Webinar Urban Lunch Talk #6: From Project Partners to Synergy Soulmates

EDIT: The recording is available on our Youtube channel!

What if integrated approaches and cross-fertilization of issues were made key in urban transformation? How can public authorities and research actors together break out of silos-thinking, and maximize the outcome for the innovation ecosystem that they are part of? What added values are shaped when projects and their partners work synergy effects? For whom, how? The recording is available on our Youtube channel!

Welcome to a webinar about using integrated approaches as a key in urban transformation. We will discuss how for example city authorities can partner in ways that has long term and cross-cutting impact on the state of the city. We look into how integrating a wide range of projects and issues can create valuable synergy effects, both between projects and between projects and their surrounding environments and stakeholders.

Urban transitions and sustainable urban development involve many different (sub)targets, which tend to result in strategies or actions pursued in parallel or disconnected from each other. While some targets support each other, others conflict across administrative departments, sectors, or societal groups. The global achievements of the UN Agenda 2030 SDGs, and the implementation of the Paris Agreement raise several questions on ways of organizing and operating in order to reach targets on time. Both agendas serve a strong urban dimension and assert that ideally, urban synergetics should underpin liveable and just cities.

Meet…

• Joe Ravetz is Co-Director of the Collaboratory for Urban Resilience & Energy at the Manchester Urban Institute, University of Manchester.  He has pioneered the art of strategic thinking for sustainable cities and regions, which brings together environment-climate policy, urban planning and design, new economics and governance, innovation and futures studies, systems thinking and complexity science. With a background as an architect, planner and development manager, he is also a creative graphic facilitator and foresight trainer. Joe works with the LOOPER Living Labs which serve as new models for experimental design and innovation at the urban and community level. They can address practical problems such as air quality, road safety, noise, crime or greenspace and are based on the involvement of stakeholders, continuous monitoring of changes and direct consideration of their impact on the implementation process. There are Living Labs in Brussels, Manchester and Verona. The project is part of the JPI Urban Europe ENSUF call. Joe covers material featured in these slides in his talk:
  – Joe’s talk props
• Joke Quintens (@jokequintens) is a “transitioneur”, former deputy Mayor in the city of Genk, passionate co-creater, matchmaker and facilitator. Joke lives and works in Marseille (France) and in Living Lab Moving Marseille, she uses the city as a laboratory to learn, but also to connect people and projects inside and outside Marseille. She shares stories about sustainable transitions and the challenges of participation and co-creation in workshops, writings, interviews, talks and other exchanges. She practices “Making City Together” as an expert in participatory policies and as a Wetopia ambassador, with a first Wetopia Academy to be set up in Cape Town in October:
  “Dreams of a Wetopian Society”
  Open Desgin Afrika: Wetopia
  Twenty Thirty
• Adrian Hill is a researcher, designer and planner. He is interested in participatory oriented projects that are built around governance, strategic communication and local economies. Adrian has worked across a range of issues including urban sustainability, mobility, agriculture, eco-systems management, renewable energy networks, industry and material cycles. Most recently he has been focusing on urban manufacturing and industrial symbiosis. Adrian is based in Brussels and is the cofounder of the OSMOS Network, a collaborator with LATITUDE platform and the coordinator of the JPI Urban Europe financed project Cities of Making through the ENSUF call. The link to the stakeholder management approach that Adrian uses can be found here and the images he presented in the talk here:
  – Adrian’s talk props
• Marcelline Bonneau (@ResiliaSolution) links theory and practices on sustainable and just cities, grassroots activities and strategic ones, the local and EU levels. She has been working on projects for societal transition of city administration via the URBACT networks (REFILL, MAPS, BioCanteens) in order to support integrated governance processes via peer to peer learning amongst EU cities. She is an URBACT Programme Expert, an expert to the UIA Antwerp Circular South project and an UrbanA Fellow. Marcelline researches and experiments on the interaction between city administrations and citizens’ initiatives in Brussels (VILCO). You can take part of her publications on social innovation in cities at URBACT and Routlegde.
  – Marcelline’s talk props
  E-mail: marcelline@resilia-solutions.eu
• Participants from anywhere in the world who will join the conversation through the chat room, polls and Q&A sessions. Previous Urban Lunch Talks have attracted visitors from more than twenty different countries, representing urban administration and public authorities, research community, business representatives and civil society.
• Host: Caroline Wrangsten, Urban geographer and Assistant Project manager in JPI Urban Europe.
• Rapporteur: Jonas Bylund (@urbanalys) Research and Innovation Officer in JPI Urban Europe. We will enjoy a wrap up and a meta-reflection from Jonas who will link the talk outcomes to the purposes of JPI Urban Europe’s Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda and dilemma-driven approaches to urban research and innovation. Jonas refers to the following two images in his speech:
  

Webinar recording 

The recording is also available on our Youtube channel.