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Considering the population density of urban areas, their levels of consumption and emissions, their influence on social equality and inclusion, and the resources and power allocated to urban actors, it is important to examine how municipalities organize work as they proceed to implement Agenda 2030 and to what effect. A systematic literature review is used to analyse 77 articles, published between 2017 and 2022, that examine the sustainability activities of municipal actors in Europe. Two themes are identified and explained: a) a paradigm shift in local government; b) the mobilization of socio-technical approaches (e.g., smart cities and regenerative land use). Also, the limitations of the literature and some areas for future research are discussed: research comparing practices across regions and countries; research analysing the interaction of different initiatives within a municipality; and research examining the role of municipal companies.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how posthumanism can contribute towards reframing responsible management education (RME) after the pandemic. Ethics has been a growing concern in management education for some time now, but the need to acknowledge the limitations and side effects of the global economy and the interdependences between biological and societal systems has come to the forefront in dramatic fashion during the pandemic. Design/methodology/approach Posthumanism proposes moving beyond traditional dichotomies such as nature-culture and social-material to introduce a relational epistemology in which attention is focused on local sociomaterial entanglements. This also introduces a new moral posture that is not based on formal principles but on a strong commitment to assembling the world and a capacity to cultivate response-abilities. As far as responsible management is concerned, it means moving the focus from managers to managing practices. Findings The contribution casts an original and critical eye on the reframing of RME and encourages a movement towards a "decolonisation" of educational methodologies. Posthumanist research acknowledges that pedagogical practices are the loci power relations and inclusion or exclusion come into play and are inscribed in the materiality of education, in the sense of objects as well as human bodies. Then, by applying on the author's experience as teacher, the paper provides inputs for developing a posthumanist research agenda for RME after the pandemic. Originality/value The contribution uses posthuman lens to explore RME and develops an original research agenda starting from the author's teaching practices.

Despite the increasing push towards collaboration between the natural and social science, little is still known about work at disciplinary boundaries. How does work actually take place at disciplinary boundaries? In the literature, the topic is often addressed in hierarchical terms and an on the basis of fundamental epistemological differences. In this contribution I apply on autobiographical notes to give account of my own experience of collaboration with urban hydrologists on a project aiming to assess the performances of devices for the treatment of urban runoffs. While the work among disciplines in the project is framed as separation, I wish to suggest a more critical perspective on work at disciplinary boundaries by introducing how I became entangled with urban hydrology practice. By applying on Practice-based studies, I give account of my own apprenticeship in urban hydrology through the selection of attention on instrumenting processes, the participation to a heterogeneous community of practitioners, the encounter with these devices materially and the development of aesthetic skills on urban infrastructures. So, I bring the attention on the work at disciplinary boundaries not as cognitive work but as situated and sensible knowledge and as the development of a “way alongside” (Latimer, 2019). I claim this does mean to overcome epistemological differences but rather to let emerge alternative narratives on the same object/practice and to give life to science.

What is the role played by non-public actors in the study of public policies? The paper focuses on knowledge production processes in the configuration of pro-environmental groups. Knowledge production is put forward as privileged locus for interactions and articulations between the two spheres public and non public actors. This entails a pioneering notion of knowledge and expertise as neither agent’s nor institution’s attribute: it is emerging from the context, as product of situated practices. The analysis is based on a project of urban planning promoted by the environmental group Italia Nostra in the city of Milan.

If the use of meteorological data has progressively expanded in tackling different sources of risk, less developed is by contrast a reflection on how meteorological systems apply in local contexts and to what extent that locality may affect the use and the content of forecasting recipients. By focusing on a wildfire forecasting, I show how forecasting practice cannot be reduced to the implementation of meteorological devices; it rather takes shape in the articulation between the technical device and different sources of knowledge – tacit, practical and ‘profane’. This articulation work, this study gives account of, reveals some specific challenges in the introduction of forecasting systems in risk management.

The study combines Science and Technology Studies interest on materiality with knowledge creation and transmission, typical concepts of Practicebased Studies. Knowledge is meant here as a process of socio-material connections. The analysis focuses on a “typical” place of knowledge transmission such as a training course, namely on safety connected to wild fire-fighting. The discursive mobilization of some safety objects during the training makes evident the conflicting positions between the Fire-Brigade and volunteers on safety and fire-fighting. In literature this communicative split is often considered as an obstacle to the development of common understanding and coordinated action. A deeper analysis of discursive interactions highlights the role that dissonance and conflict may play in softening the boundaries between communities of practice and in producing knowledge. The aim of the contribution is also to underline that knowledge not only is an effect of alignment but also of dis-alignment of human and non-human actors.

Stormwater management is a key factor of sustainable urban systems. The quantitative objective of reducing impacts on sewage systems has emerged since the 1960s. More recently, the mastery of micro-pollutants contained in stormwater runoff has emerged as a new priority, imposed by regulation (including the Water Framework Directive) to less impact on the receiving waters. Nonetheless many technical and organizational uncertainties are associated with the improvement of the quality of water discharged to aquatic environments through the implementation of “innovative” management practices for the control of micropollutants. So how can we talk about innovation? How is it produced and can it be transferred? The notion of “design” differs from the positivist idea of innovation as “plan”; rather, it is conceived as a process of adaptation /repair in relation to already existing infrastructures and social practices. This work is based on four different management devices to treat road runoff in the Paris region. We first show that innovation does not emerge ex nihilo but rather as a form of adjustment / re-design of pre-existing infrastructures and skills. Second, the establishment of such devices is not a “linear” process but a back-and-forth movement between the idea, its empirical characterization and its experimentation. In the end, we give account of the “transitional” nature of the technical device that changes in the process depending on the actors and skills developed through fieldwork.

Forecasting represents the new credo in the reorganization of risks prevention. What does the introduction of such technology mean in terms of fire-fighting practice and policy? By applying Practice-Based Studies, forecasting practice emerges as a form of practical knowledge resulting from the alignment of the forecasting tool with foresters’ former competences, expertise, practices and tools. The acknowledgement of practical and scientific knowledge linked to forecasting allows the identification of the different organizational cultures linked to fire-fighting. For foresters wildfire is mainly a criminal act and forecasting a policing activity. This use of the artefact silences alternative approaches to wildfire-fighting such as the prevention of unintentional acts. While forecasting technology may reproduce forms of blindness in the future, anticipation becomes then an interesting research objet, embedded in dominant professional cultures and forms of knowledge.

Welfare technologies (WT) for older people is a rapidly expanding sector that offers a way to tackle the challenge of an aging population. Despite their promise in terms of advances in care services and financial savings, their use is still limited. Their design and implementation remain problematic, as they require changes in working practices through coordination among a multiplicity of actors. In order to address these challenges, the need for change is often expressed in terms of a lack of working methods appropriate to their scope. This has led to a proliferation of different toolkits, guidelines, models, etc.; however, these methods often imply a linear understanding of an implementation project and thus fail to take into consideration the emergent and situated character of the processes that lead up to the adoption of welfare. The aim of this article is to propose an alternative means of providing support for the introduction of these technologies by initiating a process for organizational change. The term "change" is understood here as something that is produced by practitioners-in collaboration with researchers-and not brought by researchers to practitioners. To this end, using the tradition of intervention research as inspiration, a learning process at the crossroads of different practices and objects was initiated. The center of attention of this article' is the sociomaterial process by which different communities of practitioners interact on the co-creation of a checklist. This is a new working method in which the focus is not the artifact in itself but how it emerges through successive interactions and iterations among different objects, practitioners and researchers, resulting in a joint sociomaterial process that reconfigures power relations and the work objective associated with WT. In other words, a new working method artifact is developed in a process in which practitioners, researchers and contextual objects interact and become one with each another.

In this paper we present the elements of a nexus approach linking water and energy and soil (or WES) to address urban environmental issues. If the notion of "nexus" has become mainstream in order to grasp the interactions between priority issues (especially between Water-Energy-Food or WEF nexus), it is considered both undisputed and ambiguous. After a review of the scientific literature on the concept of nexus, this paper proposes a WES nexus approach that focuses on: the urban scale as a priority action context, on soil - and its multidimensional trait (land, substrate, subsurface) - as a factor not yet sufficiently taken into account and on a heuristic approach that is not intended to give a prior definition of the nexus but rather to explore how the (WES) "nexus" is locally appropriated.

In this paper we present the elements of a nexus approach linking water and energy and soil (or WES) to address urban environmental issues. If the notion of "nexus" has become mainstream in order to grasp the interactions between priority issues (especially between Water-Energy-Food or WEF nexus), it is considered both undisputed and ambiguous. After a review of the scientific literature on the concept of nexus, this paper proposes a WES nexus approach that focuses on: the urban scale as a priority action context, on soil - and its multidimensional trait (land, substrate, subsurface) - as a factor not yet sufficiently taken into account and on a heuristic approach that is not intended to give a prior definition of the nexus but rather to explore how the (WES) "nexus" is locally appropriated. 

La maîtrise des polluants contenus dans les eaux de ruissellement urbain représente un volet porteur d’enjeux importants en matière de transition écologique et en particulier  de préservation des milieux récepteurs.

Longtemps considérées que pour leurs impacts «quantitatifs» liés au risque d’inondation, les eaux de ruissellement urbain sont considérées depuis une vingtaine d’années comme une source chargée en micropolluants et représentent un enjeu majeur pour la gestion des polluants. La poursuite d’objectifs qualitatifs liés aux rejets d’eau de pluie est inscrite dans des textes réglementaires et administratifs qui, lors de nouveaux  aménagements, prescrivent de trouver des solutions pour ne pas aggraver l’état écologique des milieux récepteurs.

Malgré cela, la prise en charge de cet objectif de qualité des eaux de ruissellement fait face à des nombreux défis qui peuvent être résumés à travers l’idée d’un changement de paradigme de l’assainissement requérant le passage d’une approche hydrologique à une approche environnementale.

La communication vise à montrer comment la question de la gestion des micropolluants émerge et est appropriée par les acteurs concernés.  Le projet ROULEPUR (ONEMA), actuellement en cours, vise à tester les performances des dispositifs de traitement des micropolluants contenus dans les eaux de voirie en Île de France. La partie SHS du projet a conduit une analyse sociotechnique sur la conception, l’exploitation et la mise en expérimentation de plusieurs de ces dispositifs.  Deux éléments émergent de cette analyse.

D’un côté, l’enjeu de la qualité est lié à une reconfiguration des compétences au niveau des administrations. La gestion de la qualité dans l’eau de ruissellement représente en effet une compétence «orpheline» au sein des administrations et qui demande une collaboration entre services – notamment assainissement, voirie et espaces verts. Cela prend des formes différentes selon les contextes. Dans certains cas, cette collaboration s’avère très difficile et prend la forme de conflits entre cultures et pouvoirs professionnel(le)s, en particulier entre, d’un côté, les ingénieurs civils qui représentent encore le cœur du métier des services d’assainissement et, de l’autre côté, les nouvelles figures professionnels formées aux enjeux environnementaux. Dans d’autres cas, la collaboration entre services est rendue plus facile grâce à la présence de passeurs….

Au-delà des collaborations entre services, les objectifs de qualité liés à l’eau de ruissellement se concrétisent au travers de la mise en place de «pratiques de la qualité» qui identifient des nouvelles formes de production du savoir.  Avec le déclin de l’ingénierie d’Etat, et le manque de guides techniques dans ce champ spécifique de la qualité, les collectivités vont développer elles-mêmes des compétences en la matière. Cela implique de nouer des collaborations avec les scientifiques. Mais ces rapports ne définissent pas une relation qualifiable «de prestation» selon laquelle on demande aux scientifiques de fournir des solutions, des résultats et une expertise tout court. Il s’agit plutôt pour les collectivités de s’engager à côté des scientifiques pour mettre en place des procédés «validés scientifiquement» – liés à l’expérimentation et à l’évaluation des solutions. En d’autres termes il s’agit pour les collectivités d’apprendre à «faire de la qualité» à côté des scientifiques et avec les ressources et conditions – techniques, cognitives, culturelles et organisationnelles -  propres aux contextes administratifs locaux.

Cela implique des définitions, pratiques et formes de savoirs plurielles de la qualité de l’eau de ruissellement au croisement d’une culture scientifique – standardisée, codifiée et «généralisable» – et de pratiques locales. De ce point de vue, la transition écologique du domaine de l’assainissement doit désormais prendre en compte cette pluralité pour la mise en place d’actions en matière de qualité des eaux de ruissellement.

The article offers an analysis of the interactions between legal and policy science researchers within a European project on flood risk management using a “Policy Arrangement Approach” (PAA). While interdisciplinary research is increasingly becoming a ‘must’ in environmental governance, under what conditions is cooperation possible and desirable? Our analysis shows that the PAA is not mobilized as an interdisciplinary method, but offers a framework for researchers from different disciplines to learn to work together on a subject such as flooding, requiring interdisciplinary insights. The paper shows the steps that are progressively put in place to reach a common language and reformulate issues by benefitting from each other’s view and approaches. The article concludes by drawing attention to new means of knowledge production relating to so-called “messy” or “wicked” problems, such as environmental issues. Within this framework, interdisciplinary work is not considered to be a pre-condition for the study, but rather the result of the research process itself. The analysis draws attention to the actual (working) conditions established to create an interdisciplinary community of flooding practices by challenging disciplinary borders.

The chapter explores how arts-based practices informed by posthuman feminism can contribute to expanding ways of learning and knowing about sustainability. Posthuman feminism relocates agency from the human subject to heterogenous assemblages of humans and nonhumans and anchors subjectivity to the body and materiality. From a pedagogical perspective, this means subverting the traditional approaches rooted in the reproduction of a given area of knowledge and taking all materialities, including the body, into account in the learning process as a way of becoming with the world. The authors set up a workshop in which they mobilise creative dance in order to explore different approaches to urban water, in particular flooding, with students of industrial engineering. The students explore the materialities involved in urban flooding through corporeal interactions and creative tasks. They physically experience becoming bodies of water, encountering and intra-acting with “hard”, protective infrastructures as well as more sustainable solutions under the new paradigm “more room for water”. Through these bodily practices, the students multiply the ways of experiencing connectedness with urban water beyond control and mastery as part of a watery subjectivity. The experiment and methodology also contribute to the conversation on post-qualitative research in the framework of a posthumanist epistemology of practice.

By applying a posthuman perspective to the analysis of care for older people (COP), we analyse the agential cuts (together/apart) enacted by humans (mainly caregivers and older people) and more-than-humans (a camera intra-acting with other objects) whose agential entanglement configures and reconfigures the political economy of the caring apparatus. Our study identifies 'targeting', 'monitoring', and 'aligning' as interrelated caring practices, thus contributing to advance a posthuman understanding of welfare technology, and advancing a critical use of the possibilities enacted by technologies.