24 Sep 2020 - 25 Sep 2020
00:00 - 15:01

Sustainable Urbanism Across Borders, Eurodistrict International Conference

In our increasingly contested global world, cities are becoming crucial political agents in addressing climate change and planetary survival. Yet cities are rife with borders between citizens and non-citizens, rich and poor, and between political administrations, languages, and cultures. This conference, organized by Eurodistrict Basel in collaboration with Urban Studies at the University of Basel, explores how the tri-national region of Basel and the Upper Rhine can be positively leveraged to create sustainable cities across multiple borders.

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Through a series of expert conversations and participatory workshops, the conference engages with current research, exemplary projects, and conceptual visions to explore new pathways for promoting a more sustainable Basel metropolitan region across national borders. Drawing from multiple disciplines and approaches, the conference explores how the region’s specific cross-border, intercultural, and trans-political geographies can help us to rethink practices and visions of sustainable urban development. The conference is accompanied by a poster exhibition of current projects in and for the Basel region.

The conference brings together international experts, local political agents, planners and designers, cross-border groups, civil society organizations, and an engaged public from the region to discuss future challenges and opportunities. It explores environmental and social notions of sustainability that serve the region’s communities across borders, hoping to establish new channels of exchange between decision-makers, inhabitants, and other actors. We invite participants who are are interested in learning how trans-border urban regions can develop strategies for sharing resources, services, modes of governance, and concepts of planning, and how these may be applied and transformed in the Basel metropolitan region.

PROGRAM:

Thursday 24 September

Keynote: Caroline Creamer

Friday 25 September

Whose Borders? Accounting for the Different Experiences of Climate Change How can urban regions, shaped by a multiplicity of borders and forms of disparity, tackle climate change and planetary survival?

(with Caroline Creamer, Bernhard Reitel, and Urban Studies) Whose Resources? Developing Commons, Building Collectives How can transborder urban regions manage resources that serve communities across borders and develop new practices of commoning and of sharing resources?

(with Barbara Koch, Samuel Mössner, Urban Studies, and Lukas Ott)

Whose Urbanism? Rethinking Design and Governance How can transborder urban regions develop new strategies for urban change that include bottom-up processes of decision-making and design?

(with Lina Liakou, Sascha Roesler and Urban Studies)


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