After a master degree in psychology as an initial education, Julien Carbonnell joins a real estate development company in the south of France (Perpignan). He gets soon interested by urban science and digital developments in order to facilitate the engagement of inhabitants in the personalization of their living environment. He pursues his education in these domains as self-learner, gives lectures at the master degree in urban science of the local university, participate to the creation of a territorial prospective Think Tank, organizes open innovation workshops where computer scientists meet architects and construction entrepreneurs. The creation of a first startup on a project of 3D modeling of the city, in order to make the citizen participation to decision-making easier, has been a turning point in his career. He therefore spends his whole time to urban innovation, with a particular interest for civic-technologies development. He joins the urban research laboratory of the University of Cergy-Paris in 2018, in order to write a doctorate degree thesis on the topic of the engagement of stakeholders in Smart-City projects. It has been the opportunity to investigate Asia, Middle-East and North-Eastern Europe practices of digital transformation of cities and democracies.