Between communities of practice and epistemic communities: the emergence of hybrid communities in urban spaces

Abstract

Communities are gradually being formed in many French towns around urban logistics issues. The latter creates major environmental and societal challenges and involves a multitude of stakeholders who need to improve collaborative relationships. Our objective in this paper is to analyze how the notion of community allows clarifying the particular collaboration between private and public stakeholders in urbans spaces. Based on an empirical research carried out on a community under construction in the city of Grenoble, France, we propose to illustrate the emergence of this community. We analyze the process and point out that building the community is characterized by a growing interaction between public and private actors, the establishment of rules of communication and the emergence of several projects that aim to develop innovative solutions. Our results allow us to define the outlines of a new type of community that we call hybrid , crossing the characteristics of communities of practice and epistemic communities. We shed light on the elements that contribute to the success of this community, but also the barriers to its development, its maintenance and the deployment of several actions by the members of the community. This research project let emerge a new organizational object that breaks with the traditional codes of CoPs. The governance of urban spaces, mixing private and public stakeholders, can thus be illuminated under a new and innovative lens in the context of the study of territories and communities.