INSIEME:FARE – Reggio Emilia, 21-24 March. !Save The Date!

INSIEME:FARE – Reggio Emilia, 21-24 March. !Save The Date!

Four days of meetings, presentations, and explorations to discover together participation in Reggio Emilia and to engage with experts on the themes of collaboration and research for urban social innovation.
This will be facilitated through the Neighborhood Common Good project and participatory initiatives promoted by the Municipality of Reggio Emilia.

In particular, on Friday, March 22nd, at the Open Laboratory in the Cloisters of San Pietro, you can join to understand how scientific research can become a tool for innovation in service of the city.

We will discuss this with the City Science Office research team coordinated by Francesco Berni:

– Lanfranco de Franco, Councillor for Housing and Participation of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia;
– Giovanna Galli – Director of the Department of Communication and Economics at Unimore;
– Christian Iaione – Luiss Guido Carli.

🔎The full program of the event is available here: https://eventi.comune.re.it/eventi/evento/insiemefare-quattro-giorni-di-incontri-presentazioni-esplorazioni-per-scoprire-insieme-la-partecipazione-a-reggio-emilia/

 

Webinar on “Community Land Trusts: Affordable Housing Strategies for Economic and Racial Justice” – March 12, 2024

Webinar on “Community Land Trusts: Affordable Housing Strategies for Economic and Racial Justice” – March 12, 2024

The March 12 webinar, titled “Community Land Trusts: Affordable Housing Strategies for Racial and Economic Justice,” offered an exceptional platform to highlight how shared equity models can foster upward socio-economic mobility. While the concepts of Trusts, Land Trusts, and Community Land Trusts are not novel, CLTs have surged in popularity over the past decade, offering a means for community members to collectively assert agency over their housing and broader living environments.Viewing CLTs through the lens of Co-City methodology underscores the empowerment they offer communities in enhancing neighborhood affordability and sustainability. Moreover, localized and participatory decision-making fosters greater self-determination over land use at the local level. As CLTs nationwide diversify their portfolios, the Plank Road CLBT stands poised as a trailblazer in this movement, boasting properties for residential (both ownership and rental), commercial, recreational, and environmental purposes.The speakers—Kristin Ring-Reis, Adam Maloon, and Reed Asselbaye as moderator—offered fresh and compelling insights into this topic, drawing from legal, urban planning, and management perspectives. Their contributions, alongside those of others in the field, represent remarkable efforts globally and extend a warm welcome to all seeking deeper understanding. I extend my gratitude to Professor Sheila Foster, Reed Asselbaye, and the CLT community for providing this invaluable opportunity for education and engagement.

 

Research Seminar – March 4th, 2024

Research Seminar – March 4th, 2024

Here with a new research seminars of the LabGov team, led by Professor Christian Iaione, to present and discuss the current ongoing projects.

This Monday was dedicated to the discussion of the paper in development on a mission-driven technology transfer process for sustainable development, authored by Paola Belingheri, Christian Iaione, and Marijana Krstic.

The document highlights the importance of sharing and integrating knowledge among various institutions, especially of Higher education, including universities, research centers, NGOs, governments, and private industries. It particularly focuses on the crucial role of Social Science Universities, recognizing technology transfer as a significant opportunity to contribute to sustainable development.

Lessons in experimentalism and collaboration from rural communities: building sustainable urban-rural social-ecological systems

Lessons in experimentalism and collaboration from rural communities: building sustainable urban-rural social-ecological systems

By Dr Winnie Law and Dr Jessica M. Williams

 

Rural decline is a pressing matter for rural communities and for the continued strength and vibrancy of urban areas.  Building sustainable and resilient urban-rural systems requires increasing collaborative approaches between communities and finding innovative solutions to maintain functional and mutually-beneficial connectivity.  The APAC Initiative for Regional Impact (AIRI), initiated by the Centre for Civil Society and Governance at The University of Hong Kong, the HKU Hong Kong Lab, has adopted the “network of networks” collaborative approach and established a regional consortium of university intermediaries to create ties and facilitate revitalisation actions within and between communities at the local through to regional levels.

As part of this initiative, the university intermediaries and change fellows, recruited from civil society, conducted a knowledge exchange tour in January 2024.   They witnessed inspirational examples in Bangkok of rural communities coming together to co-create and innovate to restore, revitalise and safeguard their communities and values.  The Organic Farming Group, in Nong Bua Sub-district, established community rules between farming groups to enable standard- and protocol-setting for participatory and green production.  This facilitates the group in experimenting to create their own markets and products and build long-term relationships with their broader community.  The Thaiberng Folk Museum demonstrates a socio-economic revival model of traditional cultural practices, providing an alternative source of revenue and social support for the community, whose land was repossessed due to a nearby dam, and a retreat for urban dwellers.  In another example, the Hua Takhe community, using a local school as the hub, has organised to proactively revive their town, which was destroyed in a fire, in an environmentally conscious manner while re-instating itself as a culturally attractive and sustainable alternative to over-crowded and resource-intensive floating markets for the wider community.  These examples helped inspire the AIRI fellows and the university intermediaries, providing lessons into how communities can converge, overcome adversity and innovate, creating more sustainable and resilient rural societies, while also contributing to broader rural/urban systems.

 

Demonstration of traditional weaving practices at Thaiberng Folk Museum.

 

The HKU team and change fellows from civil society in Hong Kong, part of the HKU Hong Kong Lab, undertook a knowledge exchange trip to Bangkok to learn how communities can collaborate to co-create and innovative solutions to rural decline and so support resilient rural/urban systems.

Webinar on “Community Land Trusts: Affordable Housing Strategies for Economic and Racial Justice” – March 12, 2024 – Save the Date

Webinar on “Community Land Trusts: Affordable Housing Strategies for Economic and Racial Justice” – March 12, 2024 – Save the Date

 

Manohar Patole, Co-City fellow and project manager at Co-City Baton Rouge, will be the guest speaker for the webinar titled “Community Land Trusts: Affordable Housing Strategies for Economic and Racial Justice,” scheduled for March 12. He will present the ongoing work and projects in progress in Baton Rouge.

At a moment during which no state has an adequate supply of extremely low-income rental housing, innovative solutions in shared equity housing are helping to cultivate meaningful, lasting social change. As active practitioners in the world of Community Land Trusts, our three guest speakers’ unique experiences—derived from legal, administrative, and urban planning perspectives—are invaluable in guiding the work of housing attorneys, planners, and lay advocates alike. This webinar will cover tangible strategies for shared equity housing implementation, tools for effective participatory governance frameworks, and potential institutional or systemic barriers.

Stay tuned…

 

“Pursuing Environmental and Climate Justice” – Sheila Foster at The Norman Foster Institute – Madrid, February 2024

“Pursuing Environmental and Climate Justice” – Sheila Foster at The Norman Foster Institute – Madrid, February 2024

Pursuing Environmental and Climate Justice

This week at the Norman Foster Institute, in Madrid, Sheila Foster, Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Urban Law and Policy and Professor of Public Policy, Georgetown University, Washignton D.C., U.S., gave a seminar in which she explored the topic of environmental and climate justice, focusing on how climate change and pollution affect different communities.

In 2023, unprecedented levels of extreme heat, flooding and severe air pollution brought the world to a clearer understanding of the degree to which climate disruption threatens public health, safety, social cohesion and natural systems today, not at some time in the future. Such threats are especially problematic in vulnerable and marginalized communities, most of whom live in cities.  There are persistent inequities in the effects of extreme heat, precipitation, drought, wildfire, housing-loss, sea level rise, and displacement.  These inequities are often the result of the lasting effects of historical and systemic injustices and lack of access to adequate housing, infrastructure, and adaptation resources. Many of these communities are often dealing with long-standing environmental injustices tied to the disproportionate presence of pollution and toxins in their soil, water, and homes. Climate change heightens such risks and exposures, essentially becoming a “threat multiplier.”

In this lecture, Foster explained some of the historical, social, and economic processes that contribute to uneven environmental and climate vulnerability and shape adaptive capacity for many communities. She explored the domains in which progress is being made to achieve environmental and climate justice.  Much of this progress is occurring at the local government level, as cities are on the front line of many climate impacts. Cities are forced to adapt their infrastructure and populations to stave off the worst consequences of climate change. In doing so, cities increasingly incorporate “justice” into their climate action and adaptation plans. Cities do so by utilizing social science and data, including use of social vulnerability indexes and equity screening tools, as well as leverage relationships and partnerships with the civic, private, and knowledge sectors.

 

Discover more about the Norman Foster Institute visiting www.normanfosterinstitute.org