Menu de gauche

This article aims to better understand the construction of the French scientific map in the mid-1960s. It highlights the leading role of a small group of scientists and top civil servants, charged with defining a policy
of scientific investment localization. Three interrelated priorities were at the heart of this policy : the development of large scientific metropolis, able to act as a counterweight to Paris ; the specialization of small scientific towns ; and the strengthening the scientific potential of the Western part of the national territory. Even though the implementation process involved other actors, the members of this group played a key role in framing the problem of scientific investment distribution.

When new links between universities and territories are considered, it implies that decisions concerning planning are based on previous experiences. Selected projects concerning spatial reorganizations of Universities during 19th and 20th centuries show that it is not the case. If the diagnosis – too numerous cities with university – (1st part) and part of solution – necessary grouping – are shared, means to arrive there – networking cities with university – regularly seem to fail (2nd part). When we consider the ways Regions, Cities and Departments act financially and politically, it allows us to understand difficulties to implement these programs. Such a complexity puts in perspective systematic use of expressions such as “university map” or “planning by University”.

The involvement of many universities in urban projects and policies, is surprising. Because universities use to plan, to rehabilitate, to create neighborhoods or even entire cities, they can be considered as "universities-urban producers”. But if they behave in this way, it is not out of charity. Quite the contrary, this involvement in urban production responds to their own development strategies. The analysis of urban actions of universities in North America and Europe between 2007 and 2011 revealed four main reasons explaining the posture of "universities - urban producers”.

Addressing contemporary reconfigurations in the field of higher education and research in France, this article focuses on the intriguing case of an unexpected, voluntary merger between universities located in Metz and
Nancy, two cities with a long history of rivalry and competition, both among academic institutions and among local governments.
Emphasizing the role of local governments, it traces the complex process leading to the creation of the University of Lorraine, an outcome that was widely considered unexpected in the field. This case study allows for a discussion of the interactions between sectoral and territorial logics in the context of national policies promoting competition and differentiation in the field of higher education and research.

Entangling situated involvement and retrospective view, the article analyses the formation process of an small campus, in Alençon-Damigny (Orne). The campus, emanating from an alliance between Orne’s industrial branch, local power and academia, sought originally the construction of a cluster around plastics industry. Deindustrialization, higher education politics and actors strategies change the vocation of the campus.

This article re-examines the regional policies of higher education and research of four French regions to question the role of local organizations in these sectors and their relations with the State and other partners by drawing on an analysis of regional plans of higher education and research. This analysis leans on various angles such as the specific regional context, the effects of opportunities and constraints highlighted by the political importance of the issues, the methods of implementation of the same and finally, from the point of durability and renewal located through these methods.

Research policies are marked for nearly thirty years ago by an increasing and continuous involvement of local communities, including regional councils. Mobilizing an empirical material collected in the Provence-Alpes- Côte d’Azur region, this article focuses on how national and regional policy actions compete or articulate. Based on two examples linked to the development of clusters, this article analyzes the organizational work developed by the regional institution. It shows how, through the work of organization, the regional institution is built as much as it builds a regional competence in the field of research.
Faced to the services of the state, the regional institution is not alone in doing this work of organization.

The vertiginous increase of the number of the students in Tunisia in twenty last years modified the geography of the university spaces
and favored their redistribution. Mid-sized cities, held up to here away from the university setting-up, are gradually endowed with this
new function. According to investigations, the infrastructures of higher education seem endowed with a powerful power of attraction and with attractiveness which participates in the dynamics of the territories where they join.
In the urban zones in trouble the university is a precursor of important changes. The scale of certain realizations is capable of making of the university, a tool of urban development.

Using the example of interuniversity cooperation in the region of the Lake of Geneva (canton of Geneva and Vaud), this article aims to analyse how Swiss universities have been, over the past twenty years, reterritorialized” within metropolitan/regional (supra-cantonal), and national areas. This process has occurred in the dual context of sciences and territorial dynamics changes, which have taken place at various scales. The federal State’s (Swiss Confederation) financial incentives have notably participated in such territorial reconstructions arising from this university policy.

Relationships between universities and communities have grown earlier and reached a larger scale in the United-States of America than in France. Such a step ahead provides an invaluable feedback within French universities’ mutation of their self-defining role towards society. This article uses a Syracuse University (N.Y.C) case study to analyze what parts the university played in its territory and to present the different ways of team working in collaboration with the non academic world. Studying the structures of these relations and their dynamics highlights how significant both the power struggles and balance of power are in a negotiated and sometimes contentious way of building and managing projects.

In Bordeaux, the creation of the PRES University of Bordeaux (a public university system) in 2007 was followed by the selection of the project within the national Campus Plan.
This change in the university landscape takes part in a process of wider change confirmed by the Law on Higher Education and Research (ESR), adopted in July 2013. The case of Bordeaux offers an interesting opportunity to study the peculiarities of the recent transformations of the French University. It combines indeed an institutional reform with the partial merger of institutions, and management of a very large land easement (especially around a large campus). The study of Bordeaux can lead to question the ability of the university to build itself as a real planner and to transform its relationship with the local territory.

In 1990, University planning opened up to local authorities and allowed them to invest and take part in planning procedures within the context of the “schema Université 2000”.
A system of co-production of campuses was then set up, in the form of a partnership between the State administration, local authorities and Universities. Through an analysis of the development procedures concerning the new campus of Claude Bernard Lyon I University in Gerland, this article questions the performance of this practice to address the challenges that Universities are facing at the beginning of the 21st century.