The week-long World Urban Forum (WUF) is organized semiannually by the UN Habitat programme. This year's conference was the fourth, and was co-organized by the UN and Chinese authorities. Approximately 20,000 delegates attended the conference, in Nanjing ,China. The theme this year was sustainable urban development. Several network meetings on related themes were also held. “WUF is an important international meeting place for anyone involved with urban development. Researchers, practitioners, non-profit organizations, development assistance organizations and research funding organizations participate," says Mats Jarnhammar, a consultant at Node — an urban development advisory. Consortia
Together with Henrik Nolmark at Node, Jarnhammar was responsible for Mistra´s activities at the conference. The evening before the conference began, Mistra organized a seminar at which the tender for a new Urban Futures research center was presented. Of the seven proposals submitted for the current tender for the center, three have been selected and awarded planning grants for work developing full proposals. The three applicant groups — consortia from Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö/Lund — presented their proposals to an international audience at the seminar.
International gathering
Mistra hopes that the tender will lead to the establishment of a Swedish-based international center on urban development (Center for Urban Futures) with nodes around the world. “Participating in a conference of WUF´s magnitude is important for Mistra, especially for making contact with researchers, end users and other research funding organizations. The idea is that this won´t be a traditional research center, but rather that it should engage all actors involved in urban development, with research as a foundation," says Jarnhammar.
Close to 80 participants from a large number of countries attended the presentation. Mats Jarnhammar believes that the high level of participation reflected the relevance of the topic and the need for an international gathering around the questions raised. “There is no leading actor internationally in the area of sustainable urban development today, which is why an initiative like this receives so much attention."
Local solutions
Mistra also organized a network meeting — Learning Cities — in collaboration with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and the International Development Research Center (IDRC), a Canadian research funding organization. “We concentrated on how one can work to achieve more knowledge-based urban development, i.e. how research can become a better resource in that development and, at the same time, how those who work practically with urban development can influence research so that it leads to useful results," says Mats Jarnhammar.
Kampala
One important component in the discussion was how one works with local solutions, and how local platforms can be used to encourage developing countries to participate in and contribute to development. Therefore, a couple of examples of such solutions were discussed at the Learning Cities meeting. One was taken from Kampala in Uganda, where researchers have been working with so-called action research, i.e. research that is carried out in dialogue with end users. The researchers begin by first defining how problems look in cities and then how they can be solved. In Kampala difficulties related to access to, and affordability of, groceries led to urban-based agriculture. Residents use back gardens and rooftops for growing food, so that they become partially self sufficient with respect to some crops.
“With Learning Cities we wanted to illustrate different approaches to working with local platforms that are research based. This is not only about implementing measures, but also about finding solutions that are adapted to local conditions, needs and resources," says Mats Jarnhammar.
Introductory guidance
In conjunction with the World Urban Forum, Mistra has tested a new way of working with applicant groups, through so-called guidance meetings with one of Mistra´s international groups of experts that evaluates proposals. Of a total of seven applications for Mistra´s current tender Urban Futures, three have been selected and awarded planning grants to develop full proposals. The experts will meet with the applicant groups a number of times while the proposals are under development. During these meetings the applicant groups will have the opportunity to clarify and improve their proposals through an open dialogue. “The purpose of the guidance meetings is to help the applicant groups to fully understand the purpose and ambitions of our efforts, so that they can deliver good programme proposals. We know from experience that starting a Mistra-financed research programme is not a simple task. That´s why we believe that it is useful for the applicant groups to have a close dialogue with the evaluation experts and access to an international network comprised of both researchers and end users, who can provide responses to the different proposals at a relatively early stage," says Ola Engelmark, Mistra´s Executive Director.
