Culture is considered as an important element defining metropolitan status as well as a distinguishing argument in the context of international and inter-urban competition. Within cities, artistic presence is frequently associated with the transformation and revaluation of urban spaces. Contemporary art - as a global object, locally produced - and its urban spaces are the core of this research, which explores the issues related to both the cultural visibility of a city as well as artistic presence. The spatial organisation of contemporary art spaces, in Paris and in Berlin, that was taken into account thanks to the construction of an original database, shows, beyond differences that are linked to particular historic and urban contexts, the importance of multipolarised urban systems, where artistic diffusion and creation contribute to the emergence of specialised centralities. The involvement of Paris and Berlin in artistic networks mirrors the interdependencies that are revealed by functional specialisations. The artistic exchanges that we consider through contemporary art exhibitions underline the global dimension of the artistic networks. They also show that the artistic systems in Paris and Berlin are structured by intra-metropolitan exchanges between spaces of creation and spaces of diffusion. The coexistence of strong endogenous dynamics and significant artistic exchanges at different scales underline the pivotal role played by Paris and Berlin, at the interface of multiple artistic networks. Spatial practices of artists are examined at the local scale of urban spaces of creation, in Montreuil, for the Parisian case and in Neukölln for Berlin. We show that they play an important role in the collective affirmation of a creative identity. They also underline the interactions and interdependencies that contribute to urban concentration of artistic creation. This research highlights, through a comparative and multiscalar approach, urban spaces of art whose dynamics contribute to reinforce metropolitan centralities as well as contributing to the emergence of artistic centralities. We pay particular attention to artistic circulation that increases the diversity of the metropolitan connections defining the position of both cities, as well as contributing to the emergence of transnational spaces within each city. This research, crossing case studies, approaches and scales, shows the role of art spaces in the urban production processes, contributing to the reinforcment of existing centralities, as well as the emergence of more speciific and specialised centralities.
