STAR – Sustainable Territories through Action & Research

STAR’s mission is to train tomorrow’s experts in sustainable territorial development through an integrated approach to knowledge and practices. This training is based on the strong will of the founding members to decompartmentalise the academic and operational worlds. The sectorisation of knowledge and practices leads to a silo approach, which can be an obstacle to a rapid and necessary transition of spatial production systems. The complexity of the world and the rapid transformations taking place require a synergistic approach between the different actors. This EELISA Community wishes to become a platform for exchange between these actors (researchers, practitioners, technicians, associations, etc.) with a view to producing innovative research and action methods for the sustainability of territories. We favor an integrated approach to the challenges of transition and sustainable development through the human and social sciences. The proposed training courses are voluntarily transdisciplinary in order to promote the circulation of ideas from different academic fields that deal with the sustainability of territories. Sustainability is also considered at several spatial scales allowing a real mixture of disciplines: the “macro” one at the whole territory (geographical and ecological approaches), the “meso” one at the city scale (urban planners’ approaches but also sociological, philosophical and economic ones) and the more “micro” one of architecture (architectural, ethnographic and engineering approaches). Students will be asked to design urban projects based on the concepts and practices discussed in the seminars.