Research activities

Within the framework of objectives to reduce soil sealing, research focuses on the evolution of strategies, planning tools, and stakeholder systems within coveted areas with low land rents (ports, artisanal sites, agricultural areas, natural areas, etc.). It combines analyses of public policies, territorial strategies, and citizen mobilizations with a nuanced understanding of ecosystem balances to preserve soils, the water cycle, and biodiversity.

The territories studied are often threatened by land pressure linked to metropolization, but play multiple roles: supports of ecosystem services of production and regulation, sources of knowledge, landscape elements and bearers of environmental and social benefits.

The research focuses on different interfaces: city/port/water, city-agriculture, city/productive activities, brownfield sites. The methodologies used include geohistorical analyses, studies of land-use changes, anatomy of project processes and actor systems, territorial representations, ecological network modeling, and ecosystem service analysis.

The projects completed or underway are carried out in partnership with local authorities, within the framework of European or regional calls for proposals, supported by public funds (Interreg BLUE Micro-project – ERDF; SUNLOOP – FNRS, FNS and ANR; Inter-Friches Network – CIST and APERAU). Several completed or ongoing doctoral theses aim to examine and reinvent planning practices that reconcile human uses, biodiversity and ecological functions.