City/Cité Atlanta x Marseille

Chicago X Paris 2024 — ©Là, là ou là / Alice Caron - illustrations cartographiques

Designed in 2015 and first implemented in Chicago and San Francisco, City/Cité is Villa Albertine’s transatlantic cooperation and exchange program on urban issues and city making. Launched in 2022 in Atlanta and Marseille, exchanges between these two cities notably explore the fertile relationships between culture and ecology, as well as urban policy and communities, and their ability to transform the way we make cities.

Atlanta and Marseille are both southern capitals with a cultural, social and environmental history that is as rich as it is complex. Marseille is an open port on the Mediterranean with a long history as a cultural melting pot, located in a specific natural environment, yet marked by strong geographical and social divisions. Atlanta, on the other hand, is a major center for African-American culture, a seat of the civil rights movement and a fast-growing metropolis in an ever-present natural environment, marked by inequalities linked in particular to its history and gentrification. Over the past 10 years, these two cultural and academic capitals of the South have become highly attractive and are now at the forefront of the major urban challenges of our time.

In September 2022, Villa Albertine invited the Friche la Belle de Mai for an exploratory trip to Atlanta, bringing together a dozen researchers, artists and directors of cultural institutions in Marseille. Since then, the City/Cité Atlanta x Marseille program has brought together more than 25 important figures from Atlanta and Marseille on both sides of the Atlantic, including artists from the Villa Albertine residency program, and organized more than twenty events (conferences, workshops, exhibitions, performances) in partnership with institutions in both cities (Atlanta Design Festival, Elevate, Georgia Tech, Friche la Belle de Mai, Bureau des Guides, Ecole nationale supérieure d’architecture de Marseille, and more).

Alongside these main events, the City/Cité program initiates and supports cooperative projects led by institutions in Atlanta and Marseille, for example, in the academic field around architecture or urban planning, or in music, at the crossroads of rap, jazz and improvised music.

This page is the publication platform for the City/Cité Atlanta x Marseille program and its various components: events, magazine articles, residents, and associated events. It also links to partner institutions’ publications related to the program.