IMPORTANT : COLLOQUIUM IMU 2020 CANCELED

Due to risks of our speakers and participants travel cancellations and sanitary measures due to covid-19 situation, The LabEx IMU Direction and the UERA decided to cancel the « All views of the urban » colloquium scheduled in Lyon next March 11-13.

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Since its creation in 2011, LabEx Intelligences des Mondes Urbains [Understanding Urban Worlds] (IMU) has adopted a research position based on an “object” – the urban environment in general – and an approach - radical plurality. This conference intends to take a new look at this position and compare it with related experiments.

By radical plurality, we mean an approach that brings together a wide variety of research fields on urban issues – experimental science, engineering sciences, human and social sciences, design science, communication science and computer science – that address questions formulated by researchers and city stakeholders working together. This collaborative work is fostered in order to fully take into account the complexity of environmental, social, and technical configurations in urban projects and the creation of urban worlds.

Our dual research gamble has thus been to go beyond multidisciplinarity that is already at work within these fields and to expand collaborations beyond the academic world. This plurality is radical because it is intended to lead to an intersection of theoretical issues expressed by academics with the more operational issues of practitioners. It should be expressed through true cross-disciplinary contributions, from the construction of research questions to the collection of materials and their analysis.

Drawing from this position, we aim at providing a new impetus to the French urban research field by rethinking its questions and its methods. Epistemologically, it is more ambitious than the usual multi- or interdisciplinary approaches that have been implemented for a long time; it aims at a mutual acculturation of the two worlds, "academic" and "practitioner," through symmetrical joint understanding of practices, knowledge and expertise, and by sharing formulations of the issues and questions. Based on this principle of acculturation, which is of course an incremental process, IMU has chosen to tackle contemporary urban issues. With this in mind, our focus is on promoting research initiatives the results if which can be meaningful in terms of knowledge as well as action. 

Now LabEx IMU is inviting those who have conducted similar experiments in the broad urban environment research field to discuss their methods and results. A special session has been built with the UERA [1]. Every questions adressed in the four cross-disciplinary themes and in this special session can be taken over by researchers working on urban issues, wether they come from local ecosystem, from french research on urban issues or from european and international stakeholders.  Moments could be devoted to experience feedbacks on this research tools steerings and coordinations methods.

The conference will be structured around four cross-disciplinary themes. Starting from urban research conducted through a pluralistic approach, or through related approaches, these themes will induce debates about the questions they raise. This brings up several areas of investigation:

• Collaborative methods: how did we build them?
• Results and scope of innovation: To what extent did these research practices contribute to the renewal of scientific problems and issues, including those specific to the disciplines involved; To what extent did they contribute to shifting questions, methods, and operational cultures?
• Reflections on practices: What are the barriers to intra-scientific dialogue? What are the disparities compared with known states of expertise? What are the epistemological issues concerning knowledge and action?

Presentation proposals will promote both theoretical reflections and more empirical approaches to implementing plurality. Proposals should relate to at least one of the following four cross-disciplinary themes:

Environments and habitability of urban worlds

The cross-disciplinary field of urban habitability is widely shared by urban stakeholders. It may bring together, on all scales, problems regarding ecological, environmental, social, political and planning issues. The current state of the habitability of urban worlds shows the impossibility of continuing to conceptualize them in terms of the dualistic visions inherited by our Western modernity. The opposition of nature/culture, subject/object and techniques/cultures, and the epistemologies that allowed them to be perceived, are today confronted with the conditions for the possibility of an integrated understanding of what makes an urban “environment.” By re-articulating objects from “nature” and objects from history, politics, culture or technology in different ways, in their constructions both as objects of knowledge and as objects of action, it is possible to produce a new understanding of these complex oikoumenes, which have become so vulnerable today. The etymological relationships of the oikos, between ecology and economy, are at the heart of the problems of contemporary habitability. The sciences involved in these urban issues are inevitably the pluralistic disciplines that study urban environments.

Proposals might, inter alia, address the issues of urban renewal and sustainability, “nature in the city” (green and blue belts, management of green spaces), pollution (air quality, urban heat islands, noise pollution etc.), scenarios for planning projects (desired or feared environment related to risks and disasters) etc.

Urban times and rhythms

These broad themes involve the study of contemporary issues through historical perspective, methodology and related historical knowledge, as well as the combination of multiple temporalities in contemporary urban phenomena (biological and ecological, social, political or individual times; "instantaneous" digital time; urban forecasting and planning). The urban world, caught at a particular moment in time, is always the product of an evolution. It also shows the entanglement of various processes – for instance, the chemicophysical process in the atmosphere, the development procedure for construction, transmission of data from a sensor or the movement of an individual– the multiple temporalities of which are expressing inner constraints. The current urban world becomes intelligible only through the subtle understanding of these process-related temporalities and of the rhythms and pulses of change.

Proposals might address, inter alia, the following themes: sustainable mobility/new mobility, construction in the city, expansion of heritage designation in the past and present, variations in atmosphere and climate, planning and unpredictability, inertia/path dependency, archives and urban temporalities etc.

Perceptive understandings of contemporary urban worlds

When researches address urban phenomena in and through their perceptible realities, when observations and analyses are rooted in specific places and lived experiences, questions inevitably arise on the transformation of perceptive forms of the urban environment. Addressing the issues that question stakeholders’ methods, actions, practices and sensitivities can be achieved through the traditional disciplines of the urban project (design, architecture, urban planning), as well as those that do not belong to the usual sphere of urban studies. As such, the field of aesthetics is one  contemporary way of implementing the city  (relational systems and artistic actions in public spaces). More unusually, research on the perceptions of urban spaces, in their multi-sensory impressions — sound-related, olfactory, visual, kinaesthetic — and involving the category of “experience,” is one of the pragmatic approaches that many community researchers are testing on urban realities. But these approaches are also related to the new methods of participative and collaborative science. These different modes combine scientific practices and artistic creativity, perceptive knowledge and common knowledge.

Proposals might, inter alia, address the following themes: new types of planning consultations, centres for observing perception, ambience orientated policies, scientific and landscape mediations, connections to places / places and connections to the perceptible, multimedia creativity and the urban project, and “sciensitive” approach to urban issues etc.

Materials, sources, data: knowledge and expertise

Materials in urban research involve a very wide range of sources and resources, stemming from academics or produced and collected by practitioners (watchdog or monitoring organisations), not to mention the data and open data that digital tools are able to provide through the advent of the “smart city.” All this information is characterised by its heterogeneity in terms of status, modes and methods of production, acquisition and (inter)operability. One of the issues facing those involved in urban issues, whether they are scientists or practitioners, lies in the possibility of systemic and intersectional intelligibility of the various materials, sources and information, whether or not “information” is used to mean “data.”

Proposals could address the following themes, for example (non-exhaustive list): documenting urban data, data deposits, articulation of “traditional” investigations and big data, data in the context of multidisiciplinarity and plural use, citizens in the “smart city” etc.

*** Special session IMU-UERA: Urban transition and dilemmas ***

The Urban European Research Alliance (UERA, 53 research organisations, 18 countries) was created from the JPI UE (Joint Programing Initiative) in order to bring together research organisations to strenghten and expand urban research in Europe. UERA brings together scientists from different research fields (such as economy, mobility, environment, governance, data analytics) around the urban object. UERA members organised and participated to seminars of differents key urban research subjects such as green infrastructures;  NBS and urban conflicts; Accessibility, mobility and territorialisation;  Sciences and cities; Smart cities and Huminification of the cities that cross also the research fields developed by the LabEx IMU.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals represent a comprehensive set of targets and ambitions. The SGG 11 ‘Sustainable cities and communities’ is entirely dedicated to urbanization but is linked to other SDGs such as SDG 3 (Good Health and well being) 6 (Clean water and sanitation) 7 (Affordable and clean energy), 9 (Industry, innovation and infrastructure) 10 (Reduced inequalities) 12 (Responsible consumption and production) 13 (Climate action) or 16 (Peace justice and strong institution). JPI UE defines the so-call “urban dilemmas” to characterize competing goals. The dilemma means having to decide between two or more alternatives, or to deal with difficult situations where the path is not clear and for which there is a need to compromise. Dilemmas occur where the level of uncertainty is too high to rely on a pre-calculated action plan. JPI UE identifies 4 dilemmas that are neither complete nor exclusive one to another: the digital transitions in urban governance; From urban resilience to robustness; Sustainable land-use and urban infrastructures; Inclusive public spaces for urban liveability. 

Proposals could address the following themes, for example (non-exhaustive list): Digital transition and social or age exclusion; Digital transition and privacy; Digital transition and governance; The cost of obsolescence; Impact of digital cities on human lifecycle; Climate change mitigation deprioritisation (vs adaptation) at city level; Financing Nature Based Solution; NBS and electoral rhythm; NBS and gentrification; Middle size or peri-urban cites and Urban transition. Financial models for housing energy transition; Affordable Low carbon districts; Inclusive mobility; public and virtual spaces in cities; public space and segregation; security and privacy in public space; etc.

Exploring results and putting them into perspective

Extensive discretion is conferred to Contributors for addressing the differents sessions (four cross-disciplinary themes and special session). Selected presentations will offer a discussion on research results — whether in progress or completed — putting into perspective the methodological and/or theoretical or even epistemological issues of the adopted approach. These practices question what it means to “do science” at the boundaries of each discipline and at the boundaries of academic and operational worlds.

How can operational problems be translated in research issues? How can we establish and share collections of sources and data that are heterogeneous in terms of the procedures by which they were obtained and their status? What methodological translations are necessary and how are they made possible? What writing procedures can be imagined and for what kinds of reporting? How can we maximise the assimilation of results and the operational and academic expertise? How can we design evaluation criteria for research that is radically plural? What modifications should we adopt in view of various standards of scientific research?

Finally, we hypothesize that certain issues are specific to radical plurality when it is implemented on a localized urban territory. This poses the more specific question of knowledge related to a specific territory, of its roots in networks of interknowledge and its localized nature, as well as tensions between this aspect of research and the need to share on different levels, particularly internationally.

Suggestions for presentation methods

Proposals based on any type of presentation method will be considered. While proposals for “standard” presentations and for posters are expected, other types of presentations are anticipated or even eagerly awaited as they participate in implementing plurality. We particularly welcome unconventional and experimental formats such as the following:

- Reversed presentations: a project is presented with several speakers, each describing the contribution of another partner of the project (researcher in another discipline, non-academic partner).

- Research in process: a narrative of the genealogy of projects, their order of events, the incremental sequence of research efforts, the cross-pollination of issues between stakeholders.

- Actions or images: urban walking tours, participatory workshops, videos etc.

The organizing committee maintain the right to group the presentations according to their theme and format, mainly to ensure coherent sessions.

As the audience will be made up of researchers and practitioners from various disciplines and backgrounds, a didactical efforts are required to clarify concepts, methods, and issues.

Modes of submission

Languages of the conference:

French and English

Format of presentations:

« Standard » presentation should not exceed 20 min.

Longer -60 min.- format for workshops, walking tours etc.   that can take place simultaneously, in the early morning or early afternoon, for example.

Submitting presentation proposals:

Presentations should be submitted by 30 June 2019 on colloqueimu2020.sciencesconf.org

• For « standard » presentation proposals: one page maximum, with title, name(s) of speaker(s), proposed theme(s), institutional affiliation, language of the presentation. A separate document should contain a 10-line bio and a basic bibliography. Files should be in .doc format and should be named as follows: name.firstname.doc
• For poster proposals: 10 lines maximum with the subject of the poster, name of the presenter(s), proposed theme(s), institutional affiliations. A separate document should contain a short bio and bibliography. Files should be in .doc format and should be named as follows: name.firstname.doc
• For proposals in other formats: 10 lines maximum with the topic of the presentation, name of the presenter(s), institutional affiliations and organisational details (equipment needed, number of participants, any other useful information). A separate document should contain a short bio and bibliography. Files should be in .doc format and should be named as follows: name.firstname.doc

AAC Colloque IMU 2020