Beyond the local. The innovation effects of citizen supralocal networks and organizations in citizen-initiated urban transformations

Project Information

SUPRALOCAL

Grant agreement ID: 101024066

DOI

10.3030/101024066

Project closed

EC signature date 13 April 2021

Start date 1 September 2022

End date 26 December 2025

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 184 707,84

EU contribution

€ 184 707,84

Coordinated by

ECOLE DES HAUTES ETUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SUPRALOCAL (Beyond the local. The innovation effects of citizen supralocal networks and organizations in citizen-initiated urban transformations)

Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2024-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

SUPRALOCAL is a project dedicated to the study of how citizens collectively and directly enact solutions to public problems in European cities. These collective interventions have become a common feature of contemporary urban governance, relied upon by public authorities to address housing shortages, vacancy, neighbourhood revitalization, and social exclusion. The project falls within urban studies and urban planning, to which it contributes through the original concept of direct civic action and by examining a dimension that existing scholarship has overlooked: the supralocal organization of these processes.
A key assumption in the literature on citizen-initiated urban transformations is that civic action is inherently locally rooted, with supralocal relations understood as secondary connections between autonomous local projects. The SUPRALOCAL project was designed to challenge this localistic assumption, investigating how supralocal networks and organizations influence the generation of innovative local responses to urban problems; how they share, institute, and innovate repertoires of knowledge and resources for urban action; the effects of direct citizen action in the production of public goods and publicization of problems; and raising awareness about these dynamics among practitioners and policymakers.
While the project initially planned to explore two network-based cases, it was ultimately based on an in-depth ethnography of a multi-site civic operator in Paris. This reorientation prompted a major theoretical development: ethnographic observation of conflicts between operators managing the same site revealed limitations in organizational-focused frameworks and led me to integrate the civic action approach with pragmatist philosophy and the sociology of public problems. The resulting concept of "direct civic action" constitutes the project's primary contribution, shifting analytical focus from organizational types to actions themselves.
The project has fully achieved its objectives. As European cities increasingly delegate urban problem-solving to civic actors under hybrid arrangements, understanding how these shape the accessibility and sustainability of citizen-driven solutions is essential for informed policy design.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The core empirical work consisted of over five months of intensive ethnographic fieldwork within a large-scale temporary urbanism project in Paris, managed by a multi-site civic operator coordinating projects across France. I attended coordination meetings, governance assemblies, and daily operations, completed approximately 30 interviews, and collected over 100 project documents. Drawing on an abductive coding approach, this ethnographic engagement generated three interconnected lines of theoretical development.
The central contribution is the concept of "direct civic action." Ethnographic observation of a pressing conflict within the team managing the site revealed that existing frameworks could not account for the cultural patterns structuring how different groups understood their role and commitments. Combining the civic action approach (Lichterman and Eliasoph, 2014) with pragmatist philosophy and the sociology of public problems, I developed this concept to shift analytical focus from organizational types to actions themselves, examining how scene styles — recurrent interaction patterns based on shared normative assumptions — shape which problems become salient, which solutions are enacted, and how actors navigate the intertwining of civic, market, and governmental logics. The ethnography developed two specific dimensions of this framework.
The first addresses knowledge circulation within multi-site civic organizations, documenting three mechanisms: horizontal peer-to-peer learning between site operators; vertical-internal institutionalization through centralized procedures; and vertical-external professionalisation, whereby local experience is translated into consultancy services for property owners, municipalities, and public authorities.
The second addresses the hybridization of direct civic action. I identified three recurring dilemmas structuring intermediaries' work: balancing deductive implementation of predefined uses against inductive discovery of emerging activities; navigating accessibility versus financial sustainability; and managing diversification of uses against regulatory time constraints. These dilemmas illuminate how direct problem-solving operates as situated negotiation where actors balance civic objectives against structural constraints.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project advanced the state of the art in two areas. First, it revealed that supralocal organization of civic initiatives takes diverse forms beyond peer-to-peer networks. The ethnographic study of a multi-site civic operator — coordinating simultaneous temporary urbanism projects across different cities — presented a fundamentally different model from the locally-rooted initiatives assumed in existing scholarship, documenting how this coordination simultaneously enables knowledge transfer and generates tensions between local experimentation and central directives. The identification of three mechanisms of knowledge circulation demonstrates processes of diffusion but also professionalization of civic knowledge.
Second, the concept of "direct civic action" redirects attention from organizational typologies to actions themselves and the dramaturgical processes unfolding in the field, addressing how conflicts arise through contrasting scene styles, how publicization and problematization unfold in the discursive field, and how the hybridization of civic, market, and governmental logics generates specific dilemmas. This contributes to understanding how direct problem-solving operates neither as regulation-determined nor as freely experimental, but as situated negotiation where actors balance social objectives against structural constraints.
These advances have materialized in publications exceeding the original plan: one Routledge monograph (2024), five peer-reviewed journal articles published or in press, one under review, two in preparation for Q1 journals, and one guest-edited special issue, against an original target of three articles. Findings were also shared with civic practitioners through keynote presentations at European networks, festival roundtables, and training sessions.
The project results will be further developed through the final research workshop, bringing together twelve scholars to consolidate research agendas on direct problem-solving. More broadly, the findings provide an evidence base for informed policy design in European urban contexts where civic initiatives increasingly address housing challenges and neighbourhood revitalization, aligned with SDG 11 and the New Urban Agenda.