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.

In West Africa, in contexts where States are weak and dependent on international aid, the possibility of elaborating autonomous and efficient sector-based policies is at question. Reforms implemented in main public services have been encouraged by international institutions and are based on liberalisation and privatisation. Beyond problems regarding their practical implementation, assessing these reforms has led to mixed reviews. Institutional changes have led to the emergence of public but also private actors as well as local associations contributing to deliver these services at the local level with various means and specific strategies. The outcome is a weakly efficient disseminated public action. However, accomplished reforms can be identified in some countries as well as local original innovations and public action revealing State involvement. By taking the political economy of aid-dependent countries into consideration, an important issue is to empirically investigate the links among the State and sponsors and to examine the multiplier effects of public action actors and eventually to identify the conditions for effective public action. More specifically, the research project aims to analyse the implementation process of a public action in aid-dependent countries and to identify the factors that might or not lead to its institutionalisation. The objective is to contribute to the debate on the nature of State, on the conditions of institutional and political changes in aid-dependent States, on the possibility of conducting autonomous public policies in these countries. Research will be conducted on a limited number of countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger) and subjects (drinkable water, land tenure) to allow accurate comparability and robust conclusions. Final results will be discussed along with the implied stakeholders. These two sectors are key sectors of public intervention and refer to different principles : an articulation of private operators, public actors and associations for Water and a combination of public and customary principles for Land. The project will : -analyse the processes of policies’ negotiation and definition in two sectors (drinkable water, land tenure) at the national level by focusing on actors (domestic and international), on models and conflicting conceptions and on arbitration and negotiation processes; - deeply investigate local innovations by identifying their origin, the involved actors and the institutional arrangements that are proposed; - question the articulation among different action levels by documenting the way that local actors interpret, divert or take advantage of systems designed at the national and the international levels and the arbitrations by which local organisational and institutional innovations influence or not domestic policies; - be dedicated to the issue of the articulation of Water and Land. Several research disciplines (Institutional Economics, Development Anthropology, Sociology and Political Sciences) will be brought together to build a common analytical framework. The project is original with regards to its expected theoretical findings since the analytical tools widely used in developed countries to analyse public policies will be wisely and maturely transposed to the context of weak international-aid-dependent States. The project is also innovative with respect to the implemented method since it targets interaction of various disciplines on specific research objects (Water and Land Tenure) by creating common analytical instruments. Eventually, the project will build on a research partnership involving both research institutions and operational field institutions to ensure the testability and the implications of the obtained results on an accurate basis. The project will thereby launch an ambitious research program on public policy production processes in developing countries.