International seminar ‘Parks, trails, loops, forests’

Parks, trails, loops, forests: How do these features shape the environmental approach of metropolitan areas?

This international research seminar will take place on 13 October 2026 at the Maison des Sciences Humaines et sociales Paris-Nord, organised by Raphaële Bertho (University of Tours, InTRu), Sonia Keravel (National School of Landscape Architecture, Versailles-Marseille, LAREP), Frédéric Pousin (CNRS, CRESSON) and Nathalie Roseau (École nationale des ponts et chaussées, LATTS). It forms part of the Par(c)Image. Developing the concept of the metropolitan park research project.

See the programme for the study day

The concept of nature is inextricably linked to that of the city, with visits to ‘natural’ living spaces serving as a counterpoint to the artificialisation of urban spaces. This ‘city-nature’ pairing is itself changing, depending on the configurations and representations of inhabited territories. Green loop, metropolitan trail, greenway, linear park, urban forest: as well as reflecting a desire for nature, these terms refer to indeterminate entities that develop through fragments, infiltrations, interstices and hybridisations. The co-evolving functions they embody outline a large-scale dialectic that is both rooted in local contexts and embedded in regional and metropolitan interdependencies. The aim is to integrate living organisms into urban dynamics (the ecology of green networks), to structure regional planning (park systems), to connect agriculture to the city (urban farms), to promote walking (hiking trails), and to create vantage points (panoramas, viewpoints). This profusion of emerging forms invites us to revisit their genealogies and representations — photography and cartography in particular. What are the antecedents of these forms and practices? How do they engage with the political and vernacular structures of the large city undergoing transformation? How do they redefine the permeability between the urban and the non-urban? What shift in urban and landscape paradigms — in planning and design — is emerging in the contemporary era, driven by the need for cities to adapt to the ‘new climate regime’? How can research engage with this, at the intersection of knowledge and practice?

This international and interdisciplinary study day forms part of the Par(c)Image research project (“Deploying the idea of the metropolitan park. A visual history in the service of territorial transformation”), supported by the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Paris-Nord (2026–2027), in collaboration with the ‘Inventing Grand Paris: Entangled history of metropolitan areas’ programme. At the intersection of urban, landscape and visual history, this programme focuses on representations of the eastern Greater Paris region and its Grand Chemin project — a 55-kilometre green loop currently in the planning and construction stages that builds upon existing infrastructure, incorporating continuities, crossings, parks and gardens. Rooted in the environmental and urban challenges of the Anthropocene, this programme explores a reverse chronology of the soils, land uses, projects and morphologies that have shaped this territory from Paris to Romainville, prioritising a visual approach — and more specifically, photography.