Urban Lunch Talk #4: Sustainable Land-use and Urban infrastructures – The Dilemma

In the fourth episode of JPI Urban Europe’s webinar series Urban Lunch Talks, we will explore the urban dilemma of sustainable land-use and urban infrastructures. Join the conversation!

Point of departure
Cities and urban areas in general attract people and create positive effects out of agglomeration, density, and diverse and intersecting infrastructures and facilities. These positive effects of urbanisation are underpinned by integrated urban planning and management by public administrations and across diverse public and private actors. Particularly supported by public engagement and participation in decision- making relating to land-use management, flows of people, flows of information and resources, place-making, and impact on existing settlements and environs affected.

At the same time there are also consequently risks involved and currently increasingly wicked problems around e.g. congestion and accessibility, loss of identity or demand/waste of natural resources. Furthermore, urban areas may succumb to conflict and clashes between powers, mismanagement of transportation flows, existing tensions intensify and severely delimited progress towards sustainable urbanisation will ensue. Added to this, increased spatial and social inequalities between city centres and suburbs may be caused by increasing economic polarisation, segregation and gentrification dynamics, suburban sprawl, and shrinking cities in functional regional contexts.

Moderator

• Cissi Askwall, Secretary General, CEO of the Swedish NGO Public & Science, VA, who has a long and passionate experience of research communication and public engagement.

Panellist

• Sara Borgström, Assistant Professor in Sustainable Urban Development, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Sara conducts research in urban landscape governance for sustainable development especially focusing on collective benefits, multi-level perspectives, co-production of knowledge and learning for capacity building. In her research, Sara, uses social-ecological systems thinking in order to address strong sustainable development where the biosphere and ecological sustainability is seen as the fundament for social and economic development in the long-term perspective.
• Marc Dijk, Research Fellow at International Centre for Integrated Assessment and Sustainable Development (ICIS), Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Marc’s  main research interests are innovation and innovation policy, sustainability assessment and socio-technical transitions. He is currently principal investigator and project coordinator of SmarterLabs, an action- research project focussed on upscaling and social exclusion in Smart City Living Labs in Maastricht, Brussels, Graz and Bellinzona.
• Igor Kos, Advisor at WCYCLE Institute Maribor, Slovenia. Igor has experience from the Mayor’s Cibinet in the Municipality of Maribo where he worked with the municipality’s Sustainable urban mobility plan and Integrated urban development strategy. Since 2017, he works on WCYCLE with promotion of the model of circular economy MO Maribor and involvement in the development of strategies in the field of circular economy in Slovenia and the EU.

Participants from anywhere in the world may join the conversation through chat rooms, polls and Q&A sessions!

Please register here!

Please make sure to be there at 12.45 circa to grab a seat. Seats are limited by ”first come first serve” principal. Chat room opens 12.45 and closes at 14.15 and participants are welcome to keep the conversation going before, during and after the webinar.