France and Portugal,together with other European countries,are witnessing the emergence of citizen initiatives and forms of collective organization as alternatives to current spatial planning practices. By bringing together senior and young researchers from these two countries around the transition to more sustainable societies,this project explores two analytical lenses: the “alternative” and the “common”.
This last concept points to the underlying principle of both the collective activity of individuals in building more sustainable societies and the governance processes that encompass such activity (Dardot and Laval, 2014). Articulating innovatively concepts around the social ecological transition both in cities and in peri-­urban and rural areas, this two-‐year project promotes field trips and workshops in both countries and a final conference to be held in Paris. The project aims to consolidate the theoretical-methodological and interdisciplinary training of students to facilitate future insertion in the scientific labor market.