This research project involves the international comparison of different capital cities to study the place and role of political power and global urban governance in the creation, making and development of capital cities as well as the impacts of grassroots claims and demands about urban and environmental design on these political processes. The following questions will constitute the core of our interrogation: how are the national imaginaries of capital cities forged by the spatial configuration of political symbols? What are the conflictual and/or consensual relationships between different political actors in the conception of capital cities? To what extent could the nature of the political regime have an important impact on this conception with regard to the highly competitive context of planetary urbanization? What are the specific socio-political and economic flows among these countries and how do they in turn influence capital city building? Finally, how is it possible to tackle the interactions between urban design policies and multiple societal and environmental advocacy programs, considering the growing importance of urban democracy in many countries and international agendas? Our main objective is to study, in a comparative manner, the production of capital cities according to three different but interconnected research themes: 1- The spatial imagination and conception of capital cities by national political power, as a symbolic struggle of different political visions. 2- The influence of global urban networks and the circulation of international models in urban development and urban space. 3- The reciprocal impact between urbanisation policies in capital cities and various demands and protests from divergent actors concerning urban spaces and the environment. In order to study these questions, we propose the cases of Ankara, Moscow, Tehran, Abu Dhabi, Nur-Sultan and Cairo. Our choice to focus on these capitals comes from the fact that the countries in which they are located are often present in the studies of international relations in terms of geopolitics, state and diplomatic relations but less in urban studies. The cities of the project are deliberately chosen as being situated in states perceived among an international community as relatively illiberal and non-democratic. We are interested in analysing how authoritarian governments express themselves spatially in the city. The existing scientific literature on this topic has focused primarily on the fixed staging of illiberal political power in political geography and geopolitics, and less has been said on the dynamics between the political regime and city design as well as the lived and perceived spaces in these cities. The main contribution of the project will be the realisation of an international comparison of cities including their diversity, particularities, and also their shared strategies. What interests us is to observe if they are affected by similar political and symbolic processes among various actors, have similar strategies of integration in global urbanism and use similar tools in urban space in order to reflect an image of a strong state at the international level despite their diverse histories, settings and cultures. The major ambition of the project is to delve into unexplored fields/areas of urban studies. We will link our research themes through multiple threads that will follow state actors at both national and local levels, inhabitants in their lived and conceived spaces, urban activist networks and civil society. We will focus on political decision-making places of urbanism as well as on the historical and symbolic development of cities. We will bring together different methods and tools and will use especially filmmaking and photography for each stage of the work, not only as a research method but also as a storytelling medium.

Global urban and environmental challenges create tensions and vulnerabilities and the need for rethinking modes of city production. Growing spatial and social inequalities in cities raise a concern that traditional modes of knowing and governing the city are no longer adapted. Our project analyses other modes of city production emerging since a decade in tri or quadripartite cooperation in Europe and Southern countries: broad alliances leading to concrete collaborative urban action between citizens, professionals, the non-profit private sector, local authorities and universities. The research aims at filling the wide gap in comparative understandings of the governance of collaborative practices for a just and sustainable city. Research organizations show greater interest for participatory practices, but new alliances’ potentials and their internal mobilization into collaborative urban actions to drive change in planning practices are underestimated . A multidisciplinary and comparative (North/South) approach is necessary to bring major stakeholders to develop common research on collaborative initiatives for justice and sustainability. FAIRVILLE’s research emphasis is on citizen-based collaborative urban initiatives through a methodology also based on collaborative tools, namely their potential for social and spatial innovation through a co-designed analysis of the full process of alliance creation and knowledge production during implementation. On the one hand, the team will investigate the plural forms of knowledge which emerge through participatory and collaborative tools. Identifying the channels and obstacles to shared knowledge and skills in increasingly horizontal collaborations between researchers, facilitators and organized city dwellers, is an important step in Fairville’s contribution. On the other hand, we will analyse the organizational dimension of collaborative practices and their contribution to democratic governance; and alliances’ ability to counteract social and environmental vulnerabilities, deal with conflicts and define a common agenda of socio-spatial justice and transition-to-sustainability. Thus, the project will inform public policies on the outputs for city planning of inclusionary initiatives in regeneration and upgrading programs, risk mitigation, access to sustainable environments and services. It also aims at enhancing city-dwellers’ recognition and especially the role of the less privileged, migrants and women in research and by research. To do so, it is necessary to bring together different disciplines and all types of actors involved in these alliances, in their diversity and complementarity. The consortium includes four types of stakeholders in urban participatory contexts in the Global North and South who implement horizontal work methods with local residents: (a) SSH specialists involved in international research projects on collaborative urban initiatives (b) supra-local organizations and NGO providing support, expertise and peer-to-peer training to citizen movements (c) regional civil society platforms eager to promote community development and support (d) facilitators and civil society organizations including residents. Citizen science is present all along the research process, by engaging residents of deprived neighborhoods working in collaborative processes with consortium members. Democratization of planning process and change in participatory methods precisely come from alliances of some organizations support and advisory groups with residents and generally women among their active members, added to universities. Integration of all these members including non-professionals will occur through a co-elaboration of knowledge production, co-design of survey and planning co-decisions. Together with critical and analytical research Fairville wishes to unpack power relations and critically assess the outcomes: empowerment, increase in influence and more equitable resource distribution.

This participatory and multidisciplinary research project aims to analyze the social and urban reconfigurations underway in the “popular” neighbourhoods from the perspective of their youth. The goal of this study is to understand the experiences of youths, from their territorial anchorages, their individual and collective trajectories and their social representations. By situating them in a history and present of the “popular” neighbourhoods, it tries to capture the different conflicting dynamics that contribute to these reconfigurations. To do this, it relies on a threefold approach: it is based on this youth's experience; it grasps the metropolitan area from the perspective of “popular” neighbourhoods; it develops participatory methods in a citizen sciences perspective. It responds to both methodological issues, epistemological and theoretical.

The project is to build a numerical model for the street development during urban growth. Urban growth is a very complex subject, implying numerous effects from different fields (including human), with an increasing size of data, but we want to catch it from the street aspect. Streets are indeed an objective and visible result of the urbanization that summarizes its particular structure and organization. In the same time, this streets organization constrains and directs the possible exchanges in the city, and thus its life and growth. The underlying idea of this project is that the streets are not only representative of the city functioning, but also constrain a big part of the future development. To do so we extend a pre-existing numerical model, both analyzing the essential information from the existent streets, and computing the possible new streets. It aims at reproducing the complexity of a city, as the different types of neighborhoods, including the effect of pre-existing constraints such as access roads, rivers and topography, but also large social events such as the construction of protecting walls, or surrounding highways, or global internal reorganizations. Such numerical models will be validated by a analyzing their results and comparing it with the analysis of actual streets patterns, both the local type of organization and the global efficiency of a burrow or a city. These analyzing tools are thus essential. We will further compare quantitatively and in fine details the simulation results of growth with the data that we will collect from the succession of historical maps (to be inserted modern Geographic Information Systems data). It is also important for us that such models will be validated directly by the social actors, by submitting their results to the judgment of the actual town planners. For this we will develop simple and intuitive tools of visualization, and a software platform that the town planners could use with their own set of data. Such tool could be provided on-line, allowing also citizens as well as decision makers to use them to nourish possible discussions on the effect of planned modifications (such as new streets or street closing). Such development can be either a toolbox added to current GIS software, or a free web-site allowing to compute the various analyses from people’s imported data. This will also involve the development of new functionalities for GIS, as they are not turned for the moment to any time evolution representation and analysis. For the use of decision makers, the urban evolution model would allow long-range planning, guiding them toward the most natural growth. The development of these numerical tools is important now in view of the accelerating urban growth, and in particular the sustainable development problem. Theses numerical tools would help to define the best politics to built a sustainable expanding city.

Mainstream adaptation to the imperatives of sustainable development remains largely technological. In a period in which governance promotes citizen participation, insurgent planning experiences multiply, as do urban co-production practices uniting civil society, universities, professionals and sometimes allies within public authorities. These initiatives carry fundamental social innovations for transitions-to-sustainability, especially in deprived areas. Rather than the greening of technologies, CoPolis insists on the importance of cooperation tools in adaptations to sustainable development. As societies increasingly claim the need to debate and the power to influence governance systems, collaborative practices can overcome some of the remaining gaps between civil society, professionals and, to a certain extent, government. They are poles of social and democratic innovation that explore concrete alternatives for reduced socio-spatial inequalities and for inclusion. France and Brazil are two countries which have a long history of cooperation and collective and community involvement in urban and professional sectors, including in the areas where the most discriminated of populations live. This project explores the potential of co-production in the adaptation to sustainability imperatives: reducing social and environmental vulnerabilities, building more democratic governance, empowering vulnerable populations and the cognitive effects of knowledge co-production. Departing from the tensions between cooperative practices and the “collaborative cul-de-sac” (Laurent, 2018), we will critically assess the impacts of these approaches on civil society, the third sector and the production of a “solidary transition urbanism”. These aspects are analysed through the mens of social and spatial justice. The project tackles three main research questions: on the origins and development conditions of these collaborations; on the relationship between political and institutional contexts and the organisational configurations of collaborative practices; and on the organisation and the circulation of knowledge within each collaboration and the role played by different types of intermediary actors. To do so, CoPolis will implement mixed methods, including qualitative research and participatory action-research protocols. We will investigate nine French and Brazilian case studies with different urban issues at stake: metropolitan megaprojects in working class neighbourhoods; large-scale urban renewal projects; and collective initiatives in housing and transition urbanisms. Moreover, the project will tackle long-lasting collaborative practices in working-class neighbourhoods and their circulation. Regarding action-research, the team will implement a survey with partners among local intermediary actors and residents. We will implement protocols to co-construct objectives, identify means for action and implementation. It will be one of the ways of observing collaborative practices. Thus, CoPolis is a comparative and participatory project, anchored in partnerships with intermediary actors and civil society organisations. In doing so, CoPolis will also assess the tangible gains due to the collaborative practices implemented during the project, in relation to the political and institutional contexts which influence organised civil society’s action possibilities. That is why the project will shed light on the conditions encouraging the emergence and consolidation of collaborative practices. At the same time, results on organisational configurations and cooperative tools will be produced. These two types of results will feed an intense effort of dissemination.