Rurban Futures Collective
Our Aims
To address the complex challenges of achieving sustainability we contend that RUrban innovations are vitally needed in order to critically and productively address rural-urban interactions and the roles science and technology have, and could have, in rural-urban dynamics. Meeting human (and more-than-human) needs in just and inclusive ways, the tasks of decarbonising the economy, reducing net production and consumption, creating fair and resilient societies, and regenerating ecosystems will mean the renegotiation and repatterning of rural and urban relationships and the co-development of alternative practices and imaginaries that address diverse values and perspectives. Accompanying this effort will be the re-shaping of public values to support commons-based forms of organisation and governance of resources, the reorganisation of systems of provisioning to prioritise sufficiency, and the realisation of equitable and synergetic relationships between human settlements and more-than-human worlds.
RUrban Principles
1 [Context] // The RUrban platform acknowledges that rural-urban interactions are situated and shaped by the contexts in which they unfold (e.g., geographical, social, cultural, institutional, political). We address every context as unique, which requires appropriate methodologies to investigate rural-urban interactions, while we foster trans-local relationships, dialogues, and exchanges.
2 [Sufficiency] // We address sustainability in terms of sufficiency and take a critical outlook on different views of transformation, including socially and environmentally unjustified and relentless production. Innovation does not always need to centre on the ‘new’ and we support creative and context-appropriate re-uses and re-mixes of the ‘old’.
3 [Human-nature Relations] // Human-nature relations are critical aspects in rural-urban interactions and thus for the RUrban platform, providing both causes and potential transformative pathways. We will study these relations in different ecological and cultural contexts, investigating what kinds of relations result in injustices and inequalities, and limit the agency of diverse human and non-human actors.
4 [Commons] // We place the Commons at the core of our RUrban research and investigate the potential of commoning practices to generate institutions, economies, values, and everyday practices that are more attuned to sustain necessary transformations of human-nature relations.
5 [Diverse Economies] // RUrban economies are diverse economies of care driven by the desire to steward more-than-human wellbeing. Economic growth and profit maximisation should not overshadow the paramount necessity of meeting social and environmental needs.
6 [Appropriate Technology] // Technology is ‘appropriate’ and ‘re-appropriated’ for each context, co-produced to reflect local specificities, needs and users, and aimed at sufficiency and conviviality through re-use, re-mix, and interdependence. It is a Commons and its production and use support practices of commoning, and ethical, just, and sustainable human-nature relations.
7 [RUrban Futures] // Sustainable RUrban futures are a Common right for all. We strive for widening futures literacy through critical and transdisciplinary research practices and pedagogies, as a prerequisite for generating inclusive and just RUrban sustainability transformations and expanding the sustainable RUrban imaginary to inspire and inform collective action and decision-making.