CITEGO – Cities Territories Governance for a transition towards sustainable territories and societies
septembre 2017
In the past few decades rapid urbanisation has radically changed the role of cities in our societies, as well as how they operate. Cities and territories are set to become major actors in a system being remodelled by globalisation.
CITEGO is an association, based in France, which aims to be a mediation tool that promotes the exchange of experiences and sharing of knowledge between practitioners, researchers, elected officials, associations and citizens on matters related to the governance and role of territories in the transition to sustainable societies. The international site of documentary resources, http://www.citego.org, created in 2008 is composed of analysis sheets and cases that are organised in thematic dossiers.
The site is a working tool, a space where information is pooled, and an international space for dialogue and exchange of ideas and experiences, available to local leaders, civil society organisations and citizens, local authority employees and professionals of urban issues, researchers, lecturers and teachers and students who either input information or consult the site.
It aims to pool knowledge acquired from actual practices (experience) and from research, and reinject this knowledge into a systemic vision of territories and their governance. The site was developed—and continues to be developed—through partnerships with diverse practitioners and institutions including city networks, schools and continuing education programmes, research centres, journals and associations.
The site provides a classification of content based on questioning that permits a transversal approach to predominantly theme-based dossiers that allow the reader to access information above and beyond what found with a sectorial approach. The ‘notions’ section is composed by ‘notion sheets’ that present a notion used in a dossier, drawing out differing views and pointing out the elements of the debate.
CITEGO brings together the knowledge and experience of various actors through:
1. Capitalisation of experience: by encouraging various contributors (researchers, practitioners, civil movements) to ‘translate’ their experiences and put it into perspective using a short, didactic format (analysis sheets).
2. Production of thematic dossiers that include case studies and analyses on a given subject. Such dossiers provide a point of view on an issue associated with cities, territories or governance. Dossiers are based on lessons learned from experience.
3. Diffusing publications and grey literature (reports, studies, working documents, etc.), that can be a major source of case studies, analyses and innovative and pertinent proposals, so we have set up two ways of using these documents. The first is to encourage the authors to ‘translate’ their work into short, didactic formats (case study, analysis and proposal sheets) that can constitute a separate thematic dossier or enrich an existing one.
4. Diffusing students’ work (master’s degree theses, end-of-study projects, workshop proceedings, etc.), which can be a major source of cases studies and innovative and pertinent analyses.
5. Production of educational tools, such as online courses, as a means to guarantee that website content is used by and profits many different actors.