Climathon
In 2022, from December 8th to December 10th, as part of the revision of Paris' Climate Plan, the Council of architecture, town planning and environment organized a major consultation workshop with 40 Parisian students, aged between 18 and 25.
Using a hackathon format, the students, divided into 6 teams, were given 48 hours to formulate concrete proposals in response to 6 major challenges put forward by the City of Paris.
The 6 challenges:
- Challenge 1 - Paris, a 100% bicycle-friendly city
- Challenge 2 - Paris, a 100% renewable energy city
- Challenge 3 - Paris, a haven city for biodiversity
- Challenge 4 - Paris, a zero-waste city
- Challenge 5 - Paris, a 100% eco-renovated city
- Challenge 6 - Paris, an adapted city
The workshop's program:
The first evening, the first part of the Climathon, was dedicated to debating climate issues during mini-conferences using the fishbowl method to facilitate exchanges between experts and students.
The following day, students met in teams for various ideation sessions, including 2 "retro-speculative" workshops to project themselves into a desirable future and then retrace the various steps that led to it.
The final day was devoted to preparing the presentation of the ideas to a jury.
Défi Résilience
We are now in 2023, on October 6th and 7th. This time as part of the overhaul of the City of Paris' Resilience Strategy, new students gathered around a more condensed 24-hour format. The principle remained the same: to formulate proposals for action in the face of 4 crisis scenarios envisaged on the scale of the city of Paris.
The 4 crisis scenarios:
- Paris facing a food supply disruption
- Paris facing a severe drought
- Paris facing a long-term power cut
- Paris facing an intense heat wave
This time the students were divided into 8 teams (2 for each situation) and followed the same schedule:
- first evening dedicated to building skills in the form of mini-conferences
- next day focused on ideation and formatting
- presentation of proposals on the second evening
A semi-professional experience
Throughout the whole process, the students are in contact with experts from different climate domains and from the administration. Indeed, the organizers wanted this event to broaden the youngsters' knowledge. Some students even pursued their career in the domains they discovered during the workshops.
After the hackathon, the best teams were invited to present their proposals to other stakeholders to gain even more experience. For example, the Vélib company, operating the self-service bicycle system in the city of Paris, has been interested in the project of a cycle-friendly city.
*"Vélib 2.0
To encourage more people to use bicycles in Paris, the team is proposing to encourage the use of an existing service that has already given a major boost to the development of cycling in the capital: Vélib'. To achieve this, they propose to work with users to invent Vélib' 2.0 and reinforce its role as a genuine public bicycle service in Paris. [...]
To reach new users, different models will be deployed, such as children's bikes or cargo bikes, all accompanied by helmets to increase cyclists' safety. [...]
Kiosks will be set up in public spaces, providing easy, direct access to information through the presence of human contacts."* (translated from french)
Institutional proposals
The projects presented during these hackathons, all taking place in the city of Paris, are founded on three major pillars: citizen's awareness, community and political action.
In most of the proposals, one lever of the project is related to sensitization or the transmission of knowledge to the Parisian population. These processes are thought to help them change habits or to develop the proper reflexes in case of crisis. Sometimes, the citizens are also involved in consultative or participatory sessions.
As far as the community is concerned, it is often mentioned as a way to seek help, share material or simply build relationships.
"These sites are dedicated to training local residents or professionals in agricultural production, host awareness-raising workshops and also provide a place to meet and share."
"A wide-ranging communication campaign has been launched to inform the general public and direct them towards citizen mutual-help networks." (translated from french)
Last and not least, the city of Paris, as an administration, holds a great role in the transformations proposed by the students: taxes, incentives, obligations, new services, fundings...
*"From courtyard to balcony: Biodiversity in condominiums
The first axis is the compulsory greening of condominiums, with a target of 50% of the surface area within 5 years.
To achieve this, the group is proposing incentives such as deducting biodiversity-related expenses from property tax, modifying the distribution of deductible co-ownership expenses, and subsidies from the City of Paris for the purchase of equipment."* (translated from french)