RUrban foci
We set out three main focus areas of research that reflect the core principles of the RUrban platform. These foci are interconnected and provide an overarching programme of research aimed at inviting dialogues, exchanges, and collaborations between academics from UT, beyond TPS/BMS, to include other relevant communities such as ITC, the DesignLab, and other like minded groups at UT. Over the longer term, we aim to expand collaborations beyond UT, to relevant national, European, and international academic institutions and practitioners.
Space: This focus area places an emphasis on material resources, the physical and experiential domains where sustainability issues materialise and/or where they can be directly experienced, and where business-as-usual can be contested through experiments and examples of alternatives. RUrban work is inherently cross-boundary and relational, reaching over multiple scales of analysis, which requires us to rethink existing institutional frameworks and propose alternative forms of governance. It also addresses context-based methodologies that have a spatial dimension, such as citizen science and living labs, and support direct engagement with alternative examples of organising and managing human-nature relations, e.g., urban commons initiatives and practices of commoning.
Practices: This focus area is centred on socio-ecological, economic, and techno-scientific practices of everyday life linked to RUrban domains, e.g., mobility, food, energy, water. Taking social practices as a unit of analysis can expose lock-ins, dependencies, power structures, technology uses, together with opportunities for alternative narratives, institutions, and economies e.g., centred on conviviality, cooperation, and demand-side reductions.
Imaginaries: This focus area problematizes the future, looking at how the future is imagined from the political / global level to the mundane, everyday life level. Future visions shape present actions and practices, and therefore they hold transformative potential. The future of RUrban environments and relationships will emerge from the collectively negotiated imaginary of society, which will have to address differences in values, perspectives, mindsets, and identities. This focus area will explore experiential futuring methodologies and approaches such as the responsible futuring approach developed at the DesignLab, for how they might support other ways of imagining the future, futures literacy, and transformative actions in the present.
Furthemore, given the contested nature of sustainability, and its inherent political and cultural dimensions, we embrace contestation and frictions as productive spaces for democratic debates around just and inclusive sustainable RUrban futures. This is coupled with a strong interest in transformative sustainability education, and critical and emancipatory pedagogies. Nonetheless, through our transdisciplinary and societally engaged work, we aim to move beyond criticality towards creativity and propose alternatives. For instance, this could be achieved through prototyping and testing alternative business models (e.g., community-based, bioregional) and catalysing collective action, new institutions, and bottom-up policy initiatives to engage in dialogues with diverse communities.
Proposed areas of work
- Perform a state of the art review of rurban experiences, trends, areas of focus in different local, global and hybrid contexts.
- Map and classify existing initiatives with RUrban characteristics (e.g., that meet key RUrban principles) in the Twente region to develop a network of partners in the region for longer-term collaborations. These could involve initiatives by civic groups, small scale farmers, public libraries, cultural organisations, etc. The process of mapping is understood as a relationship-building activity to be conducted collaboratively.
- Explore and implement transdisciplinary ways of working with regional actors, e.g., through challenge-based learning, civic sustainability classrooms, citizen science, responsible futuring. This pedagogical dimension would represent the vehicle for creating and sustaining the network, by fostering relationships and collaborations over time.
- Co-create rurban sustainability visions with regional actors.
Societal impact pathways
- Initiate discussions across BMS/TPS & UT on RUrban Innovations for sustainability through the RUrban Seminar Series, hosting of transdisciplinary events and academic conferences related to RUrban themes.
- Integrate RUrban themes into educational programmes (Bachelor & Masters), develop new educational programmes and projects, and incorporate the RUrban theme into on-campus demonstrations and rurban “living labs”.
- Develop a consortium for a Horizon Europe project (e.g., Atlas of RUrban Commons).
- Prototype and incubate transformative practices and ‘models’ both on a policy level (e.g. urban/regional development, UT education) and an everyday life level (e.g., consumption and lifestyles; mindsets, values, and perspectives).
- Explore actions and experiment with solutions (innovative education, regional partnerships, “models”; UT as a living lab, Twente bioregion)