“Field rat, city rat”. When the rural recasts the urban: a Franco-Swiss comparison

The interpenetration between urban areas and the countryside has led to question the hybrid nature of future cities, inasmuch as agricultural spaces and urban places may overlap. This is an issue that lies at the crossroads between environmental sciences, land management and geography.

This research aims at participating in shedding light on this emerging urban question through three convergent disciplinary approaches. The first approach builds on the epistemology of geography and questions the notion of urban metabolism beyond the mere impact of the city on the environment. As such, it aims at expanding knowledge on contemporary processes that reshape the city around the environment and around agriculture.

The second approach is more empirical. It first measures the metabolic impact of agricultural activities in urban areas and then introduces factors stemming from sociality, attachment to places, and influence on health, the latter being conceived of holistically.

Such spaces are fuzzy: they intertwine different landscapes and potentially conflicting activities. Thus, the third and final approach studies possible governance modes of these ‘fuzzy’ spaces.

This research questions the hybrid nature of future cities and proposes an extensive, scientific, and social survey.

In order to do so, the focus is on three areas of research. The first one builds on Jean Gottmann’s work and, based on the BNF archives, studies the theoretical and operational reach of his view of the city as a “body-network”. The other two areas of research contrast a French context (Clermont-Ferrand) and a Swiss context (Geneva) in terms of urban metabolism, influence on health, evolution of relations as affected by these new landscapes, and lastly in terms of land management policies.

Therefore, this research proposes an extensive survey that is both scientific and social: partners from civil society are involved in the exploitation of results.