Resignification of degraded public spaces in Guanajuato and in Bordeaux: citizen reapropriation in the frame of intensive workshops developed by the University of Guanajuato (UG) and the superior national school of architecture and landscape of Bordeaux (ensapBx)

The intensive workshops Bordeaux - Guanajuato have been developed since 2015 by mixed teams of students of ensapBx and the architecture, art and design division of the UG.
Beyond the interest of constituting a cross-cultural project experience for students from different continents, these workshops involve diverse actors concerned in issues of the citizen's agenda since they are articulated with the existing international cooperation agreement between the local governments to which belong the two universities.
These workshops, two per year, take place alternately in the State of Guanajuato and in the metropolis of Bordeaux, working on different types of obsolete spaces.
This is the case of the public spaces of intermediate cities currently not recognized by the population as spaces of the community, despite being part of their built heritage, or of the natural spaces located in the heart of small cities practically ignored by the population whose recent developments turn their backs on them.

In these workshops the urban project is conceived not only as a large-scale design action but as a trigger to contribute to the change of the perception that the inhabitants have about their public spaces in disuse and contribute to a resignification and appropriation of them as elements of identity and reinforcement of community ties.

The concept of resilience appears here as the capacity that an obsolete territory offers to generate strong social bonds thanks to a joint action of spatial conception that associates universities, institutional actors and inhabitants.