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.

"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.