Language : French and english

A small guide on line on the IGU website could to be downloaded and allow you to discover the various forms that nature can take in the city. It proposes an itinerary in the form of a sensitive urban walk of about an hour and a half in the Bièvre valley, with the future Arcueil-Cachan Grand Paris Express station as the starting point. You could discover the different meanings of nature in the city : parks, planted promenades, community gardens. The Vallée de la Bièvre, located in the southern suburbs of Paris, has a characteristic landscape shaped by its historical function in the service of the capital. Working-class housing and suburban buildings, works of art and industrial wastelands are the witnesses of a rich past and form the landscape signature of a territory between city and nature.

 

Files to realize these excursions in autonomy

Language : French and english

An online guide on the IGU website could to be downloaded and allow you to discover the place of nature in a city of the suburbs close to Paris at the heart of the deindustrialization and urban renewal processes. From the Ivry town hall (metro 7) to the Voltaire square, you will (re)discover the history of this city through the evolution of its gardens, from allotment gardens, to the insertion gardens, to the community gardens and to the recent urban parks. You will see how plants were integrated by architects in the functional urbanism of the 1960s-1970s, and, in the early 1980s, to blur the line between public and private space.

 

The tour is full, it is not possible to register anymore
Marion Tillous (Paris 8 University)
Commission de géographie critique CNFG

Language : English
Date : friday July 22, 9 am - 12:30 pm
Departure point: « Saint-Denis Porte de Paris » metro station (line 13), in front of the Novotel hotel  
End location: « Basilique de Saint-Denis » metro station (line 13)
Max. 15 participants

The city of Saint-Denis, whose historic center is located 10 km from the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, has been, since its foundation, considered by Paris as a service territory. With a certain glory at the beginning, since it is in its Basilica that almost all the Kings and Queens of France are buried ; which awarded it to be connected to Paris by the magisterial avenue that constituted the "Voie Royale" / "Royal Way". But with the industrialization of the 19th century and the opening of the canal in the 1820's, the city that was a stopover for trade from the North of France to Paris gradually saw its agricultural areas covered with factories. Inequalities grew within its population, as newly arrived workers rubbed shoulders with the well-to-do girls of the Maison d'Éducation de la Légion d'Honneur created by Napoleon Bonaparte. The construction of highways during the 20th century reinforced the fracturing of the territory, all the more so since they cut right through the working-class residential fabric. The construction of the Stade de France and, by 2024, of the infrastructures linked to the Olympic Games are also part of this dynamic. Despite all this, Saint-Denis is a city with a strong identity that manages to preserve a unity: this is what we will try to show during this field visit.
We could finish the visit with a lunch on the place of the Basilica.

An excursion to analyze the conflicts of development in the West of Paris and their geopolitical stakes.

The tour is full, it is not possible to register anymore
Matthieu Jeanne (PhD in Geography, French Institute of Geopolitics, Paris 8 university)
Commission géographie politique et géopolitique CNFG and Commission de géographie critique CNFG

Language : French
Date : tuesday July 19, 10 am - 12:30 pm
Departure point: in front of the 16th arrondissement town hall (near the Rue de la Pompe metro station, line 9, or the Henri Martin station of the RER C)
End location: in front of the old Auteuil train station (Porte d'Auteuil metro station line 10)
20 participants max.

For the past 15 years, development conflicts concerning social or sports facilities have multiplied in the Bois de Boulogne and its surroundings. Residents' and locals associations are opposed to the Paris City Council. These conflicts now occupy a central place in the rivalries of actors for the political control of the Parisian territory.

 

Gilles Martinet (IHEAL CREDA) and Véronique Bontemps (IRIS)

Language : French
Date : wednesday July 20, 2 pm - 5 pm
Departure point : Charles de Gaulle Etoile metro station (RER A, metro lines 1-2-6)
End location : Place d'Italie (metro lines 5-6-7)
Max. 35 participants

This tour proposes to go through Parisian spaces of social and political struggles of the last years, in order to understand their specificities and transformations, especially those produced by the Gilets Jaunes. Using the metro, and sometimes walking at the fast pace of the "GJ demonstrations", we will visit the Champs Elysées, Saint-Lazare, the Place de la République before finishing at the Place d'Italie. 
We will discuss the reconfiguration of the Parisian spaces of protest, from Nuit Debout to today, focusing on the experience of the Gilets Jaunes, who have taken over the places of power, inventing new tactics of struggle in the face of unprecedented police strategies.  
 

The tour is full, it is not possible to register anymore
Sophie Blanchard et Claire Hancock (Paris-Est Créteil University)
Commission de géographie critique CNFG

Language : English
Date : friday July 22, 9:30 am - 12:30 pm
Departure point: Créteil University metro (line 8) 
Ending point: Créteil Pointe du lac metro (line 8) 
20 participants max

The City of Créteil is one of the designated « new centers » on the outskirts of Paris planned in the 1960s in order to decentralize political decision making and limit the banlieue’s dependance on central Paris. A very ambitious urbanistic plan was deployed in an area of relative deprivation, with a striking visual signature and high hopes for a new centrality. This tour of Créteil includes its charming lakeside, daring housing developments and major public landmarks.
 

Jérôme Monnet (Gustave Eiffel University)

Language : English, Spanish and french
Date : thursday July 21, 10 am-12 pm (French), 2 pm-4 pm (Spanish), 4 pm-6 pm (English)
Starting and ending point: in the Samuel Paty square, in front of the Sorbonne on the Rue des écoles.
15 participants max.

The emphasis on vision encourages velocity as well as speed requires more concentration on vision. To challenge this feedback loop and its dominance on our perception, practice, conception and design of the city, we will explore the urban environment through a barefoot walk. This is intended to enhance the importance of proprioception, touch, smell and hearing to enrich the urban experience through slow motion.
Recommended : hat and water


---

Fecha : jueves 21 de julio.
Punto de partida y de llegada: en la plaza Samuel Paty, frente a la Sorbona, en la Rue des écoles.
15 participantes como máximo.

El énfasis en la visión fomenta la velocidad, al igual que la velocidad requiere una mayor concentración en la visión. Para desafiar este bucle de retroalimentación y su dominio sobre la percepción, la práctica, la concepción y el diseño de la ciudad, exploraremos el entorno urbano a través de un paseo descalzo. Con ello se pretende realzar la importancia de la propiocepción, el tacto, el olfato y el oído para enriquecer la experiencia urbana a través del movimiento lento.
Recomendado : sombrero y agua

 

The tour is full, it is not possible to register anymore
Sophie Bonin, Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Paysage de Versailles
Thematic link with the session "Agrarisation of the city" led by Joëlle Salomon-Cavin and Giulia Giacché

Language : French and english
Date : july 19, 9-12am (possibility of picnicking in the Potager du Roi - to bring with you, water on the spot)
Departure and end point: Versailles-Chantiers stop (RER C) 
25 participants max

The last “Agricultural Revolution”, was based on the adoption of mechanization-motorization and chemization. It was the result of searching for an autonomy from the land (soil, climate, limits or frontiers), and even from the territory with a disconnection from local markets and chains of production. This has led to both the dramatically increased specialization of certain regions/territories and a great simplification of the landscapes. In many ways, agroecology aims to recreate relationships both with the characteristics of the landscape (landscape structures are integrative of soil-climate-water relationships but also of the history of human / non-human relationships built over the years), and with territorial dynamics (reconnection to local markets, upstream and downstream of agricultural activity). Thus, it is a general rule that agroecological practices are closely linked to a consideration of the landscape, and at the same time produce a more complex landscape, even if these two aspects are not always explicitly integrated into the projects. Among the transformations underway, which from being possible alternatives are now becoming widespread practices, we can cite agroforestry, conservation agriculture, direct seeding, diversified living infrastructures (hedges, permanent or temporary prairies), limited irrigation, but also the movements of urban agriculture, and the development of short economic circuits which also have spatial effects. All of them relate to issues of transformation and organization of space, at different scales, but it is the interweaving of the different temporalities involved that will be the guiding thread of this visit.

The ecological transition of agricultural systems needs to integrate the spatial dimensions of transformations, according to different and increasingly complex temporalities:

- the temporality of the farming system,
- that of the urban food project and the organization of actors
- that of urban demand which allows and exerts pressure for changes in agricultural practices: food demand but also aesthetic demand, in relation to the land and the living
- that of agroecosystems, their adaptation and their reaction to global changes which are reasoned over an even longer time step.

The two proposed sites are urban vegetable and fruit gardens in the centre of Versailles. One was created at the end of the 17th century, the other in 2021. Both are now managed according to strong agroecological principles, experimental or on the contrary based on a rich horticultural past, and on an increasingly accepted theorizations (permaculture). Their functions of production, conservation and training or awareness raising are quite similar, their questioning of public reception as well, but their economic models, heritage issues, and their respective histories are very different. How is the agroecological transition taking place on these sites? What spatial design has been put in place to ensure the multifunctionality of this agriculture? How does the renewal of food concerns in our rich cities influence the practices and development of these spaces?


 

The tour is full, it is not possible to register anymore
Julie Chouraqui (Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University)

Language: French or English depending on the participants
Date : july 19 2-4 pm
Departure point: tramway stop "Avenue de France" (line T3) 
End of the journey: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand stop (line 14 and RER C)
25 participants max

With an area of approximately 130 hectares, the ZAC Rive Gauche is the largest urban planning operation in Paris since the Haussmann works of the 19th century. The aim of this visit is to present this project and to examine its similarities with urban projects conducted in other large European cities since the 1980s. The tour will also be an occasion to observe the traces of the industrial past of this site and its different modes of appropriation and of enhancement.
 

Pauline Biern (researcher in social geography)

Language: French or English depending on the participants
Date : july 20 9:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Departure point : Place des Pianos (exit from Carrefour Pleyel metro station, line 13)
End location : Porte de Paris metro station, line 13
35 participants max

To what extent does the arrival of the Olympic Games in Seine-Saint-Denis remedy the territorial inequality suffered by the department's populations? Presented as a factor of correction, the games and other great projects in progress on the territory (Grand Paris Express, Urban Renovation), however reinforced the environmental injustice. 
Through the story of the mobilization (still in progress), the presentation of the various emblematic sites, we will apprehend the imbrication of the factors of environmental inequalities on this territory, where pollution plays a dominating role.