This article examines a conflict between two narratives for the future development of Greater Paris – the 'just city' versus the 'global city' – embodied in two competing regional rail proposals, one put forward by the Regional Council and the other by the French State.
The first, Arc Express, was developed by Regional Council to reduce existing territorial inequity. A counterproposal, the Grand Huit, was formulated by the French state to serve a network of new economic clusters. A political impasse between these conflicting plans, though a
prelude to broader institutional transition, empowered new actors in the negotiation of metropolitan planning. It also engendered experimental tools, such as collective territorial development agreements, with which local stakeholders leveraged the state's agenda to achieve their own objectives
and gained greater metropolitan citizenship.
