Conception , representation & mediation in participatory land planning projects : 3 D physical models artefacts

Introduction The concept of sustainable development and its related principles, in particular public participation, changed dramatically in France the way of developing and implementing public policies for spatial planning. It progressively shifted from sectorial, technical and centralized approaches to more holistic, participatory and deliberative approaches. Individual citizens and social groups in interaction are becoming more numerous and diversified, as well as the habitus and social representations. Thus, getting mutual understanding and a share vision of the territory becomes longer and more complex. In this context, the informational and communicational dimension of these widened socio-technical processes turns to play a central role (Bertacchini et al 2006). The emergence of a process of territorial intelligence requires more fluent exchanges of information between the participants and greater confidence in the information exchanged. To face such a challenge, one of the possible solutions is to introduce mediating objects (Vinck 2006) able to help formulating and making understandable by other participants different perspectives and kinds of knowledge available among the actors network. But the introduction of innovations in normative territorial planning processes is already in itself a challenge.