In the 19th century, the city expanded beyond its medieval and modern walls. It conquered the lands of the fortifications, connecting them to the old buildings and then to the suburban, rural and agricultural areas in its immediate vicinity. How was this spatial development conceived, and how was it reflected in the social reconfiguration of the city and its emerging suburbs? Can this expansion be envisaged without transforming modes of transport and administrative territorial reconfigurations? Can we compare these changes with the "utopias" of the new towns of the second half of the 20th century?

Moderator: Irène Herrmann (University of Geneva)

Free, no registration required
Subject to availability

Program in partnership with the Haute école de musique, whose students offer a musical welcome at 6 p.m.

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Ongoing construction sites, estate extensions: the spatial hold of the urban seems insatiable. Voltaire's countryside, Les Délices, bears witness to this: this unspoilt islet is now encircled and absorbed into urban space.
Today, in the face of environmental and demographic upheaval, the management of flows, the demands of habitat and the space left to nature are fuelling both political and civic debate. However, cities - like Geneva, Switzerland's most densely populated municipality - are also matrices of sociability and interaction with a long history.
The Rencontres des Délices series will explore several facets of this urban history. It will be an opportunity to better understand the vicissitudes of a way of thinking about the common good, to better situate the ways of resolving conflicts as well as the social, economic and political dynamics that underpin urbanity.