L’urbaniste, professionnel de l’improvisation ?

Abstract

For the several past decades, professionals of the urban sphere have been witnessing the development of "fuzzy jobs", reflecting the evolution of the city as well as its planning process. Animation, mediation, territorial governance... are tools supported nowadays by "project" dynamics and related arguments, which put to test the substantial features of the action itself as well as the experts’ know-how and knowledge. The observation of territorial project managers in the Paris Region however allowed us to highlight their skills deeply rooted in the territory and in the exchange process (between actors and with the field). Beyond technical, communicational or procedural approaches, qualities such as the ability to listen, the sense of temporality and the creativity specific to project managers, appeared to be at the core of their action. In this paper, we argue that these skills, associated with a logic of improvised action, engender an important potential that help to carry out a collective and meaningful action in a context of uncertainty.