Cultivated Territories: culture and sustainable territorial development in the Mediterranean

Culture as a driver of territorial transition. Driven by an innovative ambition, the Cultivated Territories project aims to make culture a driver of ecological, social, and territorial transition at all levels, from the neighborhood to the Euro-Mediterranean region. A partnership bringing together local authorities, experts, and citizens to experiment with new synergies between culture, ecology, and regional development.

To bring about contemporary cultural forms capable of responding, with accuracy and sensitivity, to the major challenges facing the Mediterranean: climate emergency, social divisions, and urban change.

A culture in awakening, to alert and mobilize consciences; a culture in projection, to imagine common and desirable futures; a culture of memory, to preserve and promote knowledge, heritage, and practices that are under threat.

AVITEM plays a structuring role in this process, coordinating the partners involved in this ambitious decentralized cooperation, which brings together three French local authorities—Nice Côte d’Azur Metropolis, the City of Vitrolles, and the Collectivité de Corse—and one Turkish local authority, the Metropolitan Municipality of Izmir.

The Izmir Symposium

On September 4 and 5, 2025, the project will reach a decisive stage at the Izmir Symposium in Turkey, which will see the signing of the Manifesto of Mediterranean Cities of Culture and Ecology.

Through a transdisciplinary approach combining culture, urban design, ecology, and citizen participation, the Symposium will offer a collective reflection on the future of Mediterranean territories. How can we think about the relationship between ecological transition, social justice, and the promotion of territorial memories? How can we reconnect humans and non-humans in Mediterranean spaces? These are all questions fueled by the experience of Izmir, with a view to creating sensitive, inclusive, and sustainable territorial models.

The Cultivated Territories Forums

The Cultivated Territories Forums are milestones in this cooperative dynamic, promoting encounters between major players in culture and sustainable territorial transition, project leaders, institutions, artists, researchers, and citizens committed to a common goal: producing eco-responsible solutions focused on cultural resilience.

Nice Open Forum — November 28 & 29, 2024

The first Open Forum for Cultivated Territories was held in Nice on Mediterranean Day, inaugurating the cycle of meetings. Two days of reflection, from the sea to the land, exploring the role of creativity in the emergence of a shared ecological imagination, agroecology in territorial resilience, and questioning the transformation of cultural practices in the face of climate challenges.

A reflection rooted in history, with an inaugural lecture by the Mediterranean Chair, to highlight Mediterranean networks as drivers of a common and united culture.

Vitrolles Open Forum — May 23 & 24, 2025

Hosted by the City of Vitrolles, the second Open Forum on Cultivated Territories provided a space for interdisciplinary dialogue around an essential question: How can we imagine and experiment with new synergies between culture, ecology, and land use planning? Bringing together the perspectives of artists, researchers, urban planners, and citizens, this exchange provided an opportunity to sketch out new courses of action, rooted in local realities and open to regional dynamics.

Open Forum in Bastia/Aiacciu — June 19 & 20, 2025

The last stop before the Izmir Symposium, the third Open Forum on Cultivated Territories was held in Corsica, focusing on the issue of cultural rights to transform our territories / I diritti culturali pè trasfurmà i nostri territorii.

What are the links between tangible, intangible, and natural heritage, the dynamics of territorial transition, cultural rights, and the essential role of cultural actors in rural areas?

The project’s outputs and commitments

The Cultivated Territories Forums are not limited to spaces for exchange: they give rise to concrete outputs, real tools for action, and initiate a lasting dialogue between sectors that are still too compartmentalized.

Practical booklets, designed as guides for collective action, capitalize on knowledge, pool experiences, and guide public policy. These documents aim to support the implementation of pilot projects, the Living Labs, which catalyze synergies between cultural actors, urban planners, developers, local authorities, and actors of ecological transition. The Open Forums of Cultivated Territories are also the subject of reports in the form of tools for capitalizing on round tables, exchanges, and inaugural lessons.

Mediterranean culture as a trump card:

• at the level of international reconfiguration
• at the level of its territories to be together
• in the relationship between environments and their components

Culture as territorial engineering: what the projects highlighted in the Cultivated Territories project can bring to the articulation of territorial transition and culture.

Prefiguration: Living Lab and practical analyses, prototype projects that enable inter-departmental mobilization for their execution (planning, culture, ecological transition).

Feedback on the forums: feedback from round tables, discussions, and inaugural lectures.