Since the approval of planning permission for the Heron Tower in 2001 in London, several dozen tower blocks have been built in the city. In Greater London, there were 342 tower blocks, and one planned, approved or under construction as of 1 January 2015. In less than 15 years, tower blocks have changed the city's skyline, which is full of history and symbols. Supported, more or less explicitly, by the municipal teams that have succeeded one another since 2000 since 2000, these new tower blocks, mostly residential, are supposed to respond to the constraints of urban capacity. They are also powerful levers of speculation and communication for developers, investors, architects and the municipality who approve them. In London, they can be read as markers of the regional political project which intends to assume the stature of London as a global city and a driving force of the British economy (Appert, 2005). London is not an isolated case in Europe. Many metropolises have also embraced verticality without it having been measured, characterised and interpreted. The first part of this volume will be devoted to this task.

To discuss the return of high-rise buildings, I rely on the identification of several debates that have emerged in the scientific and political arenas. The reflections allow us to read the verticalization of cities and to reposition the question of great height in the contemporary stakes of the manufacture of the city. Current political debates most often reveal Manichean points of view, opposing the supply/demand of available surfaces, densification/urban sprawl and economic development/preservation of the city's identity. These oppositions often implicitly articulate economic rationalities, materiality and imagination, which invite us to go beyond the sole architectural dimension of the tower block (…)

Introduction extract, p. 5.

Within new configurations of the ‘Great Australian Dream’, high-rise living in Australian cities has become not only an acceptable housing configuration for the middle classes but also a desirable one. Enquiring deeply into the tactics and strategies that building inhabitants use to live vertically in the city, this thesis explores the ways in which the design, inhabitation, and maintenance of middle-class high-rise developments are negotiated in Melbourne inner-suburbs. It explores dwellers’ agency in the negotiation of design choices and co-production of high-rise spaces, using mixed qualitative methods combining walking tours and semi-directed interviews. Drawing on the new geography of architecture and on a relational approach to housing and home, the research engages with a theory of practice acknowledging tactical and strategic actions in the city. It argues that dwellers reshape the socio-material configurations and spatial relations of apartment living set by designers, developers and housing technologists. Explicitly recognising of the role of social class in high-rise living, the research suggests that apartment developments are highly contested sites where intended lifestyles and aspirations are negotiated by varied institutions and actors, through a distinctive set of temporal and spatial actions. It finds that competing actors all work towards the co-production of high-rise living spaces and cultures. However, the thesis also shows that housing relations in the practice of middle-class apartment living outline an uneven and changing distribution of power between those who develop strategies and those who craft tactics. More broadly, this research opens up a deeper understanding of how this new kind of vertical city reflects and transforms configurations of status, power and identity in the Australian suburb.

Featuring AGILE virtual assistance, the new Thyssenkrupp elevators are promoted as “the next major innovation in our journey toward creating a galaxy of unparalleled connectivity and personalization. A galaxy where technology instantly and seamlessly connects people and places, work and leisure, reality and dreams”. The elevators have become the markers of the promotion of the towers which, although hyperbolic, is interesting because it implies that they are at the heart of high-rise living experiences. Drawing on the new geography of architecture and on ordinary approaches of vertical cities (Jacobs, 2006; Harris, 2015), this research explores the non-remarkable experiences, practices, and textures of the elevator rides as specificities of high-rise living and verticality. It argues that without being completely ordinary, elevator rides are daily, succinct, but above all particular moments: a passage between home and the city, inside and outside, public and private spaces, and a more intimate part of an urban itinerary than those drawn by the big city. Through the case of Lyon, this study paints a portrait of the inhabitant’s daily elevator’s experiences by addressing issues of mobility, sociability, and atmosphere to analyse the complexity of high-rise living in vertical cities. If the experience of the elevator is the genesis of a sensitive relationship with the machine as with the tower block and the vertical city, this research shows that such lifts and rides are transforming urban experiences of the cities. It assumes that residents develop unequal vertical competences, questioning tactics and strategies, the negotiation of their identity and anonymity, and the spatial appropriation of the space inside the lift. As Thibaud’s works asks “what is a step in the city?”, this research proposes to critically addresses “what is a step in the elevator?” to build a deeper understanding of the challenges embedded in the processes of vertical urbanism in the contemporary cities and urban life.

By what means and in what forms are residential towers making a comeback in urban planning strategies in France? When architectural modernism praised the emergence of real 'living machines' (Le Corbusier, 1925) by building towers and blocks in post-war France, the new vertical projects appear more like commercial products, goods. Offering 'state of the art' lifestyles, set with a wide range of specific and innovative residential services (L.Costello and R.Fincher 2005, R.Fincher 2004, 2007), they embody a new vision of vertical housing. The artefact of the residential tower, designating a form that is still considered too negative, is abstracted to represent a whole system of practices, of social interactions, justified and legitimised by the innovative vision of property developers. Breaking with egalitarianism and social equity, the 'Global Lifestyle' (R. Fincher, 2007) targets a 'Global Elite' (S. Graham, 2015) and seems to convey the logic of socio-spatial segregation. The new residential towers are emerging in major metropolises such as London (M. Appert, 2011), New York (S. Graham, 2015), Vancouver (S. Graham, 2015 and L. Hodyl, 2015) and Melbourne (R. Fincher, 2007 and L. Costello, 2005) and are evidence of a speculative property market (S. Graham, 2015). Globally, this pressure to verticalise (McNeil, 2008) also seems to be standardised, and raises questions about the spread of its forms, including in contexts that are reluctant to use height.

(...) If the neoliberal turn is concomitant with the globalisation of exchanges, it is also the marker of the advent of an urban and local scale, which is significant at all levels in the analysis of contemporary territorial mechanisms. Vertical and globalised goods are thus confronted with more horizontal governance mechanisms, as shown in France by the transition from city government to urban governance (P. Le Galès, 1995). The increase in autonomy, and therefore in the urban and local competence of local authorities (G. Pinson, 2010) then raises the question of a more balanced relationship with private actors, and therefore developers, on the vertical issue. Indeed, would there not be specific planning provisions in France that would encourage a nuance in the capitalist expressions of high-rise housing abroad? The new residential tower blocks seem to be linked to the urban development of strategic neighbourhoods for public actors, which they mark with their dimension of "symbolic places" (J. Monnet, 1998), taking place in the urban landscape. Justified by the ideology of densification (J-M. Huriot, 2011), in reaction to urban sprawl that is too costly, hinders environmental sustainability and is degrading for collective well-being (E. Glaeser, 2011), they are reinvented in the light of new qualities of use.

Their connection with the injunctions of sustainable development (P. Hamman, 2009, H. Meyer D. Zandbelt, 2012) even seems to be outdated in favour of 'liveability' (P. Howley, 2010), aiming at the challenges of 'living together' through the imaginaries of inhabitation (Heidegger, 1956, C. Ghorra-Gobin & O. Lazzarotti, 2008) or even that of nature (F. Vuaillat, 2012). The new "hyper-scalar" residential tower is doubly anchored in the global circuits of the real estate market, but also in the mechanisms of local urban development. Connected to both the telecommunication networks (L. Costello, 2005) and the urban networks of the city centre (D. McNeil, 2005), it is nonetheless "hyper-spatial". These two dimensions (M. Lussault, 2017), combined with these games of 'glocal' scales (C. Montès & M. Appert, 2015), illustrate a certain dimension of hybridity that is constitutive of the new objects of the geographies of globalisation (L. Gwiazdzinski, 2016).

The emphasis is thus placed on a residential tower block caught between a standardisation of landscapes and practices, imposed by the globalisation of financialised capitalism, which would install a smooth and 'flat' space, where distances disappear, and a differentiation of the latter into places, asserting themselves as 'holds' on globalisation and representing anchors of social life (M. Lussault, 2017).

How does the process of residential verticalization in France represent a shift from the 'tower' object to the manufacture of 'vertical places'? Introduction extract, p. 6-8.

While more than 350 projects of towers were approved in Europe these last ten years, the question arises of a pressure to verticalization in France. If those projects are making debate in Paris with the recent refusal of the project Triangle, it seems that it is less the case of Lyon which more than with the delivery of the Incity tower in 2015 gets ready for the reception of vertical residential projects. This is the instance of the developer Bouygues Immobilier, which has already launched processes of commercialization of vertical housing with the projects Sky Avenue in the district of “la Part-Dieu” and “Follement Gerland”, in the eponym district. Indeed, although mental stigmas from the Modernist period remain anchored in the consciousnesses, how can be explained such a return of the residential verticality? In a context of interdependence between the actors of urban development, the vertical projects are representative of a big profitability for the developers and the emblems of certain prestige for the elected representatives. Can’t we imagine therefore the existence of an urban marketing facilitating their adoption? While the pre-commercialization of the projects by the developers is finding buyers, can’t we think this is due to their use of performative, innovative discursive strategies? Spread by the elected representatives within the framework of the urban communication, such strategies seem to illustrate the promotion of new urban lifestyles trough the access to unique collective and private services, a closeness with the nature and a connection to networks and services of the city centre. Therefore, is the return of the projects of towers in France understandable by a redefining of the vertical imaginaries through the real estate innovation?

There is a strong link between all of Asia’s emerging metropolitan cities, which can be seen in the upsurge of urban verticalization. The use of high-rise buildings predominantly for dwelling rather than mixed-use functions, is now shaping the landscape of those cities. Within large-scale urban developments, these projects aim to instill order in urban organization and host a fast-growing urban population according to modernist principles as well as to maximize the profits of land used. Moreover, according to an international circulation of ideas and references, the vertical model follows a generic logic, which places cities in the heart of globalization. However, if defined as the combination of the designed, built and lived forms, the notion of «architectural model» breaks down the idea of a global homogeneity into an overlap of multiple interests and ambitions. Indeed, through the case of Hanoi, this study shows that between the designing, building and reception stages, all the stakeholders, politics, developers, designers and especially dwellers, are going through a constant acculturation process, from local to global cultures, which lead them to adopt diverging perhaps contradictory positions. Thus, by comparing the discourse of developers with what is being built and attested usages of spaces, there appears a complexity which transforms these residential towers from a simple spatial scheme to a laboratory of globalization.

In order to approach the point of view I would like to develop in this thesis, we must first study the notion of “inhabiting”. (...) We can [therefore] observe that the building, as a constructed object, delimited in space, with its material, technical and physical characteristics, does not allow us to understand the way in which people inhabit it. (...) The objective construction of the building does not hold the confrontation to reality, and it is only through the study of the practices of those who are confronted with the tower, in their daily experience, that we become able to account for their personal relationships to this space.

In order to study the relationship to height, this paper will address this question of inhabitant practices, using experience as a prism. (...) The study of experience in high-rise buildings sheds light on the perception of height. Introduction Extracts, p. 16-18.