The main characteristics of urban socio-ecological trajectories: Paris (France) from the 18th to the 20th century

•The article analyses the urban socio-ecological trajectory of Paris, from the 18th to the 20th century.•The Industrial Revolution and urbanisation have led to three main metabolic changes.•The intensification, externalisation and deepening of the imprints of urban metabolism•The growing infrastructural dimension of urban metabolism•The urbanisation of landscape and the creation of urban extraterritorialities

For some years now, interactions between societies and the biosphere have been the subject of socio-ecological studies (SESs), which analyse socio-ecological regimes, trajectories and transitions. This article follows the approach, and seeks to contribute to the analysis of socio-ecological urban trajectories since the Industrial Revolution. It draws on some key notions which are tested and applied to Paris. The urban socio-ecological regime of the industrial era has three major characteristics: i) the near-total externalisation of a more intensive urban metabolism, associated with the breakup of supply areas and the deepening, urban footprint on the environment; ii) the importance of infrastructure to this metabolism, which fits into a process of generalised networking led by engineers and leads to urban technical inter-dependencies; and iii) the urbanisation of landscapes associated with the proliferation of extra-territorial urban influences, despite the loss of certain skills available to the French capital.