Urban-net is a network of research funding agencies that shall stimulate European research cooperation regarding sustainable urban development. 16 organisations in 13 countries and UN Habitat are members. The main task of Formas is to organise joint calls for applications such as the pilot call that ended in the middle of April.
Twenty-five applications have been received, 17 of them (68%) with a woman as project leader, which is a high proportion for Formas (the usual percentage is ca 40). 17 of the applications related to usual research projects and 8 to cooperation in pre-research activities, e.g. compilation of a more comprehensive research application or arrangement of a conference. A research application can be used in the major call for applications which will be advertised in September 2009. The pilot call is a rehearsal for this, also for the funding agencies and especially for Formas.
New research consortia
The pilot call is financed by Urban-net organisations in Bulgaria, Cyprus, France, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Turkey, apart from Formas in Sweden. Only researchers from these countries have been able to apply for funds. In the pre-research projects, researchers from countries that are not members of Urban-net also could participate, but the conditions for funding research projects are that researchers from at least three of the financing countries must take part. This has resulted in new and exciting research consortia, with researchers from Sweden and Turkey represented in the majority of research projects. The reason for this is that Sweden and Turkey are investing a larger proportion of money in the call. But researchers from the Netherlands are also very active although their funding agencies are giving much less money.
Exciting subjects in pilot call
The applications were evaluated during the summer by an international group of experts who were unanimous about seven applications of the highest quality, almost all of which will be able to receive funds. There are also a large number of good projects which will be financed as far as the available funds allow. The final selection of projects will be published in the middle of November.
The broad theme of the pilot call gave researchers great freedom to define their research problem. There is a large spread of subjects – comparative studies of migration, social and ethnic integration, renewal of run-down housing estates, planning for trade, the significance of the culture industry for urban development, utilisation of ecosystem services, network planning, gender perspectives on urban sustainability, land use policy, heat stress and changed tourist streams as a consequence of climate change, climate-neutral cities, etc. One overall comment from the panel of experts was that, in most projects, the spatial dimension was weak.
Focus, delineate and select
Some Urban-net countries wish more rigid frameworks and a focus on specific subjects, one of the reasons being that this would be in accord with a narrower focus on the part of their research funding agencies. This was one of the reasons that large countries such as the UK and Germany could not participate in the pilot call. A subject specific definition also makes it easier to evaluate applications received in response to a call.
Further project work in Urban-net related to a survey of national research programmes in Europe and finding common problems that are amenable to research. The work on focusing and delineating the problem area was carried on in slightly different ways in the member countries, ranging from interviews with individual experts to conferences.
The basis for this work is a thematic description drawn up within Urban-net which is chiefly based on EU documents. The Swedish contribution to the thematic discussion comes from four mini-seminars with researchers and planners in Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö, and with officials at the Swedish Board of Housing, Building and Planning. All represent slightly different approaches to the subject of sustainable urban development. They were unanimously critical of the problem description which they considered was too prescriptive and too much business as usual, but they were in relatively good agreement, and pleased, about the overall results.
Agreement on four themes
Four themes were voted to be the most important, in the order given, in the 13 Urban-net countries:s
1. Compact city or urban sprawl and changes in land use, with couplings to different kinds of transport, to proximity and access to various activities.
2. The trans-sectoral processes that form the city were judged to be almost as important. This is a matter of both studies of the processes as such and the importance of an approach that spans over planning and administration levels and sectors irrespective of research theme. The Swedish discussions mainly related to the interaction between the municipal and regional planning levels.
3. Health and quality of life in the urban environment, clean air, security, parks etc which are significant when the everyday life of people is the point at issue.
4. Climate change and risk management. Climate changes affect Europe in different ways and are expected to generate migration streams inside, but also to and from, Europe, which will have far-reaching social consequences. The theme of climate also embraces measures to limit emissions from vehicles and other energy use in the built environment which act as the drivers of climate changes.
What Urban-net will promote are interdisciplinary and trans-sectoral research approaches. Discussions so far confirm that it is difficult to define thematic limitations in this area of knowledge with widely ramified causal relationships. In June, Urban-net arranged an international workshop for further development and, if possible, definition of themes for research cooperation and, in particular, for the large call for applications next year.
Author
:
Ulla Westerberg
senior Research Officer at Formas, responsible for urban research and Urban-net
E-mail:
ulla.westerberg@formas.se