Magazine
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Questioning digital practices of habitants living in low-income neighbourhoods
In 2018, the Lab Ouishare x Chronos launched Capital Numerique (Digital Capital), an action-research to question the digital practices of residents of four low-income neighbourhoods (Bagnolet, Bobigny, Besançon and Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni). The project was supported by a number of public and private partners: La Banque des Territoires, l'ADEME, l'ANRU, Est Ensemble, Orange, la MAIF, l'Agence du numérique (The government’s digital agency), Pôle Emploi (Employment center) and CDC Habitat. One and a half years later, after several meetings, interviews and workshops, we are here to deliver our main lessons and avenues for experimentation.
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Living together on our social issues
A complex problem requires collaborative and iterative design. It is with this conviction that, since 2018, we have been conducting an experiment in Roubaix with a variety of actors, including residents in situations of fuel poverty. Far from institutional and technocratic mechanisms, we move forward on the premise that the first experts in these situations are those who experience them on a daily basis. After two years of workshops and various initiatives, the principles of empowerment and self-organization that we have collectively shown have germinated and raised new questions.
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Co-living: Could it be the future of home ownership?
ANALYSIS. Co-living is a form of shared accommodation halfway between hotel services and traditional housing. It offers an alternative to traditional housing while questioning our relationship to property. But to what extent can this experiential strategy of ownership really transform the logic of ownership? And what is the situation today, at a time of pandemic and injunctions to social distancing? Behind the fine promises and marketing operations, does coliving meet real needs? Or is it exploiting the flaws of a system that is out of breath? A historical and documented insight, by Nassim Moussi.
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Questioning the educational potential of digital tools with the whole educational community
In 2019, we carried out a study at Besancon, in the Planoise neighbourhood, to better determine and understand the educational and unifying potential of digital tools. That drove us to question the initial order, to broaden our field of study to replace digital tools with simple tools, to meet and bring together the diversity of educational actors in the district.
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Work for life, work for death!
ANALYSIS. While pension reform continues to stir up public debate, what does it hide about the evolution of work, its value, its recognition, its inequalities? What does it say about our collective representations of ageing? An assessment by Laëtitia Vitaud and Mélissa Petit.
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Prototype a shared knowledge for the transition and transformation of territories
Everything today indicates that a quality of a study does not only depend on the quality of its production, but also on the care given to its transmission and conditions of its appropriation by the actors of its territories. It is with this intuition that the “Extreme Scenarios” approach was born, a one-year exploration that we delivered in 2019.
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How to use art to unlock urban imaginaries and public spaces
The modern city has long been thought of as a machine, a device that must respond mechanically and efficiently to the needs created by car traffic or housing. On the contrary, we believe that cities need to be evolving, living systems and that public spaces can be welcoming places and sources of creation. We discussed the topic with Dan Acher, artivist at Happy City Lab, Camille Bonazzi, journalist and vice-president of Noise La Ville and Pascal Le Brun Cordier, artistic programmer and head of the Master 2 Professional Cultural Projects in Public Space.
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Innovative partnerships and territorial anchorage: Transforming GRDF into a zero carbon platform for societal impact
This collaboration was initiated as part of an ambitious mission: increasing GRDF’s (Gaz Réseau Distribution France, a gas distribution company) green gas or biogas proportion in its infrastructure network to 10% by 2030, compared to it’s 0.1% today. This mission aimed to connect GRDF with actors of the ecological transition, who are commonly under the radar of most of the gas companies today, with the aim of creating value for local territories.
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How neighbourhood social networks can help communities and local businesses thrive
In the small state of Vermont, residents log on to Front Porch Forum, an online service, to ask for recommendations for a plumber, or to borrow a ladder, or to discuss the school budget. Unlike other social media, however, postings are aggregated and sent as a digest typically once a day. So members read postings from their neighbors only after they have been reviewed first by Front Porch Forum’s team of moderators. Michael Wood-Lewis, a founder of Front Porch Forum, spoke to Ouishare about the platform’s role in building community, increasing social capital, and, most recently, its take on Big Tech.
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How emerging forms of civic engagement are shaping the future of our cities
We met Joke Quintens to talk about new forms of citizen collaboration and how we can accelerate change-making for the common good.
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Why we need to address the digital divide if we want to foster more democratic societies
Digital divides mirror social inequalities. Fostering inclusion and participation can not only lead to better digital services but ultimately more democratic and just societies.
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Supporting a city in the design of a third place
In early 2018, we supported the city of Marmande and the Office of Tourism of Val de Garonne in the design of a hybrid place dedicated to the future of festivals in an industrial wasteland spanning 40,000 square meters. The design phase was aimed at defining the conditions for feasibility and success metrics of the project, to launch a community and put forward an operational plan for the next phase. Abandoned for almost close to a decade now, this wasteland is now set to become a burgeoning center of creative industries.
EN Case study