JPI Urban Europe is part of an inter-institutional and transdisciplinary project about “strategic synthesis”. The project sets out to harvest knowledge on synthesis processes and methods relevant to urban topics considered at the European level. Initiated in 2018, it unfolds in partnership with SLU Urban Futures, IQ Samhällsbyggnad, Stockholm, and Joint Programming Initiative JPI Urban Europe.
The Strategic Synthesis Project explores how “synthesis” – re-imagined beyond the conventional academic literature review – may be mobilized as a potential and powerful transdisciplinary format. While popular in principle, transdisciplinarity faces many hurdles, in practice. Yet, transdisciplinarity is increasingly taken as a key approach to address the societal challenge of urban sustainable transformations and increased liveability. This approach involves heterogeneous knowledge practices ‘practicing together’.
At the same time, it is becoming increasingly evident that formats and methods required to navigate, collate, distil and communicate (synthesize) knowledge outcomes generated through diverse knowledge practices remain sorely lacking. This project aims to address that gap; it is an open project with two core ambitions:
- Make research useful
In today’s TMI (too much information) context, synthesis clarifies research relevance (what matters?) with a focus on audience (to whom does it matter?) - Model a synthetic mind-set
Demonstrate ways to dynamically mobilize existing knowledge resources, using knowledge creation processes that involve criticality, and reflexivity-on-the-go.
Learn more
- Web: Go to SLU Urban Futures to find examples and contact information to the working group
- Report: State of play for the strategic synthesis project 2020 (including “7 sample synthesis process tools)
- Contact: Interested in participating? Contact jonas.bylund@jpi-urbaneurope.eu
- Webinar: Listen to Urban Lunch Talk #10: From Project Fraction to Synthesis Action – A talk about using strategic synthesis as instrument in urban transitioning
- Interview: Listen to the #UrbanTakeAways episode with Jonas Bylund (2021)
- Green paper: Strategic synthesis tools for transdisciplinary research and innovation (2021)
- Events: Look for events in our calendar