Enabling the City: Learning for Transformational Change

Turning globally conceived agendas local means enabling interconnected and sustainable urban knowledge, and giving voice and legitimacy to a multiplicity of agencies, worldviews, ways of knowing and understanding the problems and the possibility for alternative ways of doing things. In this chapter, the authors reflected on the interconnections between these three policy arenas through the lens of the inter-and transdisciplinary experiments at the local level. They highlighted the strong link between the concept of learning and re-learning how to design and plan cities in a holistic manner, and collaborative and participatory processes entailing inter-and transdisciplinarity. To address the combination of resistance, limited capabilities and inevitable contradictions, inter-and transdisciplinary experiments – the framework as well as the INTREPID journey – call for new educational models and a reprioritising of the kind of knowledge that needs to be taught, away from technical skills towards softer competences and dispositions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Housing and Human Settlements in a World of Change

The challenge of housing is increasingly recognised in international policy discussions in connection to the processes of migration, climate change, and economic globalisation. This book addresses the challenges of housing and emerging solutions along the lines of three major dynamics: migration, climate change, and neo-liberalism. It explores the outcomes of neo-liberal »enabling« ideas, responses to extreme climate events with different housing approaches, and how the dynamics of migration reshape the urban housing provision in a changing world. The aim is to contextualise the theoretical discourses by reflecting on the case study context of the eleven papers published in this book. With forewords by Raquel Rolnik (University Sao Paulo) and Mohammed El Sioufi (UN-Habitat)

Urban studies and the challenge of embedding sustainability: A review of international master programmes

The United Nations declaration of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UN DESD, 2004–2014) advocates the need for universities to embed sustainability in all learning areas. This inquiry examines how selected post-graduate top-level programmes in urban studies are adapting their curricula to promote sustainable urban development. We start by reviewing an extensive literature to identify the principles and practices characterising the UN DESD, and to identify the topics and themes considered essential for teaching aimed at the promotion of sustainable urban development. Based on the extensive literature review we define an analytical framework in five parts, related to various aspects of curricular content and teaching and learning approaches: programme orientation, skills, ethics and critical reasoning, interdisciplinarity and content related to sustainable urban development issues. We then conduct an empirical study of 25 among the best post-graduate level (MA and MSc) programmes in urban studies from Europe, China, the USA and the Global South, to see how they are adapting their curricula to the requirements of sustainable urban development captured in the analytical framework. While acknowledging the significant context specificities that must be respected, and the multiple challenges that must be reconciled when defining urban studies curricula - we find both strengths and weaknesses in these top programmes, including important differences among the programmes from the four regions. Our data suggests that important steps are being taken towards ‘whole-system’ transformation envisaged by the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, but also that transformative factors depending on cultural and institutional values and practices remain relatively weak

The Inter- and Transdisciplinary Process: A Framework

This chapter develops a proposed framework for urban inter-and transdisciplinary processes. In the framework, competences and dispositions are listed separately on purpose to highlight their potential distinctiveness and relevance, thus making them more clearly visible in the phase of planning for an inter-and transdisciplinary process. The first dimension has four phases that characterise inter-and transdisciplinary processes: co-design, co-production, dissemination and outreach, and continuation. The second dimension includes four enabling conditions: time, competences and dispositions, contexts, and words. For inter-and transdisciplinary projects linked to research funds, time is almost always too short, as the unequal weight given to economic and social time results in the former trumping the latter. The third dimension describes a predisposition to learning as an individual, in teams and in society: a quality that underpins and influences the workings of both the phases and the enabling conditions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Housing and Human Settlements in a World of Change

The challenge of housing is increasingly recognised in international policy discussions in connection to the processes of migration, climate change, and economic globalisation. This book addresses the challenges of housing and emerging solutions along the lines of three major dynamics: migration, climate change, and neo-liberalism. It explores the outcomes of neo-liberal »enabling« ideas, responses to extreme climate events with different housing approaches, and how the dynamics of migration reshape the urban housing provision in a changing world. The aim is to contextualise the theoretical discourses by reflecting on the case study context of the eleven papers published in this book. With forewords by Raquel Rolnik (University Sao Paulo) and Mohammed El Sioufi (UN-Habitat)

Setting the Stage

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. 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. 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 experience and knowledge within the urban realm could be better integrated into the more recent discussion on transdisciplinarity and transformative science for a more sustainable future. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

9th INTREPID REPORT INTREPID FUTURE INITIATIVES: Re-imagine urban curricula (a needs assessment)

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Urbanisierung

Unter Urbanisierung werden komplexe und irreversible Prozesse des gesellschaftlichen Wandels verstanden, die im Wachstum städtischer Siedlungs- und Wirtschaftsformen und in großen Agglomerationen ihren Ausdruck finden. Urbanisierung gilt als Motor der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, gleichzeitig wird sie oft von einer Polarisierung der Einkommensverhältnisse begleitet

Can municipality-based post-discharge follow-up visits including a general practitioner reduce early readmission among the fragile elderly (65+ years old)?::a randomized controlled trial

Objective. To evaluate how municipality-based post-discharge follow-up visits including a general practitioner and municipal nurse affect early readmission among high-risk older people discharged from a hospital department of internal medicine. Design and setting. Centrally randomized single-centre pragmatic controlled trial comparing intervention and usual care with investigator-blinded outcome assessment. Intervention. The intervention was home visits with a general practitioner and municipal nurse within seven days of discharge focusing on medication, rehabilitation plan, functional level, and need for further health care initiatives. The visit was concluded by planning one or two further visits. Controls received standard health care services. Patients. People aged 65 + years discharged from Holbæk University Hospital, Denmark, in 2012 considered at high risk of readmission. Main outcome measures. The primary outcome was readmission within 30 days. Secondary outcomes at 30 and 180 days included readmission, primary health care, and municipal services. Outcomes were register-based and analysis used the intention-to-treat principle. Results. A total of 270 and 261 patients were randomized to intervention and control groups, respectively. The groups were similar in baseline characteristics. In all 149 planned discharge follow-up visits were carried out (55%). Within 30 days, 24% of the intervention group and 23% of the control group were readmitted (p = 0.93). No significant differences were found for any other secondary outcomes except that the intervention group received more municipal nursing services. Conclusion. This municipality-based follow-up intervention was only feasible in half the planned visits. The intervention as delivered had no effect on readmission or subsequent use of primary or secondary health care services