For about ten years, key players have been inventing “project places” identified as a new type of place. This study is based on the analysis of ten structures involved in creating these “square metres”. What can be learnt from these experiments to extend the approach?
The study carried out with Nicolas Détrie, co-founder of “Yes We Camp”, is based on interviews with the organisers of these initiatives and data that they agreed to share: Communa, La Cordée, Darwin, Fabrique Pola, La Lune Rousse, Make Ici, Plateau Urbain, Sinny&Ooko, Social Bar and Yes We Camp.
The structures which initiate these new project-places and then run them have been created outside the framework of a commission, on the initiative of individuals or collectives. Diverse in their actions, their ways of functioning and their philosophies, they produce a local economy, a social dynamic and a governance that involves the participating parties.
At a time when environmental limits are forcing us to transform our ways of functioning, these players are attracting interest as prototypes of a different way of developing the city by creating shared spaces, tools and a collective feeling. Even though they are becoming more widespread and visible, their business models still remain fragile.
Portrait files in the appendix describe the originality of each of them.
The aim is not to produce an exhaustive inventory of these players nor the places they invent, but to extract information which is common to all, over and above the different models and to identify how these experiments can inspire professional practices which today regulate the development and animation of cities.
L’étude réalisée avec Nicolas Détrie, co fondateur de Yes We Camp, s’appuie sur des entretiens menés auprès des responsables de ces structures et des données qu’ils ont accepté de partager
