Parcours Analyse des politiques publiques

The city provides a multidisciplinary research object that interests human geographers, economists, political scientists, urban planners, and historians. Understanding the city as a living object moves beyond structural macro-sociological accounts (whereby the city merely reacts to external forces and adapts to globalization). Cities might certainly be seen through the lens of territorial competitiveness and global competition, but there are other types of urban narrative available, including those, inter alia, of the smart city, digital city, sustainable city, networked city, and post-modern city. Cities are the sites of emotions such as pride and prejudice and raise generic questions such as trust and transparency. Understanding city relationships might occur through mapping trans-urban networks, but it is also captured in specific places, where one can observe domestic organisational learning, or the diffusion and circulation of knowledge between politicians, officials, think tanks, university experts, representatives of associations.   If city governance is understood in terms of re-scaling, which levels of government are the losers and what might their reactions be?  What are the alternative spatial and mental maps, specifically the question of whether cities, localities and regions are partners or rivals? These questions are addressed in this course that constructs cities as plural objects with contested meanings. The main objective is to encourage trans-national and transdisciplinary reflection on cities as lying at the heart of contemporary reflections on new modes of regulation in a context of increasing economic and political interdependency.