Third CAT-stay at IEA, Paris
The third CAT-stay for our group from November 7-11, 2022 was hosted by the Paris Institute of Advanced Study (IEA), a research center in the social sciences, humanities, and cognitive (neuro)sciences.
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DAY 1 – Getting settled
Our first day included a quick tour guided by Sandrine Morvan (Coordination of Scientific Events at the IEA) through the quarters of the institute, located at Hôtel de Lauzun. This 17th Century building was used to house well-known artists and writers like Joseph Ferdinand Boissard of Boisdenier, Théophile Gautier, and Charles Baudelaire. Heritage salons that today host offices, conference, and meeting rooms, in the past used to allocate these artist’s Haschichins club where they experimented "Artificial paradises".
Once we settled in the office that the IEA provided for us in this incredible historic building, we started discussing and
exploring connections between our specific topic and broader urban challenges.
After reflecting on synergies and conflicts between Nature-based solutions and sustainable urban mobility programs, we prepared our presentation for the internal seminar with the IEA fellows, scheduled for the next day.
By noon, a walk along the Seine River came together with ad-hoc discussions on the river and its promenade uses. It was interesting to see the different socio-ecological interactions that are enhanced in such public spaces, where numerous playgrounds for children are developed. The area also incorporates floating cafes and restaurants as well as sports facilities and vintage markets. Our walk ended at Notre-Dame, which was impactful to see without its spire and roof. We viewed the permanent outdoor exhibition with information on the reconstruction process that this building is following after its fire in 2019.
The day finalized with an online meeting with one of our network researchers, Joana Guerrin, who is currently located in the US as a visiting researcher for the University of California, Berkeley. During the meeting, we worked together and organized our week's work plan, in which daily afternoon meetings were scheduled between Paris and California.
The analysis of case studies and successful examples was recommended to identify effective processes instead of perfect solutions, similar to the Urban Studies Program of the MIT. Besides, the CAT program allows us researchers to spend time in exchange together to freely think in a larger context without consideration of immediate outputs.
DAY 2 – Discussing our research with fellows of the IEA
On our second day, we met with the director of the Paris Institute for Advanced Studies (IEA), Saadi Lahlou, and 12 research fellows, who are visiting scholars with innovative projects in the field of humanities, social sciences, and related disciplines during five- to ten-months research stays at the Institute.
We presented our CAT group and explained our research ideas and questions in the context of the “Socio-ecological reshaping of European Cities and Metropolitan Areas”. In the following, we focused on our work during our stay in Paris – the preparation of a research proposal.
In a vivid discussion, we received valuable feedback from the fellows and the IEA director, among others, to reflect on top-down versus bottom-up approaches and the interplay of different societal actors, thinking mobility in different forms (e.g. human/non-human, material/social), address user practices of public space and social infrastructures.
In the afternoon, we visited the Promenade Plantée, an elevated park dating back to 1993. It stretches for almost five kilometers across the 12th arrondissement and follows the route of the old Vincennes railway line which closed down in 1969. Previously the line had linked the Place de la Bastille to eastern Paris for 100 years, but it was replaced by a new RER route so became redundant and was abandoned. Over ten years it remained as overgrown tracks and crumbling viaducts and was scheduled for demolition, but it was finally saved and turned into an urban park known as the Promenade Plantée – or planted walkway – a secret garden above the city where you can walk or sit and relax among trees and shrubs.
The first section of the Promenade Plantée runs above the viaduct for around 1.5 km and is lined with trees and plants – bamboo, roses, wisteria, cherry and maple trees – mixed in with archways, benches and narrow ponds. One gets a different perspective on the city from above, though sometimes the trees block out the city entirely and you can almost forget where you are. At the end of the viaduct you pass through an apartment building and head down into the Jardin de Reuilly.
For years Paris’ Promenade Plantée was the only elevated parkway in the world but the idea has spread, not just to New York’s High Line but there are also plans for similar parks in Chicago and Philadelphia.
DAY 3 – Exploring Green Infrastructure at École des Ponts ParisTech
On our third day we continued working on our research and in the afternoon, we had the opportunity to visit Pierre-Antoine Versini, assistant professor at École des Ponts Paristech in the Hydrology, Meteorology and Complexity lab (HM&Co). He is an expert on urban hydrology, impacts of Blue Green Solutions (BGS), flood forecasting, and climate change.
He showed us the research that has been developing on a green roof of about one hectare built on the École des Ponts campus. The green roof often called “The green wave" was designed by the architect Jean-Philippe Pargade with the purpose to be an accessible green space on top of the building. However, budget restrictions imposed it not to be accessible except for maintenance purposes and not to be irrigated anymore. Therefore, over time the grass gave place to other spontaneous species. Within his research, he has been testing the water retention capacity and moisture content of the green roof over the years, together with measuring the rainwater collection capacity along the roof.
After visiting the green roof, we went to the lower level of the same building to see the tests under development on the rainwater velocity and volume along the drainage system of the green roof and the water collection capacity in the tanks underground. The building was designed to collect only a percentage of the rainwater available and it is not being used for green spaces irrigation or as an alternative water source for other building uses.
Within another research project, Pierre-Antoine Versini has been working with Soprema green roofs testing the reflectivity, water retention capacity, and evaporation rate in two sample green roof trays located at the top of the École des Ponts ParisTech.
At the end of our visit, he presented his research activities on nature-based solutions and the results obtained by his research team on the water balance and energy budget of green roofs in order to assess their performances in stormwater management and urban heat island mitigation.
DAY 4 – Visiting La REcyclerie
On Thursday we could not get to the IEA due to a public transport strike. So, we set up our working space in one of our rooms in the accommodation at Campus Condorcet.
For lunch, we walked to La REcyclerie, an old train station transformed into an experimentation hub for a just and sustainable urban living in 2014. La REcyclerie is supposed to be a ‘third place’ that offers a space for interaction and community outside of the home and the workplace.
The old station building includes a zero-waste cafeteria and a workshop for repairing broken items. The outdoor space stretches along the abandoned railway line, le petit ceinture, and hosts a terrace, bar, and an urban farm.
The principles of reuse, recycle and reduce are realized, for example, by reusing old furniture and recycling building material or composting.
Workshops, events and other activities such as gardening trainings are an important feature of La REcyclerie.
The urban farm, located in a narrow lane along the rail line, is an amazing example of productivity and diversity. A chicken coop, food forests, vegetable beds, compost systems, small habitats and native plants can be found here. For the 5th anniversary in 2019, the sponsor Veolia announced that the urban farm of 1,000 m² produced 450 kg of fruit and vegetables and 4,000 eggs (VEOLIA, 2019).
DAY 5 – Wrapping up our stay and looking forward
Our last day in Paris was a holiday in France (Armistice Day), for which we stayed at our accommodation and further worked on the research proposal. We recorded a video of ourselves for the IEA explaining our CAT project and our experience as research visitors in Paris.
We also debated about the projects that we visited and reflected on how to incorporate new and fresh inputs provided by different professionals that we met during our stay. Exchanges about our own perspectives resulted in discussions about the future steps and paths that our research might follow in the next months.
