The Growth Coalition in the (Post)-Fordist City: The Multi-Scalar and Dissonant Narratives of Mediated Urban Economies

摘要

One of the ongoing debates of late modern capitalism is the role played by global networks, state territories, and localized urban places in the shaping of urban economies. The objective of the article is to explore the narratives associated with these different spatial economic scales during a press conference organized to celebrate the success of the knowledge economy in the post-Fordist metropolis of Lille in Northern France. The discourse analysis of leaders reveals the strong and differentiated interconnections between scales but also a series of verbal dissonances due to the fact that stakeholders are placed in different and potentially conflictual contexts. The media are at the basis of the multi-scalar and polyphonic promotional discourse but also at the root of the dissonances.