Institut français de recherche sur le Japon à la Maison franco-japonaise (Umifre 19, MEAE-CNRS)

To join us on site, please sign up using the Inscription button above. 

Registration to assist online (Zoom) 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

©︎Philippe Guignard

The Osaka Expo 2025 aims to highlight designs and innovations capable of preserving society and its future reproductive capacity against a backdrop of great ecological uncertainty. Addressing this theme, this conference will analyse changes in the design of urban European societies as they adapt to contemporary developments. Progressive awareness of the scale of changes brought about by what French environmental historians Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz call the "Anthropocene event" is leading a gradual reassessment of spatial planning policies. For a long time, the paradigm of sustainable development dominated discourse and practice, supported by the imaginary of a low-intensity future. However, the concept is now being replaced by that of adaptation. This notion, which has its origins in natural disaster response and preparedness, aims to rethink spatial planning policies and practices in the face of a more uncertain future. Forged in an ecological culture that emphasises bottom-up participation, territorial adaptation is also rooted in a resolutely experimental approach to planning and urban development, exploring the different possible futures inherent in each. This conference invites the audience to explore these futures by looking at various examples from European cities. 

Martine Drozdz is an urban geographer and senior research fellow at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). She is also a member of the Techniques, Territories and Societies Laboratory (LATTS) at the École des Ponts ParisTech / Paris School of Urban Planning and an affiliated professor at Sciences Po, where she teaches STS and the politics of ecological transitions. She has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics, University College London and the University of Geneva. Her research has received funding from the UK Leverhulme Trust, the European Council for Research and the French National Agency for Research. After working on the recent history of urban planning in Europe and the conflicts generated by major urban development projects in London and Paris, her work now focuses on the geographies and urban imaginaries of adaptation in European cities. Drozdz aims to develop a comparative understanding of adaptation and how it is implemented outside European societies. 

Speaker: Martine DROZDZ (CNRS)
Moderator: Raphaël LANGUILLON-AUSSEL (FRIJ-MFJ)
Organization: FRIJ-MFJ