DFG-KOPRO Int. - Approaches to co-produced urban development and their influence on the development of urban spaces

Research Project

[Translate to EN:] Rahmen und Methoden

Over the last decades, cooperative practices have become significant drivers of urban development. Moreover, co-production is considered to play a key role in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the New Urban Agenda (NUA) emphasizes its potential to contribute to the overall improvement of the living environment. As part of the Habitat III conference, the NUA in Quito was supplemented as follows:

Sustainable and inclusive urban development can only be achieved by applying a holistic understanding of planning. Special attention should be paid to site-specific characteristics, in particular the existing constellations of actors.
Traditionally hierarchical knowledge production should be supplemented by integrative and inclusive knowledge creation.

The points outlined are to be implemented in the context of cooperative practices.

1st project phase: 2019-2021

The research project focuses on the governance, interactions and benefits of different forms of co-production and socio-spatial processes. The aim is to find out:

Which concrete new instruments of participation/cooperation are currently being tested in projects and which actor constellations are being developed for this purpose.
Relevant policy approaches and strategies for achieving the SDGs and implementing the New Urban Agenda that rely on practices and concepts of cooperative urban development will be discussed.
The presentation of innovative, integrative projects based on a holistic urban development approach is intended to contribute to an improved understanding of existing space-specific conditions, material spatial characteristics and urban typologies.

The inclusion of different spatial contexts in the research will enable a differentiated picture of knowledge and practices and justifies the specific selection of countries between Europe and Latin America and, in particular, between Germany and Chile. As different as the local modes of action may be, it can be concluded from the first project phase that the entry of private investors as central actors in urban development and the simultaneous withdrawal of the state have led to a more complex networking of the actors involved. The result is a more conflictual urban development in which strategies are needed to ensure the influence of social interests on the production of space.

2nd project phase: 2022 - 2024

In the second phase of the research project, the question of the sustainability of co-produced urban development projects will now be increasingly addressed. The aim is to find out how institutional framework conditions can be included so that projects can overcome the pilot stage and become a public strategy. On the one hand, there is a particular interest in scaling-up approaches and their transformative potential. There is also the question of which stakeholder networks can be used to promote the implementation of the New Urban Agenda. (real laboratories, etc.)