Juliana Gonçalves

Urban Nature: Neighbourhood as a Biotope

As the climate crisis deepens, the importance of biodiversity is increasingly being recognised. Large municipalities such as Rotterdam and The Hague have already implemented monitoring plans and measures to strengthen biodiversity. However, these measures often do not receive a lot of public attention as citizens perceive biodiversity as complex, boring, and distant from their daily lives, often with an equivocal understanding that improving biodiversity is the same as adding common greenery to cities (parks, grass). Because about 60% of the urban environment is privately owned in most Dutch cities, public efforts will only succeed if citizens are actively engaged in biodiversity interventions.

While there are various open questions around the topic of urban biodiversity, this project focuses on the intersection of biodiversity action and citizen engagement. We welcome students interested in taking a participatory research-by-design approach and/or action research approach to the question of how to engage citizens in biodiversity action. A socio-ecological approach to design and/or planning is also welcome.

This proposal benefits from and contributes to the larger “Neighbourhood as a Biotope” (NAB) program, a trans- and interdisciplinary program, including various universities (TU Delft, EUR, RUAS), disciplinary field (design, planning, ecology, biology, among others), citizen organisations, industry partners, and the municipalities of The Hague and Rotterdam.

Contact persons: Juliana Gonçalves J.E.Goncalves@tudelft.nl and Geertje Slingerland G.Slingerland@tudelft.nl.

UP2030 URBAN PLANNING AND DESIGN READY FOR 2030

UP2030 is a Horizon Europe project that aims to support cities in driving socio-technical transitions to climate neutrality by integrating technology, urban planning and design. Within the project, city stakeholders and local authorities are supported and guided by a consortium of universities, research institutes and technology SMEs to put carbon neutrality on the map of their communities in day-to-day actions and strategic decisions.  

TU Delft is a Work Package leader in charge of developing a tool for benchmarking Spatial Justice, in collaboration with municipalities, technology SMEs and universities. This work entails preparing a pilot strategy and urban design for a historic neighbourhood in the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, where the authorities wish to integrate one of the city’s favelas into the fabric of the neighbourhood in a just, sustainable, carbon neutral way.

Students involved in this project are expected to engage in research and design to supports the city of Rio and the technical stakeholders in their endeavour. As an alternative, students are free to choose from one of the project’s city partners pilot projects (Lisbon, Granollers, Milan, Belfast, Rotterdam, Budapest, Zagreb, Thessaloniki, Munster and Istanbul). Participation in the project guarantees access to city data and interaction with city officials and other partners in the consortium. Students are also welcome to contribute to the Centre for the Just City’s activities, including the organisation of the symposium “Benckmarking Spatial Justice” in Dec 2023.

Contact persons: Juliana Gonçalves J.E.Goncalves@tudelft.nl and Roberto Rocco R.C.Rocco@tudelft.nl.

The role of solidarity in collective action

When crises happen, solidarity among people, communities, and nations often emerges as a collective response, driving mutual aid and crisis relief initiatives. During COVID-19 pandemic, the elderly and the sick have been assisted by volunteers in safe walks, food was distributed to migrants, protective gear was crowdsourced for healthcare workers, among many other solidarity stories. However, despite the clear positive impact of these initiatives, solidarity seemed to have ended as soon as we got back to “normal”.

From a western perspective, the sociologist Emile Durkheim distinguished between two forms of solidarity: mechanical solidarity, based on what individual members of a community have in common, and organic solidarity, based on mutual differences, with individuals functioning much like the interdependent but differentiated organs of a living body. Interestingly noted by Veraart et al. (2021) in the editorial Solidarity and COVID-19, organic solidarity resonates with the South African philosophical concept of Ubuntu: “I am, because you are”. The word ubuntu is part of the Zulu phrase “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu”, which means a person is a person through other people.

Exploring the question of how to bring solidarity from response to action, this project studies the role of (organic) solidarity in collective action (e.g., in social movements, community organisations, urban commons). In non-western contexts, Ubuntu or other local ‘equivalent’ value replaces are also considered. The project aims to bring these insights into urban planning and design to foster solidarity in cities.

Contact person: Juliana Gonçalves J.E.Goncalves@tudelft.nl.

The power of the margins: Towards everyday utopianism

As news outlets report daily on spiralling socio-ecological crises and their disastrous consequences, it is difficult to believe that another world is possible. Urban inequalities continue to deepen worldwide, exacerbated by austerity measures and climate change impacts. In response, cities want to become smart, sustainable, circular, and/or resilient. However, several scholars have showed that these initiatives have often failed to deliver on their promises and, instead, have exacerbated inequalities and created new forms of dispossession (Shelton, 2015; Wiig, 2016; Thatcher, 2016; Savini, 2019; Amorim, 2021). The IPCC even coined the term ‘maladaptation’ to describe climate initiatives that, instead of creating adaptive capacities, have pushed people into further climate vulnerability.

Some scholars argue that the focus of cities on strategy and action comes at the expense of efforts in developing coherent long-term city visions. An imbalance between vision, strategy and action leads to a disconnection between short-term action and long-term planning. Obviously, the fact that political cycles are short-term and climate change challenges need long-term action exacerbates this disconnection. Not surprisingly, maladaptation is associated with short-term, fragmented, single-sectoral, and non-inclusive governance. Another major criticism about urban transition visions is the strong reliance on so-called experts: City visions are at best informed by the needs and aspirations of citizens and other “non-expert” urban actors. These highly exclusive processes often do not lead to disruptive alternatives, resulting in business-as-usual visions detached from citizens’ lived experiences.

Against this background, this project studies the role of ‘everyday utopianism’ in creating alternative transition visions by exploring the disruptive power of ‘everyday life’ as a “locus for the development of non-alienated or emancipatory tendencies” (Gardiner, 2006).

Contact person: Juliana Gonçalves J.E.Goncalves@tudelft.nl.