Urban transitions and citizen participation. Report of the Third Conference "Urban ways of life in 2050"

This article aims to lay out the reflections resulting from the presentation of Marc Jeannotte entitled "What ways of civic life do we want in our metropolises?". Emphasizing the link between urban transitions and the human project, the speaker advanced the essential role of citizen participation and the citizen as an actor in these transitions. Our analysis of this questioning is based on three notions of the theory of action: the structural fields of action, the actors and the representations of the actors. By applying this conceptual framework to the discussion, we can conclude that to enable collective intelligence in participatory approaches, these three elements must be considered. Thus, the speaker and the discussants place importance on the expertise of citizens and social capital, accessibility to information and the digital divide, diversity of opinions and learning. Further, we identify the lines of questioning to pursue in order to improve our understanding of the forms of citizen participation from the point of view of citizens' representations and strategies of action.