Join us for our Final Conference
16, 17 November, Paris / 18 November, Brussels
Co-producing Democratic Cities in Unequal Times
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.
Tentative Programme
DAY 1 – 16/11/2026 – Bât Max Weber, Université Paris Nanterre, Nanterre
Learning from FAIRVILLE: Inequality, risk and democratic vulnerability
Theme - Unequal Cities: Housing, Environmental Risk and Democratic Vulnerability
09:00 - 09:30 // Welcome
09:30 - 10:00 // Opening remarks: Short introductory interventions from organizers and FAIRVILLE labs.
10:00 - 11:30 // Session 1: Locating Urban Inequalities
Learning on housing and environmental inequalities through the Fairville labs
Format: Research conversation
11:30 - 11:45 > Coffee Break
11:45 - 12:45 // Session 2: Democracy, governance and uneven cities
How urban inequality reshapes democratic participation, institutional trust and urban governance.
Format: Research conversation
12:45 – 14:15 > Lunch
Theme - Can co-production respond to democratic fragmentation and inequality?
14:15 - 15:15 // Session 3: Co-production in Times of Democratic Backsliding
Why co-production? What does co-production offer?
Format: roundtable lab members, academics, activists
15:15 - 15:30 > Coffee Break
15:30 - 17:00 // Session 4: Knowledge Co-production in practice
Exploring how co-production is shaped by and reshapes knowledge practices and epistemic justice through methods such as co-mapping, co-evaluation (and counter-manuals).
Format: Long-table discussion that brings in dialogue theory and methods
17:00 - 18:00 // Session 5: Concluding discussion
Conditions for Co-production in Unequal Times
Format: Plenary
18:00 - 20:00 > Evening: apéro
DAY 2 – 17/11/2026 – Académie du Climat, Paris
Making co-production matter: Institutions, conflict and practice
The day will explore the echoes and synergies that can emerge between different co-production initiatives, asking how co-produced knowledge can be recognised, enabled, and sustained over time.
Theme - Building the Conditions for Co-production Around Environmental, Climate, and Risk Challenges
09:30 - 11:00 // Opening Plenary
The politics of environment and risk-focused Co-production: Format: Plenary discussion
Room: Salle des Fêtes | Participants: Local authorities, policy actors, researchers, FAIRVILLE labs, practitioners
11:00 - 11:15 > Coffee break
11:15 - 12:45 Parallel Sessions: Complexities, Tensions and Infrastructures of Co-production
Session 2A: From community-led Co-production to institutional recognition: Accommodating Political Tensions
Format: Research-led debate | Participants: Authors of the Marseille/Johannesburg paper + discussants
Room: Salle la Pépinière
Session 2B: Intermediation, Facilitation and Urban Change
Format: Comparative panel discussion | Focus: How intermediary actors enable, translate, support or constrain co-production and urban transformation. | Participants: Researchers, facilitators, activists, municipal intermediaries.
Room: Salle des Mariages
Session 2C: Conflict and Disagreement for Deep Co-production
Format: Open thematic discussion | Focus: Examining disagreement, friction and antagonism within co-production processes.
Room: Salle des Fêtes
12:45 - 13:45 > Lunch
Theme - Making co-production work: fostering the right to question and long-term supports
13:45 - 15:30 // Session 3: Supporting and nurturing transformative co-production as catalyst to democratic deepening
Format: Round table discussion
Room: Salle des Fêtes
Pathways to transformative coproduction : embracing a wider definition of democracy
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Bringing the right to question at the forefront of a renewed citizenship
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Lessons from comparative urban experiences : small democratic victories of coproduction (within and out of Fairville)
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Multiple enabling factors and graded practices
End of Day 2
17:25 > Train to Brussels
DAY 3 – 18/11/2026 – ULB Faculty of Architecture, Brussels
After FAIRVILLE: Legacies, alliances and futures
What should remain : How do urban justice alliances, knowledge networks and co-production practices endure, & transform beyond the FAIRVILLE project
09:00 - 10:30 // Itinerant breakfast with exhibition: Urban Inequality and Co-productionFormat: Exhibition + guided walking exploration
10:30 - 13:00 // Session: After FAIRVILLE: Legacy, Alliances and Co-production FuturesFormat: Roundtable discussion on Manifesto and other alliance-based co-production initiatives
Building on FAIRVILLE and related initiatives, the roundtable will bring together actors working across housing justice, public policy, municipal governance, research, advocacy, and civic organizing.
A particular focus will be placed on the European Affordable Housing Plan as an opportunity to link EU-level agendas with local and civic action. The session will consider how housing alliances, municipalities, foundations, grassroots organisations, and public institutions can work together to develop more inclusive and accountable approaches to affordable housing.
The conversation will also explore the contribution of the renewed municipalist movement alongside emerging municipal practices, especially where local governments are experimenting with new participatory and co-produced pathways to respond to housing inequalities and strengthen civic capacity.
Potential contributors include Fondation du Logement, European housing justice alliances, EU representatives, municipal actors, and organisations involved in co-production and affordable housing advocacy.
13:00 - 14:00 > Lunch
End of conference
Pre-Registration
By filling out this form, you are pre-registering for the final FAIRVILLE conference. Registered participants will receive a confirmation email at a later date.
Registration link to be made available soon....
Please register by 1st September 2026
Practical Info
Reaching the venue
Monday 16th November 2026
Université Paris Nanterre
Max Weber Building
200 avenue de la République
92001 Nanterre, France
maps.app.goo.gl/A1NPXjnG9YE4wG9bA
By train : RER A – Transilien L : Station Nanterre Université
Tuesday 17th November 2026
L'Académie du Climat
2 Pl. Baudoyer, 75004 Paris, France
maps.app.goo.gl/7aqgVYyCBkugyHdw8
By metro: Station - Hôtel de Ville (1 & 11) – Saint-Paul (1) – Pont Marie (7)
By bus: Station - Académie du Climat – Lines 96 – 76 – 69 & N° 11 – N° 16
Wednesday 18th November 2026
ULB Museum, Faculté d’architecture de l’ULB : La Cambre Horta
Pl. Eugène Flagey 19, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
maps.app.goo.gl/5HqKfaLBE5N6uZRt6
By bus: N° 71 - Station Flagey
Travelling Exhibition
17th November 2026
Vernissage at the ULB Musuem in the Faculty of Architecture, Brussels
Brussels FAIRVILLE exhibition open from 17/11/26 to 18/12/26
More info coming soon...