UNIVERSITE DE LYON

IMU, Intelligences des Mondes Urbains, has positioned itself in the field of research around an “object” – the generalized urban – and an integrative approach, mobilizing a genuine plurality, bringing together all scientific fields as well as non-academic players.

This “radical plurality”, supported by all the members of its initial community, is its signature feature in the French urban research landscape.
This positioning is based on a mutual acculturation of the “academic” and “practitioner” spheres, through the symmetrical inter-knowledge of practices, knowledge and know-how, and the joint formulation of issues and problems. It is through this principle of acculturation, albeit gradual, that IMU has chosen, as a Laboratory of Excellence, to take on contemporary urban issues: so that the projects and actions funded, touching on questions of environments, mobility, as well as the uses and practices of places, can produce results whose relevance, distanced and objectified, makes sense, scientifically and politically.