The Making of Cities: Processes, Actors, Practices

Since 2019, we have focused on two types of collective action: urban walks and editorial projects.

Urban walks enable the reporting and sharing of research results in situ, up close to the actors, the uses of the city, and its material transformations, where they can be not only observed, but felt and sensed. Drawing on numerous concrete, localized examples, Les fabriques du Grand Paris (Editions de la Sorbonne, forthcoming) was produced between 2021 and 2024 and explores the material and social making of the Paris metropolis. The book’s originality lies in how it captures the city in the making, paying attention to both the “big” and “small” players in this process: the State and local authorities, major companies, social landlords, but also owner-occupiers, migrants, shopkeepers, etc. Building on this volume, collective reflections focused on theoretical approaches to these processes and associated terms, as well as on the importance of integrating material dimensions into their analysis.

From 2025 onwards, three research axes have been collectively determined:

• The first axis adopts a cross-disciplinary focus on housing, consumption, labor and public space to examine how urban production processes materialize potentially reproducing social inequalities. While the processes of urban privatization and financialization and the reconfiguration of urban collective action are central to current urban research, their spatial effects remain underexplored, as does resistance to these changes. The proposed cross-disciplinary approach—attentive to the spatial, material, and social effects of these processes—would provide a specific contribution to the various theoretical and empirical debates underway in urban studies.>

•  The second axis deploys a more comparative approach, drawing on the variety of fields studied by Géographie-cités members on an international scale. We intend to increase the opportunities for comparing the processes studied in these different contexts. This axis also considers both small- and large-scale networks and exchanges in which urban actors are involved. Finally, it promotes debate on the categories and theories used to understand the making of the city in various contexts, encouraging the circulation of concepts in order to better deconstruct them.
• The third axis focuses on expanding and improving current research practices. Closely aligned with the other axes, the challenge here is to conduct a collective reflection on today’s methods and approaches to the making of the city, addressing not only means of interaction with respondents from different social spheres but also practices of writing, valorizing, and disseminating knowledge.

Urban walks are now organized around an annual theme and combined with one or two half-day events, such as workshops or seminars. The promotion of these thematic cycles—through articles or journal issues—is planned from the outset in alignment with the scientific objectives. These events are also structured to foster dialogue between stakeholders and researchers and may be scheduled on non-academic premises to engage a broader audience. Involving researchers and stakeholders from outside France also helps to put debates into comparative perspective.

Another area of work concerns the enhancement of the urban walks themselves; sound recording, textual and visual materials, video documentaries, online platforms, digital or paper guides—the possibilities are endless. The challenge lies in both documenting spaces that are often undergoing rapid transformation and sharing this material not only with participants, but also with teachers and students, urban transformation stakeholders, and the wider public.