Science Meets Policy: New approaches for multisectoral collaborations to build urban-rural resilience for sustainable futures

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) funding priority SURE» Sustainable Development of Urban Regions« promotes applied research. Ten collaborative projects within the SURE framework develop concepts and test locally implementable solutions and strategies for sustainable transformation of fast-growing urban regions in Southeast Asia and China. The SURE Facilitation and Synthesis Research project supports the funding priority, facilitates exchange and learning between the projects and beyond, and carries out accompanying research.

The networking event is organised by the SURE Facilitation and Synthesis Research Project together with SURE collaborative projects and German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ). Five SURE projects are included: URA (TU Berlin), Build4People (Uni Hamburg), PolyUrbanWaters(BORDA e.V.), IMECOGIP(Ruhr University Bochum) and GreenCityLabHué(UfU e.V), covering geographical regions such as Cambodia, China, Laos, Indonesia, Vietnam and Palestine.

The development of urban areas in emerging and developing countries has faced challenges due to growing dynamism, complexity, and pressure to act. Areas such as decreasing living and environmental conditions, low resilience, or poor controllability by decision-makers and institutions have re-iterated themselves as problematic. These circumstances put civil and public actors in the necessity of offering intelligent, feasible strategies to improve local conditions, open economic perspectives, and fitting cities and regions with sustainable processes and systems. Following the call for new collaborative approaches that put people first in urban-rural developments aligned with the SDGs localisation and the New Urban Agenda, this session takes stock of recent attempts to bring new approaches into being and

offers participants the opportunity to build lasting relationships and connections around their ongoing initiatives. Discussions will consider the manifold interrelations between scientific and policy orientations around urban and rural space in particular, e.g., facilitation of collaborative and transdisciplinary planning approaches within living labs, the role of trans-local actor-networks, tools for integrated urban planning to put research into practice. The networking event provides a unique selling point by presenting each inter-and transdisciplinary project through the lenses of project partners from academia, public administration, and international organisations. Within the hybrid, WorldCafé formate projects partners connect worldwide and provide local insights via an open debate on innovative practices and tools for multisectoral collaboration to build transformative urban-rural adaptation and resilience for sustainable futures. The public and projects have a sole opportunity to exchange on emerging topics, strengthen partnerships and establish new ones. The event aims to create networking and content synergies between the projects and beyond.

Link: https://www.sustainable-urban-regions.org/

• Ms. Katharina Borgmann; Dr; HafenCity University, Digital City Science, SURE Facilitation and Synthesis Research Project; Germany
• Ms Agota Barabas; Researcher; HafenCity University, Digital City Science, SURE Facilitation and Synthesis Research Project; Germany
• Mr Kai Michael Dietrich; Researcher; Technical University Lübeck, SURE Facilitation and Synthesis Research Project; Germany
• Ms Anika Slawski; Researcher; Technical University Lübeck, SURE Facilitation and Synthesis Research Project; Germany