Urban Transformations Network: Pathways from Practice to Policy
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Brighton
Department Name: School of Architecture and Design
Abstract
Urban areas face urgent challenges due to pressures on resources and the environment. Ever increasing urbanisation squeezes open urban space and planted landscapes as the density of cities increases. And yet, urban agriculture (UA) is rapidly re-emerging in cities across the world in response to concerns over resources, environment, wellbeing and food systems. This has resulted in the creation of a new urban space type - productive urban landscapes e.g. http://r-urban.net/. Productive urban landscapes are multifunctional and include UA as a major element. In Europe their development has often been led by artists and designers and as the demand for, and number of, these spaces increase, urban environments are being transformed. Practice is outstripping policy and consequently policy makers are not creating the conditions to allow for innovation and development in urban design and food systems. City authorities are now urgently seeking guidance on how to develop policy to accommodate productive urban landscapes.
The Urban Transformations Network is being proposed by a multidisciplinary group of UK and European academics and practitioners who will generate future pathways to policy for productive urban landscapes within the context of sustainable development. Core members have since 2006 on occasion collaborated, but have never been able to bring their experience together to significantly advance practice and research. The network will meet three key objectives. 1) To define policy pathways that create the conditions allowing for innovation and development in urban design and food systems. 2) To deepen and extend a growing impact on urban transformations from arts and design-led multidisciplinary practice beginning to explore the role of urban agriculture within productive urban landscapes. 3) To develop and promote innovative methods for bridging design and policy development in the context of cross disciplinary working, and identifying outstanding questions in relation to productive urban landscape research and education. The core network consists of: Architects: Andre Viljoen, University of Brighton; Prof. Doina Petrescu, University of Sheffield; Craig Verzone, Verzone Woods Architects (Switzeland); Katrin Bohn, Technical University of Berlin. Artists: Debora Solomon and Mariske Van De Berg - Netherlands
Sociology / Food Policy: Prof. Han Wiskerke, Amsterdam Academy of Architecture and Rural Sociology Group,University of Wageningen - Netherlands. Agronomist: Dr Howard Lee, Hadlow College. Geographer: Dr Chiara Tornaghi, University of Leeds. Food policy: Clare Devereux, Policy Director, Food Matters UK.
60 additional participants will be invited to attend network events.
The project will include a "community of practice" workshop in Amsterdam to enable the formulation of outline policy pathways. During a follow up practice to planner policy workshop in Brighton policy developers from the municipalities hosting pioneering projects will interrogate and jointly refine policy pathways. These will then be presented at a practice to policy seminar in Sheffield targeting at UK cities aiming to integrate sustainable urban food systems into their planning and policy development. In addition the core network will undertake wider dissemination via an interactive web site, conference and professional presentations, publication of two academic papers and the development of a major research proposal based on the networks findings.
The utilisation of network findings in the future development of policy will benefit academics and non-academics in the fields of public arts, the professions (architects, landscape architects, agronomists, and urban designers), policy makers including town planners and food policy councils. SMEs and social entrepreneurs in the fields of environment and food will benefit from enabling policies and ultimately the public will benefit from improved urban quality and wellbeing.
The Urban Transformations Network is being proposed by a multidisciplinary group of UK and European academics and practitioners who will generate future pathways to policy for productive urban landscapes within the context of sustainable development. Core members have since 2006 on occasion collaborated, but have never been able to bring their experience together to significantly advance practice and research. The network will meet three key objectives. 1) To define policy pathways that create the conditions allowing for innovation and development in urban design and food systems. 2) To deepen and extend a growing impact on urban transformations from arts and design-led multidisciplinary practice beginning to explore the role of urban agriculture within productive urban landscapes. 3) To develop and promote innovative methods for bridging design and policy development in the context of cross disciplinary working, and identifying outstanding questions in relation to productive urban landscape research and education. The core network consists of: Architects: Andre Viljoen, University of Brighton; Prof. Doina Petrescu, University of Sheffield; Craig Verzone, Verzone Woods Architects (Switzeland); Katrin Bohn, Technical University of Berlin. Artists: Debora Solomon and Mariske Van De Berg - Netherlands
Sociology / Food Policy: Prof. Han Wiskerke, Amsterdam Academy of Architecture and Rural Sociology Group,University of Wageningen - Netherlands. Agronomist: Dr Howard Lee, Hadlow College. Geographer: Dr Chiara Tornaghi, University of Leeds. Food policy: Clare Devereux, Policy Director, Food Matters UK.
60 additional participants will be invited to attend network events.
The project will include a "community of practice" workshop in Amsterdam to enable the formulation of outline policy pathways. During a follow up practice to planner policy workshop in Brighton policy developers from the municipalities hosting pioneering projects will interrogate and jointly refine policy pathways. These will then be presented at a practice to policy seminar in Sheffield targeting at UK cities aiming to integrate sustainable urban food systems into their planning and policy development. In addition the core network will undertake wider dissemination via an interactive web site, conference and professional presentations, publication of two academic papers and the development of a major research proposal based on the networks findings.
The utilisation of network findings in the future development of policy will benefit academics and non-academics in the fields of public arts, the professions (architects, landscape architects, agronomists, and urban designers), policy makers including town planners and food policy councils. SMEs and social entrepreneurs in the fields of environment and food will benefit from enabling policies and ultimately the public will benefit from improved urban quality and wellbeing.
Planned Impact
Who will benefit from this research?
This research is cross and interdisciplinary and to ensure achievable outcomes it will concentrate on urban design and associated planning policy benefiting in the short term public arts practitioners, professionals (architects, landscape architects, agronomists, urban designers), policy makers including town planners and food policy councils. The network will enable the development of coherent and evidenced based policy to optimise the benefits accruing from productive urban landscapes. In the longer term this will enable broad public, SME and social enterprise benefits for individual citizens in relation to, quality of life, public health, environmental sustainability and social resilience. The Pathways to Impact document further addresses non-academic beneficiaries.
How will they benefit?
This network will enable academics to more precisely define a new cross disciplinary specialism emerging at an intersection of the disciplines noted above, and update existing or develop new curricular and pedagogic approaches. In the short term impact is likely to occur in postgraduate studies, and as the field becomes better defined it is likely to become embedded in undergraduate studies. Results from open competitions for post-graduate architectural students evidence that the concept of productive urban landscapes is already being explored by individuals (http://www.educate-sustainability.eu/prize).
By defining pathways to policy, this network will significantly contribute to a better understanding of exactly where, when, and how different disciplines relate to the network theme. This advance the body of knowledge needed to inform educational practices and enable curricula development that integrates concepts of productive urban landscapes and urban agriculture into contemporary education. Specifically the urgency of this need is evidenced by the commencement in 2013, of an EU funded Erasmus Intensive Programme Titled, "CITY GREENING. How Town Planning Can Integrate Urban Agriculture in City Regeneration". This programme in which Viljoen (Investigator) is a participant is underway and developing an annual European-wide multidisciplinary module which will directly benefit from the outputs of this network, and will run concurrently with this proposed AHRC network. International beneficiaries include programmes dealing with similar issues at urban and architectural scales are also being developed outside of Europe, at for example, The New School in NYC, Ryerson and McGill Universities in Canada. At PhD level these issues are increasingly being addressed within Europe and abroad.
Furthermore findings from the subject area, related as it is to urban design, governance and food systems, has significant implications for quality of life, public health and wellbeing. Productive urban landscapes will contribute to the concept of Health Cities, as envisaged by the World Health Organisation (http://www.who.int/healthy_settings/types/cities/en/).
The network will contribute to an evidence base being sought by agencies such as the newly formed UK Sustainable Food Cities Network, and the London Food Board for the impact of urban agriculture and productive landscapes. All academic participants in this network have been invited to brief bodies for example, London Legacy Development Corporation (Viljoen and Lee), Amsterdam Municipal Authority (Wiskerke) or Berlin Senat (Bohn).
In the longer term, enacted policies in support of productive urban landscapes will benefit a number of emerging and innovative social enterprises / SMEs linked to urban agriculture e.g. Prinzessinnengarten in Berlin (http://prinzessinnengarten.net/about/), Growing Communities in London (http://www.growingcommunities.org/) or SME's like the Rotterdam based, Uit eeigen stad - Out of your city (http://www.uitjeeigenstad.nl/over-uit-je-eigen-stad/) or urban mushroom farm Rotter Zwam (http://rotterzwam.nl/).
This research is cross and interdisciplinary and to ensure achievable outcomes it will concentrate on urban design and associated planning policy benefiting in the short term public arts practitioners, professionals (architects, landscape architects, agronomists, urban designers), policy makers including town planners and food policy councils. The network will enable the development of coherent and evidenced based policy to optimise the benefits accruing from productive urban landscapes. In the longer term this will enable broad public, SME and social enterprise benefits for individual citizens in relation to, quality of life, public health, environmental sustainability and social resilience. The Pathways to Impact document further addresses non-academic beneficiaries.
How will they benefit?
This network will enable academics to more precisely define a new cross disciplinary specialism emerging at an intersection of the disciplines noted above, and update existing or develop new curricular and pedagogic approaches. In the short term impact is likely to occur in postgraduate studies, and as the field becomes better defined it is likely to become embedded in undergraduate studies. Results from open competitions for post-graduate architectural students evidence that the concept of productive urban landscapes is already being explored by individuals (http://www.educate-sustainability.eu/prize).
By defining pathways to policy, this network will significantly contribute to a better understanding of exactly where, when, and how different disciplines relate to the network theme. This advance the body of knowledge needed to inform educational practices and enable curricula development that integrates concepts of productive urban landscapes and urban agriculture into contemporary education. Specifically the urgency of this need is evidenced by the commencement in 2013, of an EU funded Erasmus Intensive Programme Titled, "CITY GREENING. How Town Planning Can Integrate Urban Agriculture in City Regeneration". This programme in which Viljoen (Investigator) is a participant is underway and developing an annual European-wide multidisciplinary module which will directly benefit from the outputs of this network, and will run concurrently with this proposed AHRC network. International beneficiaries include programmes dealing with similar issues at urban and architectural scales are also being developed outside of Europe, at for example, The New School in NYC, Ryerson and McGill Universities in Canada. At PhD level these issues are increasingly being addressed within Europe and abroad.
Furthermore findings from the subject area, related as it is to urban design, governance and food systems, has significant implications for quality of life, public health and wellbeing. Productive urban landscapes will contribute to the concept of Health Cities, as envisaged by the World Health Organisation (http://www.who.int/healthy_settings/types/cities/en/).
The network will contribute to an evidence base being sought by agencies such as the newly formed UK Sustainable Food Cities Network, and the London Food Board for the impact of urban agriculture and productive landscapes. All academic participants in this network have been invited to brief bodies for example, London Legacy Development Corporation (Viljoen and Lee), Amsterdam Municipal Authority (Wiskerke) or Berlin Senat (Bohn).
In the longer term, enacted policies in support of productive urban landscapes will benefit a number of emerging and innovative social enterprises / SMEs linked to urban agriculture e.g. Prinzessinnengarten in Berlin (http://prinzessinnengarten.net/about/), Growing Communities in London (http://www.growingcommunities.org/) or SME's like the Rotterdam based, Uit eeigen stad - Out of your city (http://www.uitjeeigenstad.nl/over-uit-je-eigen-stad/) or urban mushroom farm Rotter Zwam (http://rotterzwam.nl/).
Publications
Petrescu D
(2016)
Co-producing commons-based resilience: lessons from R-Urban
in Building Research & Information
Viljoen A
European allotments and community gardens within the framework of productive urban landscapes.
in Landscape and Urban Planning
Viljoen A
(2016)
Integrated Urban Agriculture: Precedents, Practices, Prospects
Viljoen, A.
(2015)
Pathways from Practice to Policy for Productive Urban Landscapes.
Wiskerke J S C
(2015)
Cities and Agriculture - Developing Resilient Urban Food Systems
Woestenburg M
(2016)
Waarom we voedselutopia's moeten ontwerpen (Why we need to design food utopias)
| Description | 1) EU COST ACTION: Urban Allotment Gardens in European Cities - Future, Challenges and Lessons Learned 18/10/2012 to the 17/10/2016 (http://www.cost.eu/COST_Actions/tud/TU1201). Members of the AHRC network were invited by this COST to contextualise the position of urban allotment gardens within the larger concept of productive urban landscapes. This EU funded COST Action has been active in researching multiple aspects of allotment gardens from social, ecological and urban design perspectives and includes participants from 31 different countries. AHRC network members consider it significant that their work is being used to describe new understandings of where urban allotment gardens fit within the emerging concept of Productive Urban Landscapes. 2) Developing a dialogue between those implementing policy and design practitioners. During the Network's meetings and seminars, it has become clear that how policy is developed and interpreted is complex, and may impact at many different stages during the development and implementation of a productive urban landscape. The dialogues enabled by the network's workshops and seminar session have been extremely valuable in understanding this complexity. Through these dialogues six factors have been identified which together appear to influence the relationships between practice and policy. These are: how a project is initiated (top-down or bottom-up), who the beneficiaries are, which existing policies are influential and how these are interpreted, if a specific policy exists relating to productive urban landscapes, who is leading the project and the overall motivations for developing a project. 3) Engaging with a wide range of productive urban landscape end users and potential future users. The award has enabled a new understanding of what different organisations require if pathways to policy in support of productive urban landscapes are to be developed. Organisations with a policy focus and already familiar with the concept of productive urban landscapes appeared to be primarily interested in existing examples of good policy practice. Organisations with responsibility for open urban space seem to be more willing to test and prototype productive urban landscape strategies prior to developing new policy. |
| Exploitation Route | In the future we can imagine the implementation of prototype productive urban landscapes within existing and new development. Findings could be taken forward by a range of actors for example by: design professionals, arts practitioners and environmentalists, those setting high level strategic goals for achieving sustainable and resilient "no waste" policies, national planning policy advisors, urban and municipal authorities, developers, public parks, NGO's, community organisations, public health authorities concerned with implementing healthy cities, urban and peri-urban farmers and market gardeners. |
| Sectors | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Communities and Social Services/Policy,Construction,Creative Economy,Environment,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| URL | http://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/pulr/ |
| Description | Non-academic impact is evidenced by a series of dialogues with two non-governmental organisations, the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation and the Peabody Housing Association. These dialogues are directed towards developing a collaborative research project to test how productive urban landscapes may be "retrofitted" into Letchworth Garden City and London Thamesmead. Each location represents a much replicated international urban model. Letchworth is the first Garden City to be established based on the principles set out by Ebenezer Howard at the end of the nineteenth century. The Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation is a self-funding charitable organisation that manages a significant property portfolio within Letchworth Garden City, re-investing profit for the long term benefit of its communities. London Thamesmead refers to an extensive area of mainly social housing with significant areas broadly following modernist principals for the "vertical garden city" as set out by the influential twentieth-century architect Le Corbusier. The London based Peabody Housing Association is currently responsible for development within Thamesmead. Between December 2015 and March 2016 meetings and dialogues have taken place between the AHRC network members and representatives from Peabody Housing Association, Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation, The International Garden Cities Institute and non-institutional stakeholders from Letchworth. The aim is to develop a research programme and submit a funding application during 2016 that draws on the work of the AHRC network and aligns with future development imperatives and objectives in Letchworth and Thamesmead. The developing research plan is evolving to originate and test robust design strategies for the implementation of sustainable productive urban landscapes in each location, and thereby build replicable and transferable knowledge to inform similar development elsewhere. This proposal was submitted to the AHRC and in 2019 we received the news that it was not supported for funding. The application received 3 reviews and all three scored it with an average of 5 out of a maximum of 6. Included in the average were some "6 out of 6" scores for particular parts. Network members remain active in the field and are continuing to research productive urban landscapes outside of the original AHRC Network. In 2022 a group interdisciplinary partners from the University of Brighton and community participants in the AHRC network's earlier events, e.g. Brighton and Hove Food Partnership, Brighton and Hove City Council, successful bid for funding from the University of Brighton for a project titled "Seeing urban food futures: co-researching virtual reality as a scenario building tool." This is a pilot participatory research project will compare the use of analogue and digital (virtual reality) methods for showing the potential integration of urban agriculture into neighborhoods. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2015 |
| Sector | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Communities and Social Services/Policy,Environment,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal,Policy & public services |
| Description | Agenda 21 Policy, Department of Urbanism, Vevey, Switzerland: Verzone Woods Architects (http://www.vwa.ch/), Switzerland, AHRC network members, have been commissioned in the Department of Urbanism, Vevey to provide Assistance in siting new food garden planters / micro productive urban landscapes (Potagers Urbains) in the public realm, and in developing policy for siting constraints as part of the town's Agenda 21 policy. Initiated Spring 2017. This does not match any of the standard impact categories defined within Research Fish and "Participation in national consultation", has been selected as the closest category. |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| Impact | Short term impact is to create a new urban space incorporating orchards and community gardens and thereby demonstrate through design and practice a working example of a productive urban landscape. The development of regulations for the siting of small scale productive urban landscapes as part of Agenda 21 will improve their regulatory framework thus helping to legitimise the land-use as recognized and acceptable and making them more easily reproducible. |
| Description | Contribution to the Urban Agriculture World Summit 2019, Nerima City, Tokyo. |
| Geographic Reach | Asia |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| Impact | Prof. Andre Viljoen has been invited by the Mayor of Nerima City municipality in Tokyo to contribute to an "Urban Agriculture World Summit" during November 2019 and an earlier pre-Summit event during November 2018. These have been planned to coincide with cultural events supporting Tokyo's hosting of the 2020 Olympic Games. The purpose of the Summit and pre-Summit are to help Nerima City develop policy in relation to existing urban agriculture in the city. In comparison to other world cities, Nerima retains a large percentage of active urban agriculture that supplies the needs of local residents. City authorities are beginning to realise what a resource this is, and are seeking means to develop policy that recognises its contribution to the city and legal (e.g. inheritance taxes) ramifications. The 2018 event included meetings with farmers, city officials, site visits, workshops and a public presentation. During the 2019 Urban Agriculture World Summit a larger group of international experts will be invited as guests, continuing the dialogue with the city officials responsible for urban agriculture and with local farmers. International experts, including Prof. Viljoen, have been identified by a team under the leadership of Prof. Makoto Yokohari from the University of Tokyo's Department of Urban Engineering and a member of the planning committee for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Impacts will inform planning policy and the public perception of Urban Agriculture. The initial reach of this initiative will be within Nerima City, and the Urban Agriculture World Summit will provide a pathway to wider international reach. Outside of Japan Nerima's extensive and well integrated urban agriculture is not well known and the World Summit will help to disseminate a viable scenario for adoption elsewhere. Experts from, London, New York, Toronto, Seoul and Jakarta will contribute directly to the Summit and facilitate reach within their cities. There will also be guests from other cities. Longer term impacts relate to the retention of urban agriculture in Nerima, the production of local food crops and the provision of commercial and communal food growing spaces. Communal food growing spaces are likely to benefit urban biodiversity and both communal and commercial urban agriculture will contribute resident's consumption of fruit and vegetables. |
| URL | https://www.city.nerima.tokyo.jp/kankomoyoshi/nogyo/summitENG.html |
| Description | Verzone Woods Architects (http://www.vwa.ch/), Switzerland, AHRC network members, have been commissioned in the neighbourhood of Prairie Nord - Eglantine (Morges) to advise on the development of a neighbourhood plan, landscape design and project development as well as assistance in developing regulations for gardens and productive urban landscapes including orchards and community gardens. Client: Losinger Marazzi (2017). This does not match any of the standard impact categories defined within Research Fish and "Participation in national consultation", has been selected as the closest category. |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| Impact | Short term impact is to create a new urban space incorporating orchards and community gardens and thereby demonstrate through design and practice a working example of a productive urban landscape. The development of regulations for productive urban landscapes will improve their regulatory framework thus helping to legitimise the land-use as recognized and acceptable and making them more easily reproducible. |
| Description | Verzone Woods Architects (http://www.vwa.ch/), Switzerland, AHRC network members, have been commissioned to design neighbourhood gardens and advise on regulations for gardens / productive urban landscapes in Troinex (Geneva). The commission includes landscape design and project development incorporating the integration of orchards and community gardens. Client: Capvest, 3NI, Cerutti Architectes (2017) This does not match any of the standard impact categories defined within Research Fish and "Participation in national consultation", has been selected as the closest category. |
| Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| Impact | Short term impact is to create a new urban space incorporating orchards and community gardens and thereby demonstrate through design and practice what productive urban landscapes are. The development of regulations for productive urban landscapes will improve the regulatory framework for them. This will help to legitimise them as a recognised urban land use and make it easier for more to be developed. |
| Description | H2020-SCC-NBS-2stage-2017 (Smart and Sustainable Cities - Nature Based Solutions) |
| Amount | € 12,279,250 (EUR) |
| Funding ID | Proposal Number: 776665-1 Title: EdiCitNet - Edible Cities Network Integrating Edible City Solutions for social resilient and sustainably productive cities. |
| Organisation | European Union |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | European Union (EU) |
| Start | 09/2018 |
| End | 09/2023 |
| Description | Participatory Research Call. |
| Amount | £8,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University of Brighton |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2022 |
| End | 07/2022 |
| Description | Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) sustainable food planning group. |
| Organisation | Association of European Schools of Planning |
| Country | Germany |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Several members of the AHRC network are active members of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) sustainable food planning group. This group was established in 2009 and in 2016 network member Chiara Tornaghi was elected Chairperson for the sustainable food planning group, hosting in 2017 the 8th AESOP Sustainable Food Planning Conference at the University of Coventry. Members of the network have contributed to the steering group set up to plan and manage the conference. Some have also contributed directly by presenting papers at the conference. In structuring the conference three tracks developed themes that related to policy and practice (our network's theme), namely Track 1 - Agroecological Urbanism, Track 2- Political Processes and Track 3 - Resourceful Land Management. Specific contributions from network members: Key Note: Chiara Tornaghi (CAWR) and Michiel Dehaene (University of Ghent, Belgium), "Food as an urban question, and the foundations of a reproductive, agroecological, urbanism" and launch of "The International Forum for a Resourceful, Reproductive, Agroecological Urbanism". Solomon D. "Soil Portraits, the 'real' Big Data" + art display Rich M., Viljoen A., Smith H., "Creating the 'Healing City': Lessons learned from care farms in three European countries" Solomon D., Nevejan C. "Urban soils as a biological hotspot, with new roles for all ecosystem actors" |
| Collaborator Contribution | The Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) help to promote the Sustainable Food Planning Group's conference. |
| Impact | The conference is the main output and provided a formal forum for this community of practice. It encouraged cross disciplinary dialogues, for example between architects, artists, planners, geographers, sociologists and activists. It is difficult to attribute outputs directly to the conference as it operates as a fairly loose but supportive forum and network for participants who are active in their different fields. |
| Start Year | 2016 |
| Description | A two day practice to policy seminar held in Sheffield. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | Hosted by the University of Sheffield this seminar was aimed at people involved with the future provision of sustainable urban food systems and who had an active interest in shaping future research to help to define how urban agriculture fits into urban food systems and the possible ways in which policy can be developed in order to support the coherent integration of productive urban landscapes into cities. The seminar disseminated best practice examples of urban agriculture practice from the Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland and the UK, describing leading current projects and the policy opportunities and challenges that have influenced them. It included active workshop sessions to help understand how policy does and could support urban agriculture with the UK, and where it contributed to a sustainable urban food system. A number of delegates who attended had participated in an earlier event titled "Protecting Parks and Green Spaces hosted by the organisation Government Knowledge / Policy Knowledge during which a presentation was given about the AHRC Network Urban Transformations: Pathways from Practice to Policy. As a result of the Sheffield workshop a substantial research proposal is being developed by AHRC network members and representatives from Letchworth Garden City in Hertfordshire and Thamesmead in Greenwich and Bexley. See the section "Other outputs, Knowledge/Future Steps" entry: Partners in a submitted Stage One EU Horizon 2020 proposal. 18 people attended this workshop. This included, 8 Network members including 2 facilitators and 10 UK practitioners associated research with or third sector organisations, such as the Letchworth Heritage Foundation, and the Black Environment Network. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/projects/utppp |
| Description | A two-day community of practice workshop held in Amsterdam. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Hosted by the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture (AAA), this workshop was designed as a forum for core participants to frame their understanding of the relationships between practice and policy. The first day of the workshop enabled participants to define common goals for the network and share their experience and understanding of where policy aided, hindered or was lacking in relation to their practice and research. Digital presentations and tables were used to characterise and compare different projects. The second day was used for participants to diagrammatise their experience of policy, and thereby help to visualise and define policy pathways. The day concluded by identifying research questions after which a site visit was made to a project in Amsterdam run by network members URBANIAHOEVE. 20 people attended this workshop, including 10 network members. 24 practitioners, policy makers, social entrepreneurs, SMEs and post graduate research students from Amsterdam, Den Haag and Rotterdam, were invited to attend the workshop, and 10 joined the workshop to co-create and diagram pathways to policy. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/projects/utppp |
| Description | A two-day practice to planner policy workshop held in Brighton. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Hosted by the University of Brighton and using selected presentations and discussions this workshop set out to test, refine and challenge the policy pathways identified by participants during the earlier Community of Practice Workshop held in Amsterdam. It reviewed these with input from policy professionals involved with the network member's productive landscape projects. Policy professionals from Amsterdam, Brighton, Berlin, and Paris, as well as academic delegates from London, Lisbon and Geneva made presentations while NGO's and post graduate research students from Brighton and London participated. The workshop made clear the importance of policy interpretation together with political and individual motivation in facilitating the implementation of productive urban landscapes. It also began to challenge assumptions held within the AHRC network about which individuals and organisations would be most receptive to exploring pathways to policy in support of productive urban landscapes. 25 people attended this workshop. This included, 10 Network members and 5 European policy practitioners associated with network members projects. 47 practitioners, policy makers, social entrepreneurs, SMEs and Post Graduate Research Students from the UK, were invited to attend the workshop, and 10 attended the workshop. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/projects/utppp |
| Description | Network Workshop: Extending international reach. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Hosted by the University of Brighton this was the network's final official event and was additional to what had been in our proposal to the AHRC. It enabled the network to extend its reach to South America and India and highlight issues related to development strategies and water management. Architect Laura Bracalenti from the Centro de Estudios del Ambiente Humano, Rosario, Argentina explained how productive urban landscape initiatives interfaced with policy in the city of Rosario, a significant early adopter of policy supporting the introduction of productive landscapes. Dr Priyanie Amerasinghe (http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/about/staff-list/priyanie-amerasinghe/) from the International Water Management Institute described her work and efforts to advance an understanding of the relationships between urban water management and urban agriculture. Joy Carey represented the long established and highly effective international Resource on Urban Farming and Agriculture (RUAF) Foundation (http://www.ruaf.org/). The workshop identified a set of issues that often inhibit comprehensive and systematic thinking about productive urban landscapes. For example often planners don't look outside their sector (e.g. water), broad brush mappings of environmental services neglect the integrative role of urban agriculture and field work research may not correlate geographically with planning zones. Experience from Rosario demonstrated the beneficial outcomes from Municipal and University collaborations, in this case initiated by the 2002 economic crisis that led citizens to grow their own food. Since then benefits resulting from this, for example heat island mitigation, greenhouse gas emissions reduction and sustainable urban drainage, have been measured and resulted in policy to support the introduction of productive urban landscapes. The RUAF foundation has played active role in brokering and fostering these activities within Rosario and elsewhere. The meeting identified research opportunities under the Sustainable Urbanisation Global Initiative (SUGI)/Food-Water-Energy Nexus call and within the EU's Horizon 2020 calls. Nine people attended the workshop including, 3 Network members of the AHRC network, the director of the UK based International Garden Cities Institute (http://www.gardencitiesinstitute.com/) and a member of the Brighton and Sussex Universities Food Network (https://bsufn.com/). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/projects/utppp |