EcoDA · Experimental co-Design Approaches: Investigating possibilities for creating networks of resilient citizens and civic actions of urban resilience through hybrid platforms
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2015-10-01 → 2017-09-30
- EU contribution
- €195,455
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
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Results in brief
Experimental co-Design Approaches: Investigating possibilities for creating networks of resilient citizens and civic actions of urban resilience through hybrid platforms
The unprecedented environmental, social and economic challenges of the 21st century ask for searching new ways of enhancing the resilience of cities and urban communities. The discourse of ‘resilience’ has (re)gained prominence among the academic community, policy-makers and grassroots activist groups alike. In parallel with the proliferation of resilience work within academia and the policy arena, numerous community-driven initiatives have emerged throughout Europe and beyond. Typically, such initiatives are aimed at enhancing community resilience and experiment with alternative ways of addressing the challenges through processes of ‘commoning’ (Linebaugh,2008). Yet, while the number of such practices has increased in the recent years, only few of them seem to have the means to become sustainable in the long term and up-scale (Petrescu et all,2016). EcoDA addresses this need, investigating ways of scaling community resilience practices and opportunities for using digital technologies to assist this. The project had three main objectives: 1.To examine the social, cultural, political and technological contexts for urban resilience, and specifically map existing community resilience practices in three European cities, focussing on the neighbourhood scale. 2.To co-design, prototype and test digital tools that could support and potentially amplify community resilience practices. 3.To evaluate the capacity of these tools to generate an open resilience platform that could foster and sustain connectivity and knowledge sharing across scales and locations.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
EcoDA investigates methods for co-designing platforms that can stimulate collective civic actions of urban resilience and enhance the capacities of urban residents to become resilient. The project focuses on food practices as case studies of resilient actions and tests a hybrid platform in three European cities – London, Paris and Bucharest. The research has three main objectives: 1) to examine the social, cultural, political and technological contexts for urban resilience, and map existing civic initiatives around resilient food practices in the three selected cities; 2) to co-design, prototype, test and refine open source digital platforms that could enable such civic initiatives to take place and/or expand, and enhance resilience capacities for citizens; and 3) to evaluate the capacity of these co-designed platforms to generate forms of public participation and urban governance that can stimulate actions of urban resilience. To address these objectives, the research will be carried out through design practice, through secondments within three professional practices working in the area of urban resilience, in the three elected cities. The methodology includes traditional qualitative methods (e.g., interviews), participatory action research, co-design experiments and collaborative workshops. The innovative and original aspects of EcoDA offer significant value in the context of the Horizon 2020 EU Programme, by addressing areas of special focus (e.g., sustainable food security and waste management) and key objectives (e.g. boosting industry engagement and supporting innovation). Moreover, the practice-based research approach, the open-source nature of the platform and the provision of the ‘metadata’ needed to enable the platform, will facilitate the up-scaling and up-taking of EcoDA’s outcomes in various cities across Europe and possibly further away, thus enabling collaborations beyond the term of the project.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD · SHEFFIELDCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union