Anthropologist and geographer Sonia Lavadinho has been working on issues related to sustainable mobility for the past fifteen years, and in particular on the way urban planning can improve walkability. She believes shifting from the “functional city” to the “relational city” will primarily stem from our relationship to time.
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Geographer and Director of the École Urbaine de Lyon, Michel Lussault brings attention back to the forefront of urban planning, via the One Health concept. He thinks through the pandemic, which accelerated the dematerialization of human interactions, inviting us to ponder which relations should absolutely be protected.
The challenge of the Anthropocene must be addressed through cities, not only because they cluster challenges, but also because, according to Michel Lussault, their desirability will not decline in spite of various crises. The urbanity specific to the “relational city” remains crucial as an experience of otherness, and, in that respect, going full digital or generalized teleworking would represent a “counter-social” development. The increasing complexity of our global urbanization reinforces the systemic inscription of cities and drives urbanism towards ever-increasing levels of cross-disciplinarity, an approach he promotes at the École Urbaine de Lyon, in particular around the “common health” concept, intended to spatially approach issues of social justice, public healthcare, and ecosystem restoration.
We are faced with the need to bring about a behavioral shift to support the ecological, urban, and economic transitions. Given that space influences behavior, Sonia Lavadinho calls for a “relational city” to kickstart the process. Like the city itself, mobility could be perceived as not only functional, but as something that can take on a new dimension, as events. Enriching the urban experience through a proliferation of micro-events and social interactions would then change our spatiotemporal relationship to the city and foster better social behavior.