Co-producing Democratic Cities in Unequal Times

Fairville Final conference

How can cities confront growing inequalities, democratic backsliding and environmental breakdown ? What role can co-production play in rebuilding trust, supporting collective action and shaping more just urban futures ?
​
The FAIRVILLE final conference will bring together researchers, activists, community organisations, practitioners and public institutions to reflect on the challenges that inequality poses to urban democracy, and on the role co-production can play in addressing them. Drawing on the project as a whole, including its urban labs in Athens, Berlin, Brussels, Cairo, Dakar, London and Marseille, the conference will open a broader conversation with external actors working on democracy, inequality and urban transformation.
​
The conference will explore how co-production can generate knowledge, relationships, political claims, forms of advocacy and, in some cases, institutional change. It will also address its tensions and limits, including unequal access to time, resources and legitimacy, and the conditions needed for co-production to support more durable forms of democratic practice.

DAY 1 – 16th Nov ’26 – Nanterre (Université Paris Nanterre)

Learning from FAIRVILLE : Inequality, risk and democratic vulnerability

Focus on how urban inequalities are produced through housing systems, environmental exposure and uneven protection from climate risks, and how these processes shape democratic capacity across cities. The morning brings together academic and practitioner perspectives with FAIRVILLE cases to examine unequal urbanisation and its political implications.

The afternoon shifts the discussion toward co-production in conditions of democratic fragmentation, asking what it can enable and where its limits lie. It focuses on epistemic justice, co-production tools (co-mapping, co-evaluation, counter-manuals) and the politics of knowledge production, linking methods to broader theoretical questions that have guided the project.

DAY 2 – 17th Nov ’26 – Paris (Académie du Climat)

Making co-production matter : Institutions, conflict and practice

Focus on how urban inequalities are produced through housing systems, environmental exposure and uneven protection from climate risks, and how these processes shape democratic capacity across cities. The morning brings together academic and practitioner perspectives with FAIRVILLE cases to examine unequal urbanisation and its political implications.

The afternoon shifts the discussion toward co-production in conditions of democratic fragmentation, asking what it can enable and where its limits lie. It focuses on epistemic justice, co-production tools (co-mapping, co-evaluation, counter-manuals) and the politics of knowledge production, linking methods to broader theoretical questions that have guided the project.

DAY 3 – 18th Nov ’26 – Brussels (ULB Faculty of Architecture)

After FAIRVILLE : Legacies, alliances and futures

Focus on how co-production practices, knowledge and alliances developed within FAIRVILLE circulate beyond the project across academic, policy and activist networks. The day reflects on what persists, what is transformed with and after the project, and on the conditions under which co-production can be sustained or reconfigured within broader urban justice agendas in Europe.