The Métropole Rouen Normandie is an intermunicipal authority comprising 71 municipalities and nearly 500,000 inhabitants in north-western France. Located along the Seine Valley, the metropolitan area combines major industrial and port activities with extensive forests, agricultural land and urban centres. Like many European metropolitan regions, it faces the challenge of reconciling climate adaptation, economic development, social cohesion and environmental protection while responding to increasing citizen expectations for greater involvement in public decision-making.

Against this backdrop, the Métropole launched Rouen Métropole 2050 in 2023 to co-design its long-term territorial strategy and revise its principal planning instruments—the Schéma de Cohérence Territoriale Air Énergie Climat (SCoT-AEC) and the future Metropolitan Local Urban Plan (PLUi). Rather than limiting public participation to the statutory consultation required for planning documents, the initiative transformed the revision of these complex regulatory frameworks into a large-scale deliberative process through which citizens, civil society organisations, municipalities and institutional stakeholders jointly shaped the metropolitan vision for 2050.

The initiative builds upon several years of institutional commitment to participatory democracy. Following the creation of a dedicated participation service in 2017 and the adoption of a Citizen Participation Charter in 2023, the Métropole sought to embed participation directly within strategic territorial planning. The process was designed around two guiding questions: “How can climate urgency be reconciled with social justice?” and “How will we live in 2050?”

The methodology was organised as a multi-level participatory process running from late 2022 through 2025, accompanying every stage of the preparation of the metropolitan planning documents. Instead of consulting citizens only after technical proposals had been prepared, participation informed the diagnosis, the definition of future scenarios, the selection of strategic priorities and the translation of these priorities into regulatory planning documents.

The process unfolded in three successive phases. The first phase focused on developing a shared territorial diagnosis through studies, public dialogue and the identification of major environmental, social and economic challenges. During the second phase, citizens and stakeholders co-developed a long-term territorial vision by debating alternative development scenarios for the metropolitan area. The final phase translated these collective priorities into the regulatory components of the SCoT-AEC, ensuring that citizen contributions informed strategic planning rather than remaining separate from decision-making.

A distinctive feature of the initiative was its 360-degree participation strategy, combining more than 70 complementary participation mechanisms adapted to different audiences and territorial scales. Public participation included participatory public meetings, thematic workshops, neighbourhood outreach activities, territorial walks, climate-awareness workshops, online questionnaires, consultations through the digital participation platform JeParticipe, youth activities, children's workshops and dedicated sessions for persons with disabilities. Mobile engagement initiatives—including a travelling information kiosk and outreach activities in public spaces—helped reach residents who would not normally participate in institutional consultations. Between 2023 and 2025, more than 3,600 people took part in the process through these various mechanisms.

At the centre of the methodology was the Citizens' Convention on Transitions, composed of 80 randomly selected residents reflecting the social and geographical diversity of the metropolitan area. Over a period of nine months, participants met during six weekends and several intersession workshops, receiving balanced information from technical experts, researchers and practitioners before deliberating on some of the most complex dilemmas facing the territory. Rather than debating isolated projects, participants examined fundamental choices concerning land use, housing, mobility, biodiversity, flood risk, climate adaptation, energy production and economic attractiveness. Working through structured deliberation, they developed a collective vision for the metropolitan area and adopted a final report containing 64 recommendations, approved by 96% of Convention participants.

The Convention represented far more than an advisory exercise. One of the initiative's principal innovations was the creation of a Citizen Monitoring Committee, established at the request of Convention members themselves. Bringing together former Convention participants and additional volunteer residents, the committee accompanies the implementation of the planning process by reviewing how citizen recommendations are incorporated into successive planning documents, requesting clarifications from metropolitan services and issuing additional recommendations where necessary. Public reports are produced after each meeting, creating an institutionalised "right of follow-up" that extends citizen involvement well beyond the deliberative phase.

Innovation also lies in the continuous interaction between technical expertise and citizen knowledge. Rather than treating participation as a parallel exercise, the Métropole established an iterative process in which citizen feedback repeatedly informed technical work, while planners returned to participants with revised scenarios and regulatory proposals for further discussion. This permanent dialogue allowed planning documents to evolve throughout the process and strengthened the legitimacy of difficult policy choices concerning urban growth, ecological transition and territorial resilience.

The initiative placed particular emphasis on inclusion and accessibility. Dedicated workshops were organised for children, young people, students and persons with disabilities, while meetings were held during evenings and weekends to facilitate participation. Childcare services, digital participation tools and extensive outreach activities helped reduce practical barriers to engagement. Alongside residents, the process also involved the Sustainable Development Council, the COP Rouen 2030 network, municipal councillors from all 71 municipalities, economic actors, associations, educational institutions and technical experts, creating an unusually broad ecosystem of participation.

Transparency and accountability were integrated throughout the process. Citizen contributions were systematically documented and traced through monitoring tables showing how proposals influenced planning documents. The Citizens' Convention itself was independently evaluated, with 96% of participants considering that their perspectives had been taken into account, while 72% expressed willingness to participate again in future deliberative processes. These evaluation mechanisms have also informed the development of a broader participatory evaluation framework for the Métropole's democratic governance policy.

Citizen recommendations contributed to strengthening provisions relating to ecological transition, biodiversity protection, forest conservation, water resource management, decarbonised mobility, inclusive housing, proximity services, commercial redevelopment, agroecology and the social and solidarity economy. More broadly, the initiative transformed internal administrative practices by encouraging greater collaboration between departments, improving the traceability of planning decisions and embedding citizen participation within the preparation of long-term regulatory policies.

Rouen Métropole 2050 demonstrates how participatory democracy can become an integral component of strategic territorial planning. By combining large-scale public engagement, a randomly selected Citizens' Convention, iterative deliberation and a permanent citizen monitoring mechanism, the initiative illustrates how complex regulatory planning can be co-produced with residents while addressing the interconnected challenges of climate transition, social justice and metropolitan development. The practice offers a governance model in which citizen deliberation does not conclude with consultation but continues throughout implementation, strengthening both the legitimacy and the long-term sustainability of public decision-making.