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.

"The encounter and confrontation of three different European realities, represented by the cities of the three secondary schools participating in the project, Dudelange (Luxembourg), Arezzo (Italy), Berlin (Germany), were the starting point of novel didactics and a new learning experience. Students were asked to exchange with their counterparts the nature and peculiarities of their environment and the characteristics of their city from an architectural and urbanistic, as well as economic and social point of view. An adolescent viewpoint, different from that of adults in many ways, allowed a more spontaneous and innovative angle. The commun language used during the project was French.The objectives of this project were: a more experienced and responsible European citizenship; improving ICT skillsets; augmenting linguistic skills in FLE (Français Langue Étrangère): ""We only learn a foreign language if there is something to say!"" (Daniel Pennac); be able to model and present complex information on an urban, cultural and social level; be able to collaborate in transnational group work; be able to critically question one’s own environment as well as that of their partner, thanks to precise categories of interpretation (cat. historic, artistic, …). Another aim was also the development of interactions with the world outside of the school ecosystem (business environment, political representatives, associative and cultural sector, etc.).The participant pool were three classes of students aged 15 to 17 years with one class per partner institution, with the decisive collaboration of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris Val de Seine (Higher Education) and their professors and students.We organised distance learning activities as well as “on site” activities. The project employed cooperative education material. Students prepared interviews of people important to them in their locality or of “average” people in order to gather useful information and deductive material to engage with. Imagery and film was used to better reflect the “local” reality to partner students. Surveys were distributed at the start and end of the project milestones and were used to assess the evolution of and changes in viewpoints, knowledge and opinions taking place during the project.The anticipated impact in the long term should be an increased awareness of European cultural diversity and a marked improvement in linguistic and ICT skillsets. From the teachers’ perspective, the project should continue to encourage colleagues to collaborate in a multidisciplinary approach and to embark on novel didactics of education projects. Hopefully, in the long term, this Erasmus+ project will significantly contribute to the academic development of didactic and ICT tool sets used in education."

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.