Back-to-school week spring 2025

Before the spring term, students at Urban School participated in a back-to-school week from 20 to 25 January 2025. This week, designed as a time to explore and deepen their knowledge outside the academic framework, enabled them to participate in various workshops, bootcamps, refresher sessions and lectures. Students from the Master Governing the Large Metropolis (GLM) went to Nairobi for their annual study trip, those from the Master Governing Ecological Transitions in Cities (GETIC) attended the CIVICA Honour Seminar, while those from the Master Regional and Urban Strategy (STU) alternated between field visits, an inaugural conference and themed workshops.

Find out more about our trip to Nairobi, Kenya. 
 

CIVICA Honour seminar – winter 2025 

This year's seminar focused on 'Negotiation skills for public policy: climate change & environmental transition', an essential theme for understanding the dynamics of negotiation in environmental and climate policies. The seminar brought together students from the Master Governing Ecological Transitions in Cities with students from the CIVICA   partner network at Bocconi University, Hertie School, IE University and the SGH Warsaw School of Economics.
Led by Dr. Francesco Marchi, a negotiation expert and director of negotiation expertise at ALTERNEGO, the seminar enabled students to explore negotiation mechanisms in an urban and environmental context.

Guest speakers  :

• Alexandra SOMBSTHAY – VP AKUO Energy
• Pasquale CAPIZZI, Associate Director | Leader, Resilience and Climate Adaptation | Europe, ARUP (Milan) 
• Joana VEIRA DA SILVA – Former coordinator and negotiator for the Climate Change (TBC) 

The seminar aims to encourage the meeting between practice and research, as well as to help students develop new capabilities that enable a better understanding on how different organizational or governance structures affect policy-making dynamics.

Another goal of the seminar is to support the professional integration of master’s students. It will focus on negotiation, mediation, and dispute-resolution mechanisms, all of which constitute a set of strategic skills in cities and regions notably useful for students who will take up careers as managers, city administrators, civil servants, diplomats, and policymakers.
The seminar will helped students to:

• Gain an intellectual understanding of negotiators’ behaviour and central concepts in negotiation as they apply in the urban policy-making environment;
• Improve their ability to analyse conflict situations and learn how to develop a toolkit of valuable skills, strategies, and approaches;
• In specific, learn how climate change stakes can be confronted and integrated to other contradictory injunctions.
   

Thematic workshops: design fiction, agriculture and digital transition

Students from the Master Regional and Urban Strategy (STU) took part in one of three themed workshops, each dealing with different issues in territorial and urban governance:

Urban/territorial design fiction workshop - "Using fiction to imagine the cities and territories of the future" 

This workshop explored the future of cities and regions using fiction as a tool for collective reflection. By combining foresight, creativity, and storytelling, participants imagined future scenarios to better understand their practical implications for the management and design of urban and regional spaces.

Workshop led by Guillermo Martin, consultant, teacher, speaker, author.

The challenges and levers of agricultural transition in the regions 

During this workshop, the students addressed the challenges of agricultural transition in rural and peri-urban areas. After analysing current issues, they worked on an agro-ecological diagnosis. They explored practical solutions, in particular the role of local authorities in financing this transition, illustrated by the case of the Ferme de l'Envol in the Île-de-France region.

Workshop led by Sophie Pons, Training and Agroforestry Director at Fermes d'Avenir.

Digital platforms and regulation 

This workshop highlighted the growing role of digital technologies and data in economic dynamics. Using the concepts of 'platform capitalism' and 'surveillance capitalism', participants considered the social, economic and political implications of digital platforms and the issues involved in regulating them.

Workshop led by Manon Laugaa, post-doctoral researcher at the Urban School.

Inaugural conference: how can cooperatives facilitate the ecological transition and meet local needs?

The students of the Master's in Regional and Urban Strategy began their pre-term week with an inaugural conference on the cooperative model, which is highly developed in the agricultural world and has been deployed in new sectors of activity for the past twenty years. This model presents a real alternative to traditional business models by involving several stakeholders and differentiating itself through its strong territorial roots. 

The speaker, Catherine El Arouni, is a graduate of Sciences Po and HEC, she has spent the last twenty years or so at the helm of some of the world's leading social economy organisations, both associations and foundations (WWF and Restos du Cœur) and cooperatives (Enercoop). She steers the transformation and evolution of organisations by involving volunteer and staff, having developed diversified managerial practices in both the private sector and the SSE world. She has mastered the various components of Corporate Social Responsibility, working the social, environmental and societal fields. Because of her role, questions of governance are also at the heart of her day-to-day work.