Enabling the City

Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Encounters in Research and Practice

Josefine Fokdal, Olivia Bina, Prue Chiles, Liis Ojamäe, Katrin Paadam, Josefine Fokdal, Olivia Bina, Prue Chiles, Liis Ojamäe, Katrin Paadam

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000370096
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Enabling the City is a collaborative book that focuses on how interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary processes of knowledge production may contribute to urban transformation at a local level in the 21st century, striking a balance between enthusiastic support for such transformational potential and a cautious note regarding the persistent challenges to the ethos as well as the practice of inter and transdisciplinarity.

The rich stories reflect different research and local practice cultures, exploring issues such as ageing, community, health and dementia, public space, energy, mobility cultures, heritage, housing, re-use, and renewal, as well as more universal questions about urban sustainability and climate change, and perhaps most importantly, education. Against this backdrop, aspirations for the 21st century are related to the international, national, and local agendas expressed in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and in the New Urban Agenda (NUA), raising fundamental questions of how to enable development. We highlight aspects of transformative learning and ways of knowing, critical to any collaborative and participatory process.

PART I
Setting the Scene

FIGURE I.0.1 INTREPID network workshop throughout the funding period. Source: Alice Grant.

01
SETTING THE STAGE

Josefine Fokdal, Olivia Bina, Prue Chiles, Liis Ojamäe and Katrin Paadam

FIGURE I.1.1 Kew Gardens. Photo by Olivia Bina.

Introduction

The motivation for writing this book stems from our engagement with three undeniable trends in the twenty-first century: a geographical trend of escalating urbanisation in a world shaken by multiple interdependent crises, a political trend of recognising the challenges following from this and placing them centrally into global plans for sustainable development, and thirdly, a trend in science policy of proclaiming the importance of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary (ITD) research, not least to inform policymaking. While torn between challenges and opportunities, one aspect that seems to unite all urban sustainability agendas is an appeal for transformative change and for knowledge that can make it happen. Our collaborative book, Enabling the City, occupies this inconvenient, uncomfortable, inarticulate space – but a space almost universally acclaimed as necessary to solve the difficult processes and urban challenges of today. This book focuses on how inter-and transdisciplinary processes of knowledge production may contribute to transformation at a local level, inescapably influenced by global trends.

Urbanisation

Today’s processes of urbanisation and the significant projected growth and shift of dynamic urbanisation to the South and East all imply complex challenges related to urban development (UN-Habitat, 2006, 2011; Herrle et al., 2015). Urban areas represent approximately 2% of land cover in the world but produce 70% of emissions (world cities account for between 60% and 80% of energy consumption), and are notorious for their unsustainable ecological footprints. In 2014, 72.5% of the population of Europe lived in urban areas, and this figure is still rising. Case studies and stories in this volume from around Europe, set in cities and towns of different sizes and profiles, illustrate the familiar trend towards a diminishing urban–rural divide and the growth of suburban and peri-urban areas on the outskirts of metropolitan regions. Social, economic and environmental problems overlap, often dramatically, within urban areas worldwide (Satterthwaite & Bartlett, 2016).

A global transformation in the way we live and work is urgently needed, and the projected world population of nine billion in 2050 means that “business as usual” is no longer an option (Cornell et al., 2013). We need to end the insanity of continuous economic growth leading to the inevitable – the overconsumption of finite resources (New Economics Foundation, 2009, p. 3). This requires a fundamental change of cultural dispositions linked to consumption patterns and lifestyles, especially in developed countries. Invariably, the processes of urbanisation entail a complex set of trade-offs and synergies between environmental, social and economic aspects of development that cannot be constrained within thematic, sectoral or disciplinary silos (Sachs et al., 2019). The past decades have, among others, shown that both in practice and academic research closer cooperation between various actors is necessary to understand and impact the ongoing urbanisation processes.

Setting a Global Agenda for Sustainable Development

As a result of the global significance of urban trends, the sustainable development agenda is also changing to reflect this priority – through goal-driven changes. The UN 2030 Agenda called “Transforming our World” asks for a “transformative development pathway” (ICSU & ISSC, 2015, p. 9), and the many debates about science and knowledge needed to address twenty-first-century challenges also appeal to the need for significant transformations in education and research (Wernli & Darbellay, 2016). In particular, the German Advisory Council on Global Change¹ distinguishes between transformation research, exploring “the factors, mechanisms and causal relationships of transformation,” and transformative research, referring to “the kind of research that supports the transformation by means of specific innovations – be they social, economic, technical or of some other kind” (WBGU, 2016, p. 34). New approaches in urban research and practice and new forms of governance and decision-making, however, need new modes of knowledge production as a means for coping with the challenges of a more sustainable urban future.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), along with other global frameworks such as the Paris Agreement, are rather ambitious in their striving for more sustainable development.² Goal 11, for example, to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, identifies ten targets.³ No. 3 is especially relevant to the work discussed here: “By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries” (UNGA, 2015). Throughout this book, we argue that capacity for such “participatory, integrated and sustainable” planning, can best be enabled through knowledge that is both inter and transdisciplinary. Translating these agendas, given the trends and challenges we have “on the ground,” we need to create new systems, models and paradigms that will work in favour of the well-being of people living in cities. We need new knowledge that will reach various actor groups and ways of producing knowledge based on engagement in order to learn how to “enable the city” to thrive and cater for a more sustainable urban future. In other words, urban sustainability entails fundamental change, embracing the fact that knowledge production should be seen as an inclusive process that is not limited to academia and its ways of knowing.

Defining Inter-and Transdisciplinary Processes

Our exploration of inter-and transdisciplinary (ITD) approaches to the design and application of knowledge⁴ focuses on urban research and practice that contribute to the United Nations sustainability agenda. Inter-and transdisciplinary approaches are an expression of depth and degrees of collaboration and diversity, and debates around their need are premised on fundamental questions about the nature and legitimacy of knowledge: what it is, who holds it and who is entitled to contribute to its production.

The definition and common understanding of interdisciplinarity, and related ideas of “multi-” and “trans”disciplinarity, all remain contested and tend to be superficial rhetoric rather than conceptual clarity (see also Chapter IV.1).⁵ These three concepts all pertain to the idea of linking disciplines for the purpose of researching complex problems; however, their purpose and reach is fundamentally different (Lang et al., 2012).

Building on the work done by Wernli and Darbellay (2016) and Petts et al. (2008), we understand interdisciplinarity as an approach that can help to structure multiple sources of knowledge around a common topic, promoting the exchange of disciplinary expertise through cooperation, respect and the willingness to learn from, and to understand, each other. We also give our own definition in Chapter I.3. This requires an openness on the part of collaborating disciplines (Mendes & Sá, 2017), and a recognition of shared values and trust between individuals of different disciplinary backgrounds (see also Chapter II.6). It also entails mutual curiosity towards other knowledge cultures (see also Chapter II.3), and even the willingness to give up some disciplinary territory.⁶

The recent debates assert to be about the promotion of interdisciplinarity in view of a response to a better understanding of problems or as a means of generating questions around which new forms of thought and experimental practice can coalesce (Barry & Born, 2013, p. 10; see also Chapters II.5 and II.8). However, although interdisciplinarity is increasingly central to research agendas, and recognised as a precondition for sustainability (Porter & Rafols, 2009; Sterling, 2004; van Rijnsoever & Hessels, 2011), its effective implementation in research projects remains the exception (Owens et al., 2006; Wernli & Darbellay, 2016) to the rule. Genuine progress towards greater unity of knowledge is often marginalised in practice: actual projects and agendas rarely live up to the lofty promises. Cooperation in producing knowledge is uneven and weak in its ability to shift research agendas towards a new comprehensive approach to research (Petts et al., 2008). Deep-rooted divisions between disciplines lead to an incomplete understanding of global changes affecting human societies (UNESCO & ISSC, 2010). Active collaboration, including knowledge exchange, remains rare to date (Stokols, 2014), largely due to the transaction costs involved and the lack of incentives in both practice and academic arenas.

We use Hoffmann-Riem et al. (2008, p. 4) for an approach to Transdisciplinarity that calls for different types of knowledge production for social change. Firstly, through grasping the complexity of a problem and questioning the normative nature of knowledge production; secondly, by recognising the gap between the perceived problem in science and practice; and thirdly, by producing knowledge for the “common good.” Even clearer is the desire, indeed the necessity, for transdisciplinary work, and thus to open the process of urban knowledge production to a wide range of actors that have an interest in city-making beyond academics and so-called specialists.⁷

Transdisciplinarity,⁸ as we understand it, includes the integration of knowledge from various disciplines (i.e. interdisciplinarity) as well as the involvement of civil society and other non-academic actors into the realm of research and practice. The aim is to produce more suitable and applicable results for policymaking and societal change (e.g. Polk, 2014, 2015; Klein et al., 2001). At a local scale, it can contribute to transforming urban neighbourhoods into accessible, creative, engaging and living spaces by interactive strategies enhancing participation...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Part I Setting the Scene
• Part II Urban Stories Beyond Disciplines
• Part III Short Stories from Practice
• Part IV Lessons Learned – Beyond Context
• Afterword
• Bio Notes
• Index