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L'Aude Demain, France, Carcassonne, 27 May 2026

On Wednesday, May 27, 2026, the Aude Departmental Council organised a local event for the Fair Cities project titled "L'Aude Demain." This full-day participatory Open Forum brought together more than 100 residents, local stakeholders, and community representatives from across the territory to co-create actionable local solutions for adapting to the accelerating realities of climate change.



While deeply local in its execution, this event carries profound international and regional significance. It was formally organized as an operational pillar of the international Fair Cities project, which explores how urban and rural territories can navigate the ecological transition equitably, ensuring that vulnerable populations are not left behind by green mandates. Furthermore, the forum was funded under the European Union’s Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) program, directly advancing the mandate to strengthen citizen participation in civic life and empower communities to actively co-design public policies. This dual framework operated in perfect synergy with Accel’air, the recognized regional forum dedicated to driving practical, decentralized solutions for the ecological transition specifically tailored to the unique environmental and geographic fabric of the Aude region.

The event ran continuously from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., utilizing the dynamic Open Forum methodology. This is a highly structured yet agile format where the participants themselves entirely control the day's agenda, workflow, and conversational themes based on their authentic concerns. The morning launch began with an immersive introductory period designed to set context and strip away traditional institutional barriers. Immediately following this introduction, the floor was handed over to the public. Participants collectively called out the precise ideas, systemic questions, and localized possibilities they wished to explore. These raw community-submitted prompts were dynamically grouped, prioritized, and converted on the spot into specialized, breakout workshops distributed across the Departmental Council facilities.

Following a communal lunch break, the thematic workshops and fluid debates commenced in the afternoon. Discussions were held in small, interactive working groups to ensure that every individual voice could be clearly heard. True to Open Forum rules, a law of mobility prevailed, meaning participants were explicitly encouraged to move freely between different discussion tables depending on how the topics evolved. This allowed an organic cross-pollination of ideas between fields like housing insulation, rural transport networks, and localized agricultural resilience.

In the final phase of the afternoon, the designated citizen-rapporteurs from each workshop compiled and shared comprehensive summaries of their group's findings. These diverse contributions were consolidated into a unified set of community action proposals. To conclude the forum, a collective democratic vote was held, enabling the assembly to transparently identify and rank the absolute top-priority solutions that should be carried forward into immediate institutional consideration.

To ensure absolute accessibility and break down the socio-economic barriers that traditionally hinder public civic participation, the Departmental Council provided completely free auxiliary services on-site throughout the day, including high-quality professional childcare facilities and fully catered informal networking spaces.

The "L'Aude Demain" Open Forum has powerfully demonstrated that responding to climate change is not merely a technical or purely environmental issue confined to scientific circles, but a deeply social matter of everyday life. By anchoring this local mobilization within the international Fair Cities project and the CERV program, the Aude Departmental Council has successfully forged a direct link between grassroots citizen expertise and higher-level public policy making. The prioritized solutions voted on by the citizens will now undergo formal evaluation by departmental technical services to plan their integration into the region's long-term ecological transition roadmap.



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