Democracy and Spatial Justice

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This teaching is part of the "Politics and Government" charter. The urban territory is an object of heuristic reflection that allows the tension between democracy, one of the political forms of governance, and spatial justice, a subjective aspiration to a permitted order. Living in the city, understood as the set of social practices of the urban condition, without being limited to the function of residence, offers inexhaustible opportunities for analyses and speculative political reflections. When a development project appears, the consultation of residents becomes a decisive step in the in vivo exercise of urban democracy. Willingly or by force, populations delegate their experiences, hopes, projects, requests, complaints to experts who master the scholarly expression of concepts. Every citizen questions the political legitimacy of these delegations. The educational challenge of the conference cycle is to propose simulation games, serious games, role-playing games as a heuristic modality for exercising democracy applied to the urban universe. At each conference, the student will have an in situ experience of a game or a new simulation exercise put in synergy with the scientific analyses of the urban object of study. The simulation exercise is as much about utopia as it is about uchronia, about foresight in a given ideological, temporal and spatial framework, as it is about the global approach to the world and geohistory. The legitimacy of politics constitutes the cardinal axis of reflection. Through the simulation exercise, the student is initiated, then appropriates spatial and social scientific models, to better put them at a critical distance. Designed as a progressive marked path, which invites to embody multiple postures (in turn designer, player, observer and critic) the approach is also sensitive to individualized needs (follow-up during and outside the conferences by email, zoom, wooclap ...). The final collective project allows to appropriate in action and to understand the methods of realization and putting into practice of a "game" as sharing of the political stakes of the urban condition. A personalized follow-up by email and zoom institutionalized between the conferences and on demand. A formative evaluation (without marking, with the aim of support) at the beginning of each conference via the "wooclap" application to support students in the management of their agenda.