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Transfer Story: Toulouse. Urban Regeneration Mix, a relay reace about citizen participation

Edited on

31 March 2021
Read time: 5 minutes

To get involved in the URBACT REGENERATION MIX project is to start a RELAY RACE named "CITIZEN PARTICIPATION" in Poland, in ŁÓDŹ, without knowing who the relays will be, the length of the race, or the place of arrival... It is to start a TRANSFERof GOOD PRACTICE with a precise idea, the consultation on a flagship urban development project, then to do a refresher course in Italy, in BOLOGNA, to pass the baton to the socio-cultural animation department, and to come back again to urban development thanks to a deep immersion in BIRMINGHAM (England), and a step in BRAGA (Portugal). Over the course of the race, more than 10 different directions of the Toulouse Metropolis joined THE TEAM to cross the FINISHING LINE together.

This international race, coordinated by the city of Łódź, bringing together 6 partner cities (Toulouse, Bologna, Braga, Birmingham, Baena and Zagreb), has as its theme urban regeneration and three types of competitions:
• urban regeneration,
• the conduct of citizen participation actions
• the strengthening of public-private partnerships.

STARTING LINE

The starting point of this race is at the top of a hill in Toulouse, on the site of a flagship urban development site, the ex-CEAT, with a rather successful consultation with the inhabitants for the development of a new district.
This hill is the one we see the most, an emblematic urban project of the City of Toulouse, innovative means, practices and projects in the field of consultation. But it hides many other small hills, which are worth observing in terms of consultation.
This is how the search for relays of good practices within the community began. And what was our surprise to discover other hills, with interesting but little-known practices in terms of citizen participation: the route of the race was then widened.
The Urbact project made us realize that citizen participation was finally a theme that cuts across many of the city’s departments. There is an analysis of professions department within the City of Toulouse that develops many tools and approaches, but which are sometimes insufficiently known to other intermediaries involved in the field of citizen participation.
The question then arose how this hill could make the link with other places in Toulouse that presented other consultation’s good practic

What is CEAT ?
This Guillaumet urban development project (16ha) on the site occupied until the 2000s by the Toulouse Aeronautical Test Center (CEAT). Located in the immediate vicinity of Toulouse city center. Directly connected to the ring road and located 1 km from the Matabiau train station, it is served by two metro stations.In 2016, this urban project was the subject of a broad consultation of the population led by the Metropolis, in order to involve local residents and neighbourhood associations in this requalification process. Public meetings, workshops, an exhibition and an online consultation were organized.
In 2018, consultation continued with the private developer (concession contract between Toulouse Metropole and a private developer), who hired a consulting firm specializing in citizen participation. Approximately 680 people participated in the public meetings and workshops. The consultation process will continue until the end of the project in 2024. The current inhabitants of the district but also future occupants will be able to follow its progress.

A FRESH BOOST

The race continued and the refuelling in Bologna was invigorating. The runners were starting to run out of breath and the public was getting scarce. The Italians presented many projects and ideas that fed into the reflections and the handover took place under optimal conditions: the runners were bursting with energy! The baton was passed and the cultural aspect surfaced thanks to non-verbal body expression workshops opening up the field of new cooperations and new skills around consultation (culture, socio-cultural animation...).

BOLOGNA : What good practices were presented?
The body expression workshops held at the DAMSLAB theater in Bologna with a company of artists allowed us to consider citizen participation from the perspective of animation and expression to reconnect it with a more human dimension. The exercises allowed us to glimpse a new field of possibilities with our colleagues in socio-cultural animation who have joined the ULG team for the TNM in Bologna. We realized that we could cross competences in view of the animation of citizen participation actions, in order to make this expression of users and inhabitants more attractive for the construction of the «city project». This was reinforced by the shared experience of our English colleagues in Birmingham who, in their urban renewal operations, rely on a strong appropriation and involvement of the «communities», thanks to the facilitation operated by a «community organizer».

Another step was a photo exhibition of a development project, to keep a record of the life of the site before it was demolished and to integrate the point of view of a particular audience that is difficult to capture: young children. It is important to include everyone and not leave them by the side of the road as spectators.

TOULOUSE : The “photos-graffs” exhibition.
Before the start of the destruction of the buildings, some street artists painted on the walls. The idea was to involved children on the memory of the site through pictures of this graffiti. Around 15 children participated in this activity and took pictures of the site (from 8 to 12 years old). They discovered the history of the site, some objects, and have been very impressed by the size of the site. The exhibition was held in September in four places in the Metropolis.

The race continued by bringing new race partners and new ideas to Toulouse Métropole. Consultation is an objective, a finishing line, but can be done by different means, integrating many skills and directions, necessary to reach the success.

OVERTAKING

Arriving in the middle of the race, strengthened by these different supplies, and the different experiences of the runners, a new, wider landscape arrived, offering new horizons but was also frightening. The race still seems long: how to bring together these new runners, this new public, to reach the finishing line and succeed in the challenge of transferring good practices? So the idea of an internal seminar bringing together all the runners of the race “citizen participation” was born. A final stage in Braga consolidated this idea with the presentation of the Public Private Residential Partnership, which made it possible to formalize the proposal for an event in Toulouse.

BRAGA : What’s happened ?
The TNM in Braga has allowed us to strengthen the link between different actors of citizen participation around this intuition. The success of projects is linked to the place given to the citizen. The exchanges in TNM in the form of workshops between local authority technicians, elected officials and AMOs specializing in citizen participation, enabled us to identify that project management was in the process of changing its paradigm: moving from a PPP (Public-Private Partnerships) to a PPHP (Public-Private Partnerships for the Inhabitants). A proposed methodology was discussed, notably around governance charters. This discussion strengthened the links between the representatives of Toulouse Métropole and led to the idea that before undertaking new actions with citizens, it was essential to build a common inter-departmental culture around citizen participation

THE SUPPOR OF URBACT

The race organisation team, the Urbact team, helped to light the way to the finishing line as best as possible. The different runners, the other cities, came to support us in the race and to enrich our ideas to lead to the construction of an internal event based on consultation, itself co-constructed with all the directions involved.
The idea of a new challenge in our race was born: to share an inventory of our practices and our needs through an approach that facilitates collective intelligence via the organization of an internal and inter-directorate seminar for a common framework around citizen participation. The Transfer Plan then evolved and was finalized: the work of bringing together the different departments involved in any form of citizen participation began. The concretization of this idea was made possible thanks to the support offered by the lead expert to refine this idea which began to emerge in December 2019. The TNMs prepared by each city, the phases of work, reflection in transnational groups and the meeting of new actors, really allowed us to give more substance to this idea and to find a way to propose it. The participation in the URBACT project and the creation of the ULG have been decisive to begin to create a link between directions on this project, and to be legitimized to carry such a transversal and common project to all.

BIRMINGHAM : Local organizers
From the very beginning of the discussions on the Toulouse Transfer Plan, we were challenged and fascinated by the culture of the communities at work in England and particularly in Birmingham. The role of community organizer was of great interest to us. It allows local communities to take collective ownership of projects and life in the neighbourhood, which we seek to encourage in our projects such as the one in Guillaumet.

ŁÓDŹ: Micro grant
The micro grants set up in Lodz and supported by the NGO «Opus Centrum» caught our attention. It is a tool that encourages citizen initiatives of associations within condominiums to strengthen social and neighbourhood links (creating a children’s playground, a summer lounge area, the creation of a vegetable garden...). We then discovered that the same type of project, initiated recently, existed in Toulouse: the participatory budget. For the moment this tool is being deployed in the Urban Policy Districts and will be implemented in the coming years on a wider scale within the metropolis. It is certainly a first innovative experience that will enable us to benefit from future feedback that will perhaps make it possible to envisage the development of future consolidated tools for other neighbourhoods and citizens in the coming years?

The FINISHING LINE is close, but new stages are emerging: shared and collegial drafting of specifications to select a service provider to lead the process around theseminar, choice of organizer, sending of invitations, choice of facilitators, association and discovery of new directions that can find a PLACE IN THE PROJECT... This RACE IS NEVER OVER, with always new challenges and challenges to be taken up TO WORK TOGETHER and create a COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE with NEW PARTNERS. There are more and more participants in the race, the race is longer, but we will manage to go much further, in order, perhaps to MOTIVATE OTHER RUNNERS for another Urbact project and TO MAKE THE SEEDS that germinated bear fruit in our administration?

« ALONE WE GO FASTER, TOGETHER WE GO FURTHER »