ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to make sense of the nature, modalities, outcomes and possibilities of urban transition in Paris. It explores some of the diverse array of material artefacts, sites and arenas around which low carbon actions and developments in Paris have become effectively contested, as a way of navigating possibilities and constraints of change present in the substantial proportion of the urban fabric. A focus on urban materiality is a focus directly on the contested processes and practices of change, because the diverse ways in which people understand and engage with the shifting sites and arenas of negotiation constantly work and rework the material constructions and experiences of their living space. Paris municipal plans and actors make reference to using its position as owner of the heat infrastructure and co-owner of the Compagnie Parisienne de Chauffage Urbain distribution company to extend the network to other parts of the city currently heated by less efficient fuel or electricity.
