Haussmann and the Disruption of the Apparatus of Capture in Mid-Nineteenth Century Paris

Haussmann’s public works in Paris in the mid-nineteenth century have been at the center of a historiographical debate on the rationales for what is considered to be one of the most ambitious, single minded (and heavy-handed) examples of ‘city improvement’ in the modern world, a process that has been called ‘haussmannization’. In this chapter, I draw on previous work on Haussmann’s daily planning interventions to show that this concept covers over the fact that, between 1853 and 1859, Haussmann drew on Saint-Simonian ideas to force through the entrenched influence of property owners over planning. What haussmannization thus obscures is that the transformation of Paris under Haussmann saw the playing out of an essential conflict at the heart of urban development—that which centers on the private capture of housing and land—at a time in which the degree of housing capture was extreme. To provide the theoretical tools to understand how Haussmann’s planning practice sought to break the hold of property owners over the development of the city, I use the Deleuzoguattarian notion of the ‘apparatus of capture’ as a means to isolate three facets of property owner domination over housing: control, extraction and production.