This doctoral seminar proposes to discuss and disseminate the results of recent research and ongoing experiments on the multi-level and integrative governance of urban sustainability in Europe, through case studies dealing with Sustainable and inclusive urban mobility.

European doctoral online seminar 2020-2021 - Sustainable and inclusive urban mobility in Europe. Jean Monnet Chair

Governance of Integrated Urban Sustainability in Europe (GoInUSE): Scales, Actors and Citizenship

Argument

Master ‘City, environment and societies’, Institute of Urbanism and Regional Planning, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Strasbourg & Research team ‘Territorial Dynamics, Cities and Mobilities’, UMR 7363 Societies, Actors, Government in Europe (SAGE, CNRS-Unistra).

This doctoral seminar proposes to discuss and disseminate the results of recent research and ongoing experiments on the multi-level and integrative governance of urban sustainability in Europe: its actors, processes and challenges, major experiments and themes in and around urban spaces. To this end, it brings together specialists in social sciences. The objective is twofold:

1. To address integrated sustainable development in European cities – ‘green city’ but also ‘just city’ – through the analysis of different groups of actors (including the role of inhabitants and citizens) and of multi-scale social and political configurations (global-local-individual), such as mobility, energy and ‘popular ecology’ practices.
2. To think together, on the basis of empirically founded work, topics usually associated with European studies (European charters, agenda and objectives, etc.) and issues that cut across the social sciences and urban studies, both analytically and notionally (including in critical and reflexive terms: governance or governmentality of change?, etc.).

Participation

Online

• 11/01/2021, 14:00-17:00
• 12/01/2021, 9:30-12:30

Due to the pandemic context, the seminar sessions take the form of a webinar.

To get the connection link, please contact Philippe Hamman: phamman@unistra.fr and Tim Freytag: tim.freytag@geographie.uni-freiburg.de   

Organization

Philippe Hamman (Uni. Strasbourg) & Tim Freytag (Uni. Freiburg)

Programme of the webinar

11/01 – 14:00-17:00

• Welcome and presentation of the seminar  
• 14:10: Keynote: Prof. Mathis Stock
• 35 min. presentation and 35 min. discussion approximately
• 15:20: Break
• 15:40: Doctoral presentations by Christian Hanser and Jianyu Chen
• 15 min. + 15 min.
• 16:10: Discussion in parallel sessions (two groups)

12/01 – 9:30-12:30

• Welcome
• 9:40: Doctoral presentations by Romane Joly and Florian Eggli
• 15 min. + 15 min.
• 10:10: Discussion in parallel sessions (two groups)
• 11:00: Break
• 11:20: Wrap-up and discussion
• 12:00: Conclusion and perspectives of the seminar: Tim Freytag and Philippe Hamman

Oral presentations will take place in English, discussions may be held in French, German and/or English to facilitate exchanges, including with Master’s students who are highly welcome.

Summaries of the presentations

• Mathis Stock Professor of Tourism Geography, Institute of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne Mobility regimes and the urban quality of European cities

The contemporary European city is shaped by highly differentiated mobilities or, as in the present SARS-CoV2 crisis, is affected by disrupted mobilities. How the contemporary mobility regime conditions its urban quality? In order to discuss these issues, the question of a mobility regime is raised: how mobilities are regulated? Which forms of mobility are encouraged, and which, on the contrary, are hindered and/or criminalized? For instance, regulation of “overtourism”, migration, and the reduction of the part of the automobile in the modal split of transport modes have been at the forefront of urban policies. New laws on mobility have been elaborated, i.e. the 2018 Berlin Mobilitätsgesetz or the 2019 French Loi d’Orientation sur la Mobilité. We question the mobility regime and mobilities (in)justice and the link with the urban quality of European cities. The theoretical basis elaborates on two articulated elements: 1) a theory of dwelling in order to place the different forms of inhabiting the city as key for understanding urban dynamics; 2) the notion of “mobility regime” in order to address the legal and ethical underpinnings of the differentiated values assigned to different forms of mobility. 

• Christian Hanser PhD candidate in Education, University of Edinburgh Assistant at the Department of Geography, University of Flensburg, Hospitality and belonging in the public sphere: Facilitating pop-up conviviality in mobile tiny house encounter spaces

The urban public sphere in Europe is a multi-facetted object of analysis. Beyond categories such as assimilation, appropriation and anonymity, novel in-between, fluid and hybrid forms of encounter can emerge on local as well as transnational levels through bottom-up initiatives. This European case study analyses the public use of mobile shepherd’s huts, both as an artistic intervention of place-making coordinated by a Burgundy-based NGO as well as in the context of a participatory and transdisciplinary research methodology (Edinburgh/Freiburg).

Installed temporarily in city locations, inhabitants hang out and daydream together around the wood fire stove of an open-access living room. Mobility leads to stillness, opening interstices for safety, intimacy and proximity. The individualistic withdrawal from civic sites – a phenomenon that has been widely observed in research on gated communities – does not occur in this public pedagogy. The reduction of walls and borders creates sanctuary in the middle of high-exposure environments such as squares, parks or courtyards. It will be discussed in what ways belonging and mobility can intersect to create micro-hospitalities in which the travelling researcher-facilitator is simultaneously hosted by a neighbourhood and also becomes a host for strangers who will meet by surprise.

• Jianyu Chen PhD candidate in Environmental Psychology, University of Strasbourg & Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research. Two approaches to cross border daily mobility and local residential mobility – The case of cross-border commuters living in Lorraine (France) and working in Luxembourg

The present communication intends to share two methods for analyzing different types of mobilities in European trans-border regions, respectively socio-spatial and spatio-temporal perspectives. Our case study deals with residential mobility of cross-border commuters who live in Lorraine (France) and work in Luxembourg.

The socio-spatial categorization method illustrates the tendency of gentrification and socio-residential segregation of cross-border commuters’ residential space, especially in/around big urban areas in Lorraine, such as Longwy, Thionville and Metz. The spatio-temporal method focuses on geographic evolutions of the commuters’ residential space; it shows a contradictory logic between spatial and demographic aspects. Besides, social evolutions of cross-border commuters in the Constantly Distant Communities (CDC) tend to reinforce the socio-residential segregation mentioned above.

• Romane Joly PhD candidate in Sociology, University of Strasbourg, & in Human Geography, University of Calgary, Rescaling food systems: new mobilities associated with local food supply chains 

Food system can be approached in terms of mobilities, such as flows of people and goods. The presentation outlines mobilities arising from attempts to rescaling the production, processing and distribution of food from global to local settings. Food initiatives based on short food supply chains, that is, more direct and shorter channels connecting producers to consumers, such as community supported agriculture or urban farming, have gained interest and support from a variety of urban actors over the last decades. As opposed to the globalized food supply chains, the growing number of short food supply chains generates new mobilities of people and food goods at the regional scale. These food networks (re)connect the city to the hinterlands, a relationship which is known as urban metabolism. A comparative research on food relocation processes and policies in the cities of Strasbourg (France) and Freiburg (Germany) addresses the political and spatial issues at stake in this ongoing process.

• Florian Eggli PhD candidate in Tourism Studies, University of Lausanne Research Associate, Lucerne University of Applied Science and Arts Inhabiting a Tourist City: Empirical Findings of the Case Study Lucerne, Switzerland

Lucerne is a long-lived tourist place. From its beginning in the mid-19th century up until today, tourists from all around the world are visiting the medieval city in Central Switzerland. Due to strong quantitative growth, but also qualitative change of the visitors in recent years, tourism development has become increasingly contested. In my presentation, I will lay out the conflicts arising through a manifold use of urban space. My empirical findings include practices and performances of different sorts of actors, who are all mingling, competing and co-constructing the tourist place. In particular, I will dwell on the question of “what kind of city do we want?” (“Welche Stadt wollen wir?”), as stated on a banner hanging in a Lucerne street. I will show that it needs a well-balanced dealing with tourism issues to make Lucerne a “just city” and will draw on current governmental measures to illustrate the ongoing political debate.