Metropolitan Booklets: Perspectives on Mediterranean Metropolises

The unique perspectives of urban development professionals on metropolitan transformations across the three shores of the Mediterranean.

The Metropolitan Booklets are rooted in ten years of knowledge produced through the Metropolitan Seminars led by AVITEM, in collaboration with the French Development Agency (AFD). Since 2014, these seminars have provided a space for training and exchange between participants—professionals in planning and territorial development—from across the Mediterranean basin.

As a synthesis of collective learning, reflections, and proposals, the notebooks offer a clear analytical framework for professionals, researchers, students, or simply informed citizens.

The Metropolitan Seminar Notebooks are produced in partnership with AFD Campus, the Delegation for the External Action of Local Authorities of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, and the European Union, within the framework of the simplified ERASMUS programme.

Across the diversity of the Mediterranean region, each territory is a discovery. Our Metropolitan Notebooks offer an exploration free from pre-conceived development models, structured around four main themes:

Refiguring: Geographical, historical, political, and demographic analyses of territories over the long term and of contemporary challenges.
Re-exploring: Symbolic interpretation of the territory’s DNA, political visions, and strategic issues.
Re-experimenting: What kind of metropolitan construction and what public policies?
Op-port-unity: Projects that strengthen the connections between metropolises in the face of major future challenges, with insights from professionals.

Notebooks of 4 Mediterranean Metropolises

Notebooks of Notebooks

A synthesis on the role of metropolises in Mediterranean development, what prospects exist for a common framework and grammar, what foundations for fruitful projects and modes of cooperation?

Territorial Resilience Notebook

Reflections and exchange of practices on exemplary projects, addressing governance issues, vulnerability to climate change, learning lessons from the Covid-19 period (cases of Barcelona, Marseille, Bologna, Aix-Marseille-Provence, Tirana), and designing the territorial project as a tool for resilience.