[Interview] Marie Baduel and Amine Benaissa: the Metropolitan Seminars – A journey into immersive territorial expertise training
To better understand the experience of the Metropolitan Seminars, Marie Baduel, Deputy Director of the Agency for Sustainable Mediterranean Cities and Territories (AVITEM), and Amine Benaissa, architect-urban planner and associate professor at the Sorbonne, reflect on the origins, highlights, challenges and encounters that shaped these metropolitan adventures.
A decade of training and exchange in the Mediterranean
For over ten years now, the Metropolitan Seminars have offered a unique platform for training, exchange, and co-construction around urban issues in the Mediterranean.
“Metropolises are here, they’ve expanded and continue to develop.”
By 2030 – just five years from now – the Mediterranean region will be home to 500 million people, most of whom will live in metropolises. This process of metropolisation, where large cities expand across wider territories, is a global phenomenon that presents major planning challenges. “It’s the city at scale, involving critical issues and project-based strategies.” “It’s the city at scale, involving critical issues and project-based strategies.”
In the face of this rapid urbanisation, what are the key challenges for our generation and those to come? “Should we allow the city to spread out over agricultural or natural land without a guiding vision, without a shared project, based solely on ad hoc opportunities? “
« I believe the starting point is that in theMetropolitan Seminarswe’re neither for nor against metropolises. These are key spaces that against metropolises.
These are key spaces that contribute to a territory’s attractiveness » explains Marie Baduel.
Mediterranean territories are subject to common pressures marked by uncertainty: climate change, economic crises, social cohesion issues, the rising role of civil society in governance, and new knowledge contexts, notably with artificial intelligence.
t is precisely to analyse these dynamics and suggest action strategies that the Metropolitan Seminars exist.
« To take stock of a metropolis in one week » with a method based on four core pillars:
- Studying the dynamics of the metropolisation process
Understanding, decoding and imagining – opening up to other territories
- Favouring debate and constructive contradictions over circulating false truths
- Co-producing – capitalising and learning through exchange
Ten years of encounters for a shared Mediterranean culture
Over the past decade, the Metropolitan Seminars have brought together professionals and experts from across the Mediterranean basin. Through these exchanges, a shared culture has gradually emerged, fostering cooperation and dialogue between territories.
“What stays with me most are the friendships, the strong desire to work together, the richness of the exchanges,” says Marie Baduel. “Without hierarchy, without power struggles. With a very constructive and friendly spirit – and that’s something we really need in the Mediterranean.”
Beyond human connections, the seminars have given rise to a real support network.
“The seminars have gradually refined and consolidated over time,” notes Amine Benaissa. Three major phases marked this evolution: the success of the Franco-German seminars, which helped build a solid network of stakeholders in partnership with the French Development Agency (AFD) and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ); the involvement of local authorities in co-constructing the seminars; and the strengthening of France’s diplomatic network.
From project to action: linking thinking and doing
To understand a territory, one must become attuned to its deep history, grasp its present challenges, and identify possible levers for action.
Rooted in both territorial culture and practical action, the seminars exemplify the connection between thought and implementation. “To act in the Mediterranean, we must break the perception that certain challenges are insurmountable and finally start thinking in terms of projects. People smile when we say that because it has become something of a catchphrase in our seminars,” says Marie Baduel.
So, we reflect together: how can we develop a vision for a territory’s future? How do we build a strategy to achieve that vision? The seminars provide an immersive field-based approach:
“We walk, we experience the city through wandering, through encounters. And these small steps, these explorations, allow us to physically and intellectually participate in a territorial experience.”
Then we move into tactics: identifying priority “high-leverage” projects – all while staying immersed in the context. The seminars offer a real experience that makes it possible to understand how projects are set in motion.
This process follows three key steps: Listen, Synthesise, Transmit:
- [Act I]: Present and promote local projects before comparing them to participants’ territories of expertise.
- [Act II]: The synthesis. Producing a working document from which all participants can benefit.
- [Act III]: Drafting the Métropolitain Booklets, co-produced with the Polytechnic University of Catalonia as part of a European Erasmus+ programme. This is a Mediterranean, European, and even international publication.
The Metropolitan Seminars: a decade of memories
Tunis Seminar, 2018 – A spontaneous political exchange
Marie Baduel recounts: “During the seminar on Greater Tunis, when the metropolis was still under construction, a group of elected officials existed but had never convened. As usual, we concluded the seminar with a feedback session led by our partners and participants. It is not AVITEM that speaks to Tunisia, but Algerians, Moroccans, Albanians, and Lebanese who share their learnings and offer some forward-looking perspectives.
Then the Mayor of Tunis, Madame Souad Abderrahim, invited all the mayors of the metropolis – who gathered for the first time at our seminar. They engaged in lively discussions with us, with real enthusiasm, going late into the evening, far beyond the scheduled time. For us, that’s what the seminars are all about – creating encounters and sparking dialogue.”
Nice Seminar, 2019 – Rethinking the relationship between city and nature
A moment of both surprise and excitement, centred around two complementary visits: on one hand, the Eco Valley – Plaine du Var project, a large-scale development balancing urban expansion and risk management; on the other, an immersion in Nice to explore rewilding projects, especially the Paillon Promenade, which reintroduces biodiversity into urban space.
This journey helped participants understand the importance of the city-nature relationship in four ways: (1) risk management, (2) food sovereignty, (3) combating urban heat, and (4) the revival of Mediterranean garden cities – a concept found throughout the region (Alexandria, Tunis, Casablanca, Tirana, etc.). This strong intertwining of urban and natural realms is particularly visible at the metropolitan scale.
What comes next? The impact on territories
It’s now clear that the seminars are key moments for peer encounters, forging strong links between territories and stakeholders. These meetings often lead to tangible collaborations.
In Morocco, after several seminars in Casablanca, Tangier and Fès-Meknès, a training programme for regional elected officials was launched between the Moroccan Association of Regions and the Occitanie Region. In Lebanon, the Greater Beirut Seminar (2022) inspired the strategic plan for Bourj Hammoud 2021–2031 “Together for a better present and future.” In Albania, the Tirana Seminar in 2018 paved the way for several projects, including the redevelopment of an industrial brownfield site and an agripark, followed by the FEAST project (launched in 2024), which focuses on agriculture and food systems. FEAST connects Tirana with three French communities: the Collectivité of Île Rousse Balagne, Arghjusta e Muricciu, and the City of Marseille.
What are the priorities for the 2025 seminar cycle?
Sustainability. Continuing to “cultivate” this Mediterranean territory by focusing on two familiar metropolitan areas: Bologna and Tirana.
Bologna: One of the first territories to develop a metropolitan vision with the Cervellati Plan. Its polycentric organisation and the urban renewal of its city centre shaped a leading metropolis.
But today Bologna must revisit contemporary questions. Having suffered two severe floods in 2023 and 2024, flood and water stress management are top concerns. Bologna is also grappling with its own attractiveness – a victim of overtourism leading to housing pressures, gentrification of the city centre, and contentious mobility projects that balance accessibility with heritage preservation. “It’s a chance to re-examine how we plan in historical contexts and how we can adapt these approaches.”
Tirana presents a different story. A formerly Soviet city, it is still emerging from the legacy of Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship. “In the early 90s, not so long ago, it was a closed-off territory where bicycles were the only permitted form of property, and people weren’t allowed to move house.”
Then came a dramatic acceleration: mass housing production redrawing the city’s boundaries at a time when urban sprawl wasn’t yet viewed as a sustainability threat. Now, the city’s ecological system and future development models are being called into question. What relationship remains with the land?
“And in both territories, quite inspiringly, there are highly committed mayors – and we know well that territorial planning hinges on political will.”
AVITEM now aims to fully highlight the expertise and experience built over a decade of Metropolitan Seminars. Its goal is to produce rigorous, in-depth content that reflects the work done before, during, and after each seminar, and the richness of insights that emerge.
Two Metropolitan Booklets will be drafted – one focused on Bologna, the other on Tirana – to analyse and share strategic reflections from these territories.
Now more than ever, the time has come to pass on and celebrate this knowledge: revisiting archives, sharing what has been learned, and strengthening synergies around ongoing projects.
We will continue to exchange, reflect, meet, learn, and build together – for the Mediterranean of tomorrow.
