Collaborative planning for retrofitting suburbs: transdisciplinarity and intersubjectivity in action

This paper presents the transdisciplinary research program undertaken by the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Suburbs or GIRBa (Groupe interdisciplinaire de recherche sur les banlieues, in French), as well as the collaborative planning process put forward to orient the future of Quebec City’s first ring suburbs. The first section presents the research problem and its context. The next section discusses the concepts of transdisciplinary and intersubjectivity at the very basis of the group’s work and orientations. The last section describes the content of the ongoing transdisciplinary research and action program and reports on the in-progress collaborative planning process.