Three new SBE projects on Sustainable Urban Transformations
Maastricht Sustainability Institute (MSI) of Maastricht University School of Business and Economics (SBE) has successfully applied for funding in the ‘Driving Urban Transitions’ program of NWO/ JPI Urban Europe. Three new transdisciplinary projects with international partners have recently started, with one new postdoctoral researcher each.
The three projects strengthen MSI’s research theme, ‘Sustainable Cities’, one of its five key strategic themes. The others are Sustainable economic systems and businesses, Climate neutrality and sustainable energy, Transdisciplinary approaches, and Sustainable Food.
The Driving Urban Transitions (DUT) Partnership is an intergovernmental research and innovation programme addressing key challenges of urban transitions. They develop the skills and tools to make urban change happen and boost the urgently needed urban transformations towards a sustainable future with an enhanced quality of life for citizens.
Urban Food - SURFIT
The first is an Urban Food project (SURFIT): Scaling Urban Regenerative Food Systems In Transition. This project will bring together sustainable food networks (SFNs), local policymakers and a multidisciplinary set of researchers from four mid-size cities (Krakow, Trento, Maastricht and Malmö) to jointly conduct transdisciplinary research in Urban Food Labs with an urban living lab approach.
This research aims to explore, understand, and engage in how catalysers can be designed to scale SFNs for systemic transitions. The project will deliver design principles and reflexive guidance in embedding catalysers to advance and scale SFNs. Maastricht University is the lead partner of this project. Dr Dagmar Diesner is a new post-doc for this project, supervised by Dr. Christian Scholl.
Circular Housing - CDCUL
The second project is on Circular Housing: Consumer Demand for Circular Urban Living (CDCUL). This project aims to understand whether and the extent to which individuals in different European contexts are willing to pay for circular housing in cities. Using in-depth focus groups and survey-based choice experiments, the project investigates whether the inclusion of shared services—like co-working areas and shared toolkits - can make urban homes more appealing to citizens in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Slovenia.
In collaboration with housing developers, architects and public authorities, the project aims to provide insights to integrate sharing opportunities into future residential building projects. The project is led by the Swedish research institute RISE. Dr. Andrea Armstrong is a new post-doc for this project, supervised by Prof. Nancy Bocken and Dr. Joana Wensing.
Urban Mobility - SPECIFIC
The third project is on Urban Mobility: (SPECIFIC) Specifying Practices Enabled by Cycling In Fifteen-minute Cities. This project combines transdisciplinary action research and social practice theory to co-create a tool to facilitate the successful implementation of the 15-minute city concept in lower-density contexts, so at the urban outskirts. Strategic learning about upscaling and accelerating transformations towards just, cycling-based urban development will be facilitated through transition experiments focused on cycling in five cities – Bellinzona, Bristol, Graz, Maastricht, and Poznan. Oxford University coordinates the project. Dr. Nikolaj Kristensen is a new post-doc for this project, supervised by Dr. Marc Dijk.
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