The « Erasmus City » is a project that consists in creating a virtual city which will be as real as possible in its functioning. The urban demographic growth, according to the predictions, will reach 70% of the world population in 2050. This human concentration will induce a reflexion and adjustments so as to preserve the quality of living together and the environmental exchange flows. Besides, today’s youngsters will be tomorrow’s citizens, mainly in an urban environment. So, we have to create the conditions of the apprenticeship of citizenship towards youngsters, so that they can become responsible actors, and not only passive consumers or actors. To this effect, the project offers a process of citizenship to the teenage partners who will become students-citizens of the « Erasmus City » in the first place, and actors of the sustainable city in their future life.First of all, the students of the partnership will focus on the economic, social, historic and environmental aspects of the cities. They will meet the elected representatives of the closest cities, they will carry out polls, they will get in touch with the actors of the city ( architects, town planners, social and environmerntal associations). They will organize two lectures during each meeting, they will invite the local elected representatives and the stakeholders ( parents, experts, …), the public in general.After this period of in-depth study of the urban mechanism, the students of the « Erasmus City » will build their cities through literary, artistic and political representations ( city building video game), but also through the creation of political and administrative structures of the Erasmus City. The « inhabitants » of this city will be the students-citizens of the four nationalities of the partnership. A « Black Council » (multinational group of students) will be set up in order to create environmental, social and economic disruptions, to which the city council and the inhabitants will have to bring answers and solutions, so that the students-citizens can be responsible actors of the project and develop their autonomy and maturity. Consequently, the « Erasmus City » will become the first virtual European city.On the other hand, school disengagement, beyond emotional, social and family troubles that can cause a disinterest for the course and as a consequence for insertion, partly comes from the students’ boredom regarding to academic educational methods. Therefore, our educational methods must be renewed through uses which are valued by teenagers, that is Information and Communications Technology. We will also use city building video games and the social media. Furthermore, we aim at making our students aware of their responsibilities and offering them, via school, a springboard for their personal development : a virtual currency, the Erasmus, will be created to give a tangible form to the evaluations with a permutation of the roles assessor/assessed betwen teachers and students ; each student will have to evolve in the city and create a cultural performance for the urban audience. Finally, each school will have to give its support to an association fighting against exclusion or one with an environmental goal, so that our action will not only be virtual but with a real impact too. All these approaches will take part in the inclusion of the student in his school curriculum and his social life, so that the disengaged students will not become « disengaged citizens » too.The ambition of the project « The Erasmus City » is to change representations and to make the learning of citizenship evolve. Often, teenagers think that the future is a dead end, that the dialogue with the older generations is impossible, that the expression of their problems and proposals meets with deafness, often despising the adults. So, the project will try and and convey the contrary showing that the future is theirs, that listening and transmission from the adults is possible if they can be a force of proposal and actions for the city. Likewise, adults must realize that, if one day, we want the young generations to be invested in the building of tomorrow’s sustainable city, they have to be offered responsibilities, fields of action, projects to carry out, so that we can accompany their autonomy and level of responsibilty. This will be the goal of the meetings between the elected representatives, the experts, the parents,…The motivation of the exchanges between the representatives of each democratic level and the students-citizens all along the project, the object of the final mediatised event and the ambition of the association of the « young citizens-city dwellers » : the young European generations are at the meeting point of the citizen investment.
"La Ville Erasmus" is a project to create a virtual city in its existence, but as real as possible in its functioning. Our objective was to encourage our students to deepen their civic integration in the city and its management, in society and in Europe, through the creation of a multinational European city, virtual in its existence, but very real in its functioning. Today's young people will be tomorrow's citizens, mainly in an urban setting. The Project "La ville Erasmus" was a diachronic trip through the process of building a city. In concrete terms, the students met elected representatives, association leaders and urbanization experts, and also carried out Internet research in order to understand how a city works, the issues related to solidarity, tolerance, and the integration of individuals and social groups in their diversity (disabled, young people, seniors, migrants, the marginal...). In the same way, they also discovered sustainable urban initiatives in terms of the environment, public transport, eco-construction, collaborative sharing, etc. (Pic au vent, cities in transition, green city, Tivoli project...) The reflection then took place at the political level (who to govern? What kind of decisions?), at the economic level (how to manage services and industrialization?), at the social level (where to place schools ? Homes? hospitals?), as well as at the cultural level (what place for culture?). The project "La Ville Erasmus" was also a synchronic trip through all the forces that, crossing each other, energize the cities. Elections have been held to select those who will govern this ideal idea. Coming from all four nationalities, these young people chose their "mayor" and 2 municipal councillors by nationality. Citizenship has actively participated in all urban decisions, for example, how to divide up the spaces to build houses on the pristine world of Minecraft, or on who would have built the city's infrastructure and services. These exchanges of multinational experiences, often using digital tools (Skype, Messenger...) have enabled them to develop their sense of responsibility, teamwork, intercultural understanding, decision-making, in other words active citizenship. Every citizen of Utopia has received an identity card, the symbol that he or she is both an actor and a resident of the city. The following issue was based on the following axis of reflection: "How to find your place in the urban melting pot, combining individual desires and projects with social needs and constraints? » City dwellers, in groups or individually, were invited to project themselves into the city, to imagine their life in Utopia through storytelling and artistic or business projects (video, photos, PowerPoint, tutorial), put to the online vote by other citizens. In the same vein, they have materialized their ideal city in models. In other words, these exchanges of experience have enabled them to develop their sense of responsibility, teamwork, intercultural understanding, decision-making, in other words active citizenship: all skills used in the creation of municipal structures and in the management of the City services they have thus created and which they have named "Utopia". All these reflections took on a concrete colour in the virtual construction of the Utopia city in the world of Minecraft. Everyone was able to build their ideal house (within the limits of the game) they collaborated to build a large part of the city's infrastructure: roads, bridges, hospital, school, forum... They had to react collaboratively to urban problems: the Black Council (a strange hidden council) threw 3 disruptions (climatic, technological and environmental) at them, during which elected officials had to react and helped other citizens solve the problems presented and consider ways of preventing them Finally, an association (Terra-Utopia) of young city dwellers (and not so young) has been created to perpetuate the dynamics of the "Erasmus City". For if the etymology of the word "Utopia" means "place from nowhere", the city we have created does indeed exist in minds and hearts, and the desire is great to see it incarnated in a "place somewhere" in Europe...