BETTER CITIES – WE’RE COMING TO MEET YOU

Plateau Urbain’s anthology, “Better Cities—Temporary Occupations and Solidarity-Based Third Places,” hit bookstores on February 19!

For nearly thirteen years, Plateau Urbain has been breathing new life into vacant buildings to provide affordable urban workspaces for social and solidarity economy organizations, while enabling emergency shelters to offer a more dignified and pleasant living environment. In 2023, we realized the importance of having a written account of everything we’d accomplished in the form of a collective work, reflecting the spirit of the cooperative.

The book, *Des villes en mieux – Occupations temporaires et tiers-lieux solidaires* (Better Cities: Temporary Occupations and Solidarity-Based Third Places), is finally complete and was released in bookstores on February 19! Inside, you’ll find personal accounts, position statements calling for a more just city, and critiques of our work—all of which we hope will help you better understand our commitment to reimagining the city.

Here’s a quick summary of the book to convince you to go out and buy it:

Over the past decade or so, solidarity-based third places have been multiplying. People come there to work, eat, live, dance, and repair objects. A diverse crowd gathers there and experiences their differences.

Combining social outreach, cultural activities, production, and learning—often housed in vacant buildings, whether temporarily or long-term—these hybrid spaces challenge our relationship to sharing, solidarity, the economy, and even public policy. Day in and day out, they offer new political forms—discreet alternatives to the contradictions of the contemporary, commercial, and standardized city.

This book gives a voice to those who bring these concrete utopias to life and strive to foster a new “right to the city” within them.

Read the press release HERE

You have the opportunity to come discuss with us and meet the book’s authors in various locations across France:

• May 18 in Nantes at 6:30 p.m., for a radio panel discussion with La Fabrique des transitions urbaines at Les Ateliers Dulcie September
• May 20 in Crest at 7:00 p.m. at Usine Vivante
• June 10 in Lyon at 6:30 p.m. at the Archipel bookstore
• October 17 in Lille, booth at the Architecture Market, Bazaar St So
• October 29 in Lille: a roundtable discussion followed by a reception hosted by WAOO, Lille’s architecture center, at Bazaar St So
• November 10 in Marseille at 5:30 p.m., roundtable discussion at the library of the Institut Méditerranéen de la Ville et des Territoires
• November 12 in Marseille, roundtable discussion at La Cômerie
• In December in Bordeaux at La 308 Maison de l’Architecture

More events are coming up—stay tuned!