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The Transforming cities hub has launched a call for seed funding to stimulate new internal and external collaborations on urban sustainability transformations. The Transforming cities hub organizes several activities on specific topics for researchers at Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ to stimulate collaboration and applications for seed funding. On Friday 19 March, the hub organizes a seed funding workshop on inclusive cities and global urban transformation. The aim of the workshop is to set a research agenda and formulate one or more ideas that lead to a seed funding proposal. This workshop is also taking place in collaboration with the Open City Initiative during its two launch weeks (16-26 March), which is a new initiative led by colleagues from Departments of Human Geography and Planning, Cultural Anthropology, and the Centre for Global Challenges (UGlobe). 

Background

In the face of current events such as the pandemic, climate crises, Black Lives Matter, and continually widespread urban evictions, together with rapid pace of urbanization globally, there is an increasing need for an open platform to tackle the questions regarding inclusivity, safety, and sustainability of urban spaces. Internationally, agendas such as the United Nations’ New Urban Agenda and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development push forward more global partnerships for ‘making cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable (SDG11)’ but they often lead to more infrastructural development, which create new dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, largely failing to shape the open platform. Therefore, we need to understand better how to establish global urban strategies that address various forms of urban survival underpinned by agencies of city dwellers in various settlements and neighborhoods and how these everyday urban forms can potentially lead the global urban transformations.

Main questions we want to address during the workshop are:

• What kinds of every day inclusion or exclusion do people face in urban spaces?
• Who benefits from various interventions that happen under the banner of sustainable development?

We pay particular attention to the relationship between urban transformation and social transformation that addresses questions of power relationships and political equality that underlie existing vulnerability, exclusion and marginalization of certain city dwellers.

Goal of the workshop

• The larger goal is to create a platform for researchers at UU with their global collaborators to critically reflect on inclusion in global urban transformation. 
• In this workshop, we would like to invite colleagues who have empirical experiences or interests in issues pertaining to inclusive city making to eventually form a Special Interest Group (SIG) in which people from within and outside Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ collaborate on research and experimentations into inclusive cities making in the Global South and North.
• We envision to establish close collaboration between researchers, practitioners and citizen groups in cities at a global scale to share experiences and create an open platform where we can all participate to post events/news, briefs, video clips, documentaries, and any other interactive contents.
• We can also initiate a creation of data base such as ‘urban justice atlas’ that maps out various experiences of inclusion and exclusion. In parallel, we want to write a proposal for seed funding within a call for proposals on Urban Sustainability Transformations.

The research hub Transforming cities is part of the Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ strategic theme Pathways to Sustainability. By connecting knowledge and collaborating with stakeholders in transdisciplinary settings, the Transforming cities hub aims to explore and provide sustainable solutions for cities.

For other seed funding workshops, please check the overview on the website.