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As we enter the Anthropocene, the relationship of societies to themselves cannot be understood without including their relationship to nature. We need to rethink our societies and social change in terms of the relationship of human communities with other-than-human (OTH). To this end, we propose that a geography of relationality with OTH should emerge, and how this geography can serve projects of urban territorial solidarity. This relationality is constructed in three spatial dimensions, that of exposure and precarity, that of infrastructures and coexistence and finally that of assemblies and assemblages, the latter covering the field of governance. The urban environment thus acquires a heuristic value from this point of view. For working on relational quality objectives in the city implies raising the hope of changing mentalities by reinjecting meaning into the community, providing a framework and making a pluralist value judgement. We are beings in our own right, whether we are humans, animals or plants, first of all because we are in relationship.

In projects of urban sustainability, the uses of assessment by indicators are growing. Since 2007, the Paris city council established a dashboard of indicators based on a guidebook for sustainable town planning called “Un aménagement durable pour Paris”. This dashboard enables the assessment of urban planning projects, in order to increase the efficiency in terms of sustainability of urban operations. The aim is to progress towards sustainability thanks to this experiment. Based on the Parisian experience, the article enhances the necessity of a debate on the relevance of the assessment by indicators in sustainability. The answer proposed here is to fix the conditions of a specific culture of sustainability assessment and highlights some questions about links between scales, times and stakeholders.

In France, participative devices are generally criticized. While sustainable urban projects are spreading, they are expected to integrate the inhabitants’ participation as a goal. Is the inhabitants’ participation quality better in top-down participative devices of sustainable urban projects? The methodology selected is a participative observation of participative devices in sustainable urban projects. It allows enlightening the theatre of these devices, where the construction of urban house of cards can be observed. But it appears it is not possible to perform the deliberative model, because the necessary conditions are missing. Deliberation remains uncompleted because the inhabitant is not required as a citizen and a stakeholder of territories.

Is demotorization, i.e. the renunciation of the ownership of one or more vehicles within a household, a new watchword for local mobility policies? This article presents the results of a qualitative survey conducted from 2018 to 2020 with 22 local stakeholders in Paris, Lyon and Dijon. The term spread in the 2000s to become an object of political attention in the second half of the 2010s. Accompanying a minority social dynamic observed mainly in central cities, it has passed through several of the stages leading to local political agendas. In Paris, the will to demotorize has been assumed, and in Lyon, demotorization has gone from cautious to explicit. Demotorisation is being a part of urban planning policies and is changing the way urban operators (developers and parking managers) work. Dijon may be on a different political trajectory.

The rescue archaeology operation conducted in the cloister of Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand in Poitiers allowed to study a new building on the southern edge of the collegiate church. Covering an area of 170 m2 on two very well-preserved levels, it is a representative example of the architectural and topographical evolution of cloisters. Founded on a late antique base, this building went through five major construction phases until its reorganization in the 19th century. The first great constructions were carried around the 10th century when a monumental fence was built to keep a consecrated and a civil space separate. The location and the outstanding dimensions of this stonework suggest that a claustrum or a castrum might have existed. In the 11th century, a huge pantry was created against this boundary, which led to important changes in the traffic within the cloister and its organization. The whole structure underwent significant changes with the opening of new access points, the partition of the inner space and the installation of a floor still preserved today.

The excavation completed on the western part of the plantation La Caravelle in Martinique enabled the archaeological study of a building which was traditionally thought to be a prison. Implanted between the main house and the large storage warehouses, this small construction is divided into four identical rooms. This setting completely belongs to the organization and functioning of the sugar plantation this one dating back to the XVIII th century.However, its identification as a jail can be debatable. Indeed, the approach of the topographic organization of the different buildings, as well as the architectural data allows other assumptions.Is it a prison, a safety vault, a wind hut, or even a powder house?By exploring the different possibilities and their limits, this study suggests a mixed use of this space.

Going back ten years later to my first fieldwork has been quite such a rich experience, that allowed me to understand better this territory and elaborate the sustainability concept also in a better way. In the natural park of Valencia’s coastal lagoon, called Albufera, there’s a puzzling situation of regional and local authorities who are protecting a noteworthy and complex aquatic system which represents a natural heritage for the Valencians, in a friction of sustainable and non-sustainable dynamics. This paper provides an assessment on the role of fieldwork in a scientific path, questioning its integration in a slow science and offering some methods to do so.