Learning about cities differently
newsletter no. 117B
Marie LE GAC, Sarah MARNIESSE, October 2024
By 2045, the global population living in cities is expected to reach 6 billion. In concrete terms, this means that more than half of the population is urban. However, this historic threshold, which was crossed in 2008, is only one step in the urban transition: as cities grow in size and number, the share of the urban population is increasing in all regions of the world. In Africa, the urban population, which did not exceed 33 million in 1950, is expected to reach 1.2 billion by 2050, a 40-fold increase. Unprecedented in history in terms of its scale and speed, this urbanisation phenomenon represents a considerable challenge for urban stakeholders in the South. The impacts are multiple, affecting territories, inhabitants and ecosystems. Inter- and intra-urban territorial inequalities are symptomatic of African cities at the beginning of the 21st century, and these disparities are continuing to grow. In Africa more than elsewhere, stakeholders are faced with the urgent need to rethink cities in order to ensure sustainable urban development, with the priority of fighting poverty and promoting inclusion for all, in order to create dynamic, democratic, safe and attractive cities that respect the environment and are in balance with natural, human and financial resources. But how can these stakeholders be supported? What training programmes can be designed to help them take a step back, escape from a reality of seemingly intractable problems, and rediscover the desire and creative energy to project themselves into a different urban world?
1/ Training to support the transformation of territories
A. General principles: creating the conditions for imagining new solutions for and by African city stakeholders
Cities are now at the heart of international sustainable development agendas: the International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa (2015) led to genuine recognition of the role of local authorities in financing development. The United Nations Summit on Sustainable Development in New York (2015) dedicated a specific Sustainable Development Goal to urban challenges (SDG 11). The Paris Climate Conference demonstrated the importance of the local level in the agenda for low-carbon and climate-resilient cities. The international conference on sustainable urban development held in Quito, Habitat III (2016), led to the adoption of the New Urban Agenda, which sets out a shared vision of equitable, safe, healthy, accessible, affordable, resilient and sustainable cities and human settlements.
In order to contribute to the transformation of public action in local areas and to break the deadlocks that are emerging, it is now necessary to support stakeholders in acquiring the skills that will enable them to understand the contribution of cities to international agendas and to imagine new solutions and pathways.
While learning technical knowledge and skills is essential for managing the short term and performance, other skills are needed to imagine and transform the city of tomorrow. Because we are not ‘spontaneously’ agents of change. Training must incorporate both ‘traditional’ educational objectives (acquisition of technical knowledge and skills) and ‘transformational’ objectives, which can be summarised as follows: awareness of the challenges and the need to act, stimulation of momentum and motivation, and the emergence of new knowledge, thanks to the group, to enable actors to take action and accelerate change towards the SDGs.
A transformational experience is an individual and collective educational process involving stages of awareness, introspection, inspiration, emergence, action and anchoring, enabling the development of new ways of thinking, but also the invention of solutions and projects designed for and by the actors of transition. This process enables a profound transformation in the way we see, think and act, which is essential for researching and deploying new ways of designing cities, particularly on the African continent.
B. At the heart of transformational education: understanding the complexity of territories to give them meaning
One of the first lessons of the scientific revolution of the last century was to highlight the flaws in ‘modern’ thinking when faced with an increasingly complex reality. Our brains distort our perception of reality and prevent us from interpreting an ambiguous and uncertain world in a single way. Complexity is at the heart of the challenges we face.
The city: a complex system
In his book ‘Where to land?’ (2017) and through his many other works, Bruno Latour invites us to map the ties that bind us to our territories in order to ‘find our bearings’. Take into account the systemic dimension; avoid a silo approach. Cities are at the crossroads of ecological, energy, economic, technological and social issues. These interdependencies, which are now heightened by the speed and uncertainty of urbanisation processes, make an integrated and systemic approach to understanding territories and strategic urban planning more necessary than ever.
Transformational pedagogy seeks to raise awareness of this complexity in order to understand each city in its systemic reality and to understand together the interdependencies and their consequences. This approach invites us to deconstruct the imaginaries that structure our silo-based ways of thinking and to demonstrate how business as usual and ‘traditional’ modes of urban development are ill-suited to this systemic and living reality. The aim is to raise collective awareness of the need for a paradigm shift, moving away from a Western vision towards a more integrated, contextualised and participatory approach to city building. Redefining the concepts, approaches and methods specific to urban planning, based on observations and analyses at different scales and from different sources, both statistical and quantitative, anthropological and sociological, in order to respond with appropriate actions to social demands, environmental challenges and the needs identified in African cities. Rely on citizen participation to avoid reducing planning to a ‘technocratic instrument’ that is partial and biased in its consideration of the challenges facing the inhabited territory. Understand the importance of ‘hybridisation’, which consists, for example, of integrating formal systems into urban planning and projects, but also the informality that today allows many populations to access services or sources of income. Project ourselves together onto different urban worlds, in particular by mobilising positive foresight tools to construct new desirable narratives.
Engaging communities in this transformational approach means enabling a transformation of ways of seeing in order to bring about different urban futures; offering perspectives that inspire action and, ultimately, promoting more inclusive, sustainable, collaborative and participatory cities.
C. Knowing how to transform in order to transform
Supporting stakeholders in this overall understanding of their territory and in defining a common project for more sustainable cities also means providing them with the keys to better collaborate, imagine, create… but also to better understand themselves. These skills are multifaceted: emotional and relational intelligence, communication, meaning and narrative creation, etc. They require tools such as creativity, collective intelligence, critical thinking and non-violent communication. They encourage us to work on our individual and collective attitudes so that we are able to listen, cooperate, imagine and co-create. To drive change through involvement, example and the energy we transmit.
Becoming agents of change in the service of sustainable development also means rethinking our relationship with the world and the environment. It means looking at things differently, moving away from a negative and fixed vision, and abandoning attitudes of domination and exploitation. It is about understanding how cities, sometimes considered undesirable and sources of nuisance and problems, can instead play an essential role in defining solutions (and innovations) for transitions. It means putting people back at the centre of the game and giving new meaning to action.
2/ Urban Factories: a transformational training programme from the AFD Campus
In line with the objectives of its roadmap adopted in 2020, the AFD Campus is positioning itself as a laboratory for educational innovation at the service of major social, environmental and economic transitions. Through blended learning programmes combining face-to-face and digital learning, co-designed with partners in the North and/or South, the Campus offers tailor-made programmes based on innovative and transformational teaching methods and the AFD Group’s sectoral expertise.
The Urban Factories training programme on sustainable cities and territories is part of this same objective. Designed for and with the women and men who shape cities, this training programme is aimed at elected officials, government executives, architects and urban planners, as well as civil society representatives, entrepreneurs, researchers and artists.
The various components of this comprehensive and hybrid offering are structured around the following three pillars:
-
Understanding and exploring, through the sharing of theoretical knowledge, research and exploration carried out by participants, and inspiring encounters during face-to-face or remote seminars. This is notably what is offered by the MOOC ‘Sustainable and Innovative Cities in Africa’ (and its associated series of online conferences), co-produced with ADEME. Another example is the game ‘Fresque des villes africaines’ (African Cities Fresco), developed with the support of Groupe Huit.
Experiment and take action, based on personal or collective projects defined at the start of the course, which participants must develop (or prototype) as they progress through the modules; a tutoring, mentoring, coaching or sponsorship system supports learners in these activities. This approach is at the heart of the ‘Urban prospective lab – intermediate cities’ course, co-designed and rolled out with Les Ateliers internationaux de maîtrise d’œuvre de Cergy and the Institut des Futurs Souhaitables.
-
Collaborate and engage within communities of practice or networks dedicated to collectively promoting and building the sustainable cities of tomorrow. This is the focus of the ‘Financing the sustainable city of tomorrow’ cycle, offered in partnership with the Global Fund for Cities (FMDV).