Urban-Rural Assembly: Co-Visioning Interconnected Regions – Day 1

Even in our so-called “Urban Age”, almost half of the world’s population continues to reside in areas defined as rural. These largely productive landscapes span vast portions of the earth’s land mass. However, in urban research and practice, the “countryside” has not yet received the attention it deserves as a provider of food, water, energy, biodiversity, and other resources for the benefit of urban dwellers and the planet as a whole. To address climate change and better safeguard our critical resources, it is essential to approach urban development more holistically, tackling the interrelationships and metabolisms between urban and rural areas. Such an integrative view calls for circular economies, equitable distribution of resources, practices of solidarity, and care for more-than-human species at the urbanrural interface. Moreover, we must develop a territorial approach to spatial planning and design involving multiple and diverse actors through “co-visioning” processes.

The Urban-Rural Assembly project has addressed these critical issues and needs since 2019. A multi-disciplinary, Sino-German research team has studied rapid sociospatial transformation processes in urbanrural living labs in Zhejiang Province, China, developing strategies and tools for future change.

This closing conference of the Urban-Rural Assembly project will explore new approaches and methodologies for understanding and managing the complex interdependencies and linkages between urban and rural areas. It will present some of the project’s main findings and feature contributions from international experts on territorial planning approaches, best practices from various regions, and policy approaches for just and sustainable urbanrural development.

PROGRAMME

Tuesday, 1 October 2024

18:00 – 18:20 Welcome

• Zhiqiang Wu, Tongji University Shanghai (tbc)
• Anke Hagemann, TU Berlin
• Remy Sietchiping, UN-Habitat, Nairobi
• Dunya Bouchi, Aedes, Berlin

18:20 – 19:30 Keynotes

• Paola Viganò, EPFL Lausanne
• Nikos Katsikis, TU Delft
• Jian Liu, Tsinghua University Beijing

19:30 – 19:50 Presentation of the Urban-Rural Assembly project

19:50 – 20:00 Break

20:00 – 20:45 Panel discussion: Urbanism Beyond Cities

Moderation: Cordelia Polinna, Forward Planung und Forschung, Berlin

Discussants:

• Paola Vigano, EPFL Lausanne
• Nikos Katsikis, TU Delft
• Jian Liu, Tsinghua University Beijing
• Anke Hagemann, TU Berlin
• tba