Programme
Case study of Brussels
- Benjamin Cadranel, general administrator of Citydev.BrusselsProduction in the city to build the city
To cope with the demographic boom of these next decades, the Brussels-Capital Region is striving to develop housing but also to nurture productive activities that are useful to the City. On the scale of the real estate projects it implements, Citydev.Brussels takes economic activity into account as a link in a value chain connected to urban specificities and quality of life and also helps its businesses evolve towards the integration and cohabitation of functions. Business centers, incubators, SMB and VSB parks, fablabs or single-use zones all constitute levers of urban development at the heart of our economic real estate. Alongside the production of acquisitional contracted housing, pilot projects such as solidarity housing, conversion of office buildings into housing and spatial clubbing of living and working places on the same site, our cross-discussions increasingly bring out complex and innovative multifunctional projects that energise a neighbourhood and attempt to transform it into a harmonious living environment. This presentation will take stock of the experiences, as well as the current and future strategies of Citydev.Brussels in this field, illustrated with concrete examples of recent or ongoing projects.
Case study of Geneva
- Djemâa Chraïti, Director of the Cité des Métiers du Grand Genève, Department of Public Education, Culture and Sport (DIP), Office for Guidance, Professional and Continuing Education of the Republic and Canton of Geneva.Territorial network and the future of businesses
Inaugurated on September 1st, 2008, the Cité des Métiers du Grand Genève is the result of a close partnership between the Department of public education, culture and sport – through of the OFPC – and the Department of employment, social affairs and health – through its Cantonal Employment Office. Labeled by Universcience in Paris, it has joined an international network of around forty cities around the world, spread over 3 continents and in 10 countries, which will participate in the inauguration of the very last City-state, that of Brussels sponsored by the Cité des Métiers in Geneva.The principle is the same everywhere, namely to offer – without appointment, free, anonymous and confidential – counseling spaces related to guidance, employment, continuing education and initial training. Linked to the Cité des Métiers, Associated Centers then were created in France and Switzerland, followed by a third level of dematerialised information, the Relay Points. The goal is to offer local information on a cross-border territory, a challenge successfully met. This territorial network allows the promotion of emerging professions and the dissemination of information, for example to participate as a cross-border city in an event such as the European Energy Transition Conference.
Keynote speech
- Pr. Jean-Philippe Peemans, professor emeritus of the Center for Development Studies of the Catholic University of Louvain
Which transition for which development?
This contribution is based on the idea that a reflection on the transition cannot ignore the conflicts between conceptions of the world as it is and as it needs to be. It contributes by situating the seminar’s reflection within the debate on the issue of development models. Since its emergence after WWII, development thinking has been dominated by the paradigm of modernisation, theoretically thought of as a universal model of progress. The idea of development was first associated with the transfer of the concept of economic growth to the so-called developing countries to help them fight against underdevelopment and mass poverty. Later, it will gradually become linked to attempts to make growth and environment compatible, in the name of the search for sustainable development. Nevertheless, other approaches have emerged in recent decades that challenge this paradigm more or less radically. They contribute to renewing the urban problematic and that of city-countryside relations, in particular by proposing other visions of the articulation of temporal and spatial dimensions, based on the consideration of players’ strategies and their relations in the production of territory. The confrontation of these visions of the world makes it possible to draw the general framework of a political economy of development which reinterprets the challenges of the evolution of urban and rural areas and their relations both in the South and in the North.