A Euro-Mediterranean Future: Redefining Urban Identity and Belonging in Southern France

Since 1995 the French port city of Marseille has played host to Euroméditerranée, the largest urban renewal project currently under way in Europe. More recently, Marseille held the title of European Capital of Culture in 2013, a year that also saw the opening of two new institutions on a renovated waterfront esplanade: the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations (MuCEM) and the Villa Méditerranée. Along with a combination of public and private local, national, and international forces, the MuCEM and the Villa Méditerranée (as well as the overall Euroméditerranée project) contribute to a rebranding of Marseille as a city with a particular role to play in France and Europe that is increasingly centered around its “Mediterranean” identity. I explore the economic investment and actual benefits of such projects, as well as their alteration of social dynamics in Marseille, particularly around the waterfront esplanade where the MuCEM and Villa Méditerranée now exist. Broadly transdisciplinary and multi-scalar, my research in Marseille includes the periods before, during, and after the MuCEM’s and Villa Méditerranée’s respective openings in 2013. I argue that while these complementary projects may appear to stake a claim to Marseille’s unique identity and contribute to its “development,” they also work to bring the city closer within the control of French and European political and economic power. In order to do so, they make use of a contested view of the Mediterranean that has its roots in France’s colonial past and Marseille’s role therein.