SearchMobility is a key issue in the planning of sustainable cities. High car density poses many challenges for urban communities, where car traffic causes air and noise pollution, as well as obstacles and dangers for pedestrians. The Kanoo…
A life on the margins? Living and making a living in an African slum
The slum remains politicised and socially marginalised despite being weaved into the spatial and economic fabric of the city. Cecilia Fåhraeus, PhD and lecturer at the Department of Human Geography at Uppsala University, discusses the geographies of slum…
Spatial injustice, urban segregation, and violence in a Central American capital
Urban development in Guatemala City, like many other cities in Latin America, takes place along lines of social segregation and spatial fragmentation. Florencia Quesada, Lecturer in Latin America Studies at the Department of Cultures, Faculty of Arts, University…
The Gateshead Poverty Truth Commission: Sharing the lived experience of poverty
How can the lived experience of poverty help inform our understanding of the challenges people face in low-income urban areas? Lucy Zwolinska, Coordinator and Facilitator of the Gateshead Poverty Truth Commission, discusses how their organisation is establishing supportive…
Jagvillhabostad.nu: Safe housing for the youth of today
With increasing rents and property prices, unreliable contracts and poor hosing stocks, how can the youth of today live safely in our cities? Johanna Clarin, Vice President of the non-profit organisation Jagvillhabostad.nu, shares perspectives on the housing crisis…
The new urban gardening commons: creating spaces of care and connection
Are urban gardens more than growing vegetables? Nathalie Bergame, PhD candidate at Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, discusses how urban gardening as part of the practice of urban commoning is transforming public space, with both spatial…
Ultuna Permakultur: challenging the status quo of urban development
The status quo of urban development fails to fully consider the interaction between our social, economic and ecological systems. Max Whitman, Co-founder and Chairman of Ultuna Permakultur, explains how the current concept of a city and its values…
Smart Housing: the future we (never) intended?
The smart city is often framed as a new urban ideal in how we envision the urban future. In their contribution to Urban Voices, Fredrik Torisson, Researcher at the Institute for Urban Research at Malmö University and Carina…
“A landscape for presence” – self-organised communities in the COVID era
With debates continuing on how to end homelessness, its connection with rent unaffordability and gentrification in L.A. is becoming clearer. Co-founder of the design studio Claret-cup, Donatella Cusma, shares insights from Echo Park Lake and emphasises why homeless…
Hybrids and Precedents: H2 and the Transformation of New Realities at Hyllie
Combing social, living and working activities within an architectural form is the basis for the hybrid concept, but how well suited is it to our 21st-century cities? Architect and researcher, Per-Johan Dahl, shares his experiences from the H2…
Restorative workplace: a place for refuge, a place for work – some insights from the year 2020
The pandemic has drastically changed our working behaviours and environments. Erik Skärbäck, professor at SLU, and university lecturer, Anna Bengtsson, share their insights from their project ‘Restorative workplace’, which designs research-based tools for planning and designing workspaces that…
We need to talk about more than CO2 parts per million: Changing the conversation from recovery to re-imagination
Decarbonisation cannot be reduced to wind turbines and solar panels, as emissions are deeply embedded within the social rhythms of daily life. Bregje van Veelen, researcher at Uppsala University, explains why ’visions’ for sustainability are critical for exploring…
Participation post Covid-19: lessons from planners’ stories
How do planners develop innovative practices of participation and what does this mean for the relationship between planners and citizens? Martin Westin, researcher for the Division of Environmental Communication, SLU, reflects upon the experiences of planners working on…
Housing for a socio-ecological transformation
In his contribution to Urban Readings, Riccardo Mastini, PhD candidate at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and policy advisor for the international campaign for the Green New Deal for Europe, discusses how issues around access to affordable healthcare…
Whose Urban identity will we build back from Covid-19?
Andrew Butler, University Lecturer at the Department of Urban and Rural Development, SLU, discusses how the pandemic has disrupted daily lives and has revealed stark inequalities and vulnerabilities. This ultimately challenges the associations between landscape and identity, and…
The Return of the Real
The urban is transformed by the lens we, as spectators, view it through. Maria Hellström Reimer, professor in design theory and practice and docent in landscape architecture, reflects upon the way representations of the urban are selected to…
Socially distanced and intricately connected: The importance of rural places for urban renewal
An urban transition towards sustainability requires mobilizing the rural as well as the urban through a common agenda. Researcher at Uppsala University, Wiebren J. Boonstra, reflects upon the connections between rural areas and cities through primary production. The…
The Limits of Common Kindness
How we interact in public places changed dramatically due to the Covid-19 outbreak. In an attempt to govern this interaction, the government of Aotearoa New Zealand set the citizens a moral standard: they were to ‘be kind’. In…
Outbreak, Rebound & Prevention – post corona reflections
Making the system less fragile to the effects of this perfect storm will go hand-in-hand with making it less environmentally destructive”. Landscape architect and former first State Landscape Architect of the Netherlands (2004-2008) Dirk Sijmons takes a stand…
We Need to Talk About Trauma
Chiara Camponeschi is the Director of Enabling City, an international organization devoted to stimulating civic imaginaries for social change. She works with institutional and grassroots actors on anything from growing solidarity economies to supporting open governance initiatives. Read…
The Post-Covid City
When lockdown ends, will we return to the status quo ante? More likely, our uses of space will change. Here and there, steps have already been taken: a good opportunity to reflect on the city in this new…
Messy informality and the evolution of the urban village in China in times of pandemic
Focusing on the urban village, Guanchao Liu and Gini Lee from the University of Melbourne, seek to look at public space through the lens of one of the critical aspects of pandemic management - food security. By following…
Beyond humans: responses of urban wildlife to the COVID-19 pandemic
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, news websites and social media have been filled with stories about wildlife comebacks in urban areas due to the lockdowns in many parts of the world. In this chronicle, urban wildlife…
The View from the Envelope: the experience of being locked down without landscape
In this text Dr Julian Raxworthy, Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, reflects on the subjective experience of the lockdown from his tower in a city on the Arabian peninsula, and on how that experience re-casts…
Social movements in times of isolation
Antonia Besa is an architect and landscape architect who has practised in projects throughout Chile and Australia. Her research focuses on arid water systems and ecological infrastructures, with a strong interest in driving activist initiatives. Read her reflections…
COVID-19 and the Need for Equitable Urban Advocacy
Daniel Rotsztain is the Urban Geographer, an artist, writer and cartographer living in Toronto, Canada, whose work examines our relationship to the places we inhabit. Daniel's projects seek to understand and support the diverse settings of the city’s…
Co-creation!
Do you miss something here? Would you like to contribute? Please let us know: urbanfutures@slu.se