La crise dont vous êtes le héros

In 2023, Nantes and its surrounding cities (Nantes Métropole), in the West of France, organized a "Great Debate" on how to collectively build the city of tomorrow. Among many participative formats, La crise dont vous êtes le héros (The Crisis in Which You Are the Hero) was aimed at an audience aged 16-30. The objective of this workshop was "to generate a collective and nuanced vision of life in the city tomorrow in the face of the crises it will face."

How it was done

Through a cooperative game session followed by a collective working session, participants were asked to work on the issue of adapting the territory (anticipating and managing crises), identifying the roles of the territory's stakeholders, and the impacts on the processes and form of the city's fabric.

45 young participants participated in three different locations.

Each session began by introducing the participants to what Nantes might look like in 2039, based on IPCC scenarios as well as the actions already undertaken by the city. The goal was to introduce a "positive, yet nuanced" vision of the city in 15 years time.

The game itself introduced participants to four crisis scenarios happening in 2039: an extreme heatwave, a power outage, a new lockdown, and a massive influx of climate refugees. Participants had to respond to three challenges: Imagine a solution to a given problem; Manage a scarce resource; Imagine a new service offered by the city.

In another session, participants read what the other groups had produced. They identified what stood out in the response to each type of crisis. Then they debated "plausible and desirable solutions" to be ready for these crises, taking care to identify what they also disagreed on.

What they imagined

An analysis of the stories produced by the workshops identified 11 conditions for a "desirable metropolis" in 2039:

  • Conviviality: connections between people
  • Comfort: ensuring well-being
  • Beauty: aesthetics for all
  • Safety: taking into account tensions, stressful and insecure situations
  • Proximity and accessibility: facilities and services on the right scale
  • Mental health: psychological well-being
  • Culture and interculturalism: knowledge, skills, traditions, and customs that bind human groups together
  • Anticipation and preparation: modes of action
  • Conflict resolution: practices and conditions for conflict management
  • Privacy: space allowing for individual comfort
  • Social justice: consideration of situations of vulnerability, pursuit of equity.

Five archetypes of futures metropolises also emerged:

  • The 'welcoming metropolis' takes into account the unavoidability of climate migrations, both within France and from other places in the world.
  • The 'anticipatory metropolis' focuses on awareness of, and training for, crises, as well as social bonds and mental health.
  • The 'metropolis of flows' focuses on helping people share scarce space and resources in times of crises, by organizing both circulation, quiet spaces, shared resources, etc.
  • The 'proximity metropolis' focuses on hyperlocal access to all basic services.
  • The 'solidarity metropolis' focuses on social justice.

"In conclusion, the image that emerges from reading these five metropolitan figures is that of a reversible metropolis. An agile territory, capable of changing and adapting to the crisis context it faces, and of returning to its initial state. It appears implicitly that the metropolis is seen as a territory tailor-made for questioning, where everything can be changed without pain, provided that it is anticipated collectively."