French specificities of a sustainable urban development?

Joel ANSAH, Jazmyn BLACKBURN, Giulio NEGRI, Maïwen PAIN and Delia WALKER-JONES, students of the master Governing the Large Metropolis, realised a comparative neighborhood study to determine whether, and to what extent, a quintessential “French” method for sustainable urban development can be identified.

This capstone project was proposed by France Ville Durable, the French NGO dedicated to professional sustainable city stakeholders that promotes the growth and development of holistically sustainable cities in France and around the world. It is a comparative analysis between five cities across four continents: Europe, Asia, South America, and North America.

Through this analysis, the students have come to understand and appreciate the need for global conversations to happen that mobilize cities in efficient and relevant ways in order to mitigate the effects of climate change. The “European” (French) method could be one strategy for sustainable urban revitalization. France as a country is remarkable in that it bears no apparent weaknesses in any of the aspects presented in the Holistic Sustainability Analysis framework—only strengths and neutralities. This makes the French éco-quartier a very acceptable and relevant model to begin evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of other countries’ urban development initiatives and reformulating them as necessary to have more strong points than weak points.

However, this is not by any means to say that the European (French) way is the only way or the best way. Urban sustainability is not an exercise in simple policy transfer, which has many drawbacks. Simply replicating the French model as a prototype to use elsewhere in the world is impractical. None of the other countries studied align perfectly with France in any aspect of strengths and weaknesses. In fact, some (such as Colombia) remain completely distinct from the French method in all aspects. This diversity, in and of itself, should be perceived as a source of strength and not a weakness.

In addition to producing their final report, the team made a presentation at a conference organized by France Ville Durable in Dunkerque on May 19, 2021, entitled “Villes durables en actions”. They presented an overview of the research conducted, including a brief introduction to the five global sustainability projects of interest and a preliminary evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses relative to one another. >Watch their speech – from 02:50:00 (FR).

Read their study