USER will address the issue of public space inside the city. Public spaces are very strategic places because it is where people meet and exchange. The decision-makers will have to constantly adapt public spaces to changes and will also need to prevent conflicts in using public spaces. This role of cities in supporting the changes in uses of public space is the raison d'être of USER.

USER wants to consider the impact of uses in the management and design of public spaces. We want to demonstrate that better understanding the uses of public spaces, better analyzing the conflicts of uses and the potentiality of the space to develop new uses, can improve the management of such places, reduce its costs - and improve the users' quality of life.

Public space can be considered to be more than just the physical space owned by the state based on property regulations. It is the space owned by all, and which, from a socio cultural point of view, is the community expression of the contact and communion among individuals. As a spatial embodiment of the community, the ‘public’ can then emerge spontaneously from the natural dynamics of the city and the behaviour of people, conferring such a characteristic on spaces that were not planned as such. The multiple dimension of urban space can, therefore, be appreciated not only in the quality of its physical form but also, in the intensity and quality of the social relations it facilitates, in its potential to make groups and individuals interact, and in its capacity to encourage symbolic identification.

The initial assumptions of USER are how to make a more liveable city in a context where cities:

· Have to manage a growing cultural diversity,

· Should be adapted to an ageing population,

· Should save and reduce energy consumption,

· Are challenged by social exclusion, segregation and social polarization.

New urban configuration, the arrival of new inhabitants, new visitors and tourists, the new social and  conflicts of how public space is used in different urban areas are becoming a current phenomenon in our European cities. Therefore, urban public spaces are the place of a growing range of different uses with constant changes and conflict risks that are challenging the idea of a public space owned by all and where citizenship is exercised.

Cities are places where conception of the world, the image that designers have of it and their vision of society are shown. The city of tomorrow will change must faster than it has done so far, in line with the increasing mobility of its inhabitants. To answer these challenges, Grenoble Alpes Metropole works strongly to create an active democracy and to improve efficiency of local policy. URBACT, through practical exchanges between Cities, allows to assess our policies and to improve the way we will answer urban challenges. Grenoble Alpes metropole, by leading a network, aims to drive a project showing that it is possible the think “otherwise” the way to design and manage the City of Tomorrow by considering the users as key-actors. We believe that URBACT, by the flexibility of the programme and the requirement to propose practical solutions, will allow to reach this objective. USER wants to explore new ideas for urban design, new management practices, and also new ways of involving citizens and field workers to take advantage of their know-how as users and practitioners of the City. For the partnership and beyond, lessons learned through transnational exchange and capitalisation of good practices will help to propose concrete solutions to improve the way to address urban management issues. We aim to study the three core dimensions (designing the City, managing the City, involving inhabitants and practitioners) that are different among European Member States due to governance issues, legal frameworks and way to involve inhabitants, etc. Our objective is to produce practical methods for practitioners and decision-makers, despite differences, to help them consider residents, citizens or field workers as part of the solution. We aim also to focus on the target of the “practitioner of the future”- students - by giving tools to improve academic and professional education on urban policies which consider this point of view.