Géographie-cités is a joint research unit affiliated with four co-supervising institutions: the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Université Paris Cité, and École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). The laboratory also maintains a presence at the Olympe de Gouges site of Université Paris Cité, at the Institut de Géographie as well as at the boulevard Raspail building of EHESS.
Géographie-cités is structured around three research teams—CRIA, PARIS, and TERMS—each pursuing its own research while also contributing to shared cross-cutting themes. This research combines reflexivity, spatiotemporal studies, human geography, urban studies, urban planning, and territorial development.
The CRIA team focuses on urban planning and development as a series of collective and organized actions involving various actors and sectors. Its research explores how these processes shape and are shaped by territories and living environments. This approach draws on the expertise of a diverse team with multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary backgrounds. While urban production remains the key focus—with analyses focusing on actors, tools, and material aspects—, CRIA’s work also engages with evolving issues such as ecologization, the urban experience, vulnerabilities, financialization, widespread experimentation, and temporary urban solutions in an uncertain context.
The work of the PARIS team is rooted in the investigation of interactions in geography. The aim is to analyze territorial dynamics by considering spatial and social interactions as driving forces of recomposition and reconfiguration. Strong themes such as modeling, geovisualization, and a growing interest in digital humanities are enriched by reflections on data and methods, whether in terms of heritage trajectories, digital footprints, or the reconstruction of social networks and the attractiveness of city centers through data. Ecological transition is a new focus of the team’s work.
The work of the TERMS team explores two major research perspectives. The first considers the theoretical framework and communicative tools of the “sciences of space and the environment,” as well as the social histories of the actors involved. The second focuses on the temporal dimension of geographical objects, examining how said objects are constructed, evolve over time and have performative effects on the representations of the world, territorial affiliations, political or vernacular practices and, consequently, on the modalities of the production of spaces.
Exchanges between the three teams are structured around five thematic areas of transversal research:
• The making of cities: processes, actors, practices
• Mobilities and territories: towards a relational approach to space
• Data and protocols in digital humanities
• Subjectivities and reflexivity in research practice
• PhD Workshop on fieldwork and academic writing
