Facilitating territorial projects : the innovative approach “Uses, Symbols, Work”

Territorial projects are increasingly held back by the crystallization of multiple oppositions. Faced with this situation, the innovative "Usages, Symboles, Ouvrage" (USO) approach makes it possible to gather, in a structured way, disparate contextual elements in order to co-design a better-adapted project. In particular, the USO approach makes it possible to mobilize all the social sciences in a cross-disciplinary way to facilitate the emergence of a territorial project.

This approach is inseparable from the rigorous application of fundamental project management methods. It broadens the scope of what is possible by building on classic methods.

The USO approach consists of highly structured steps facilitated by the use of drawing.

Stage 0: the creation of a trans-disciplinary team combining scientific/engineer, explorer/anthropologist and urban planner/architect profiles.

Step 1: This team explores the territory. This is an in-depth exploration. The aim is not to write reports. In this exploration, the essential thing is to share common knowledge through dialogue. The essential thing is to assemble individual stories into a collective narrative to nurture a shareable dream. The "magic square" analysis grid makes it possible to cross symbolic and geographical scales.

Step 2: The team returns to the field to identify the dividing lines, everything that separates physically or symbolically.

Step 3: Once again, return to the field to identify lifelines, everything that unites, everything that brings people together, lines of use. The exploration is as much about structures as it is about people: for example, identifying two people who maintain close ties despite belonging to two totally opposed organizations.

Step 4: And finally, at the intersection of the lines of rupture and the lines of use, identify the points of intersection, the nerve centers, and attach actions to them. Some call this urban acupuncture. These actions are at the intersection of a line of rupture and a line of use. A series of coherent micro-actions that multiply their effects. They are as much symbolic as real.

Step 5: Telling the story of the action plan, disseminating it, animating the players and doing it again and again.

The whole process takes just a few months.

The contemporary world is too complex and resources too scarce to base a territorial project on a single function. A territorial project is necessarily multifunctional, even without its promoter's knowledge. Faced with increasing complexity combined with a scarcity of resources, the USO method helps to bring out the multifunctionalities...