Actionable Science for Urban Sustainability
(AScUS 2024)
March 2024, Troyes
The Actionable Science for Urban Sustainability (AScUS) unconferences aim at producing inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge to tackle urban sustainability challenges across the globe. They are conceived as a convergence platform for researchers and practitioners of all backgrounds. From political science and psychology to architecture and engineering, from basic research to policymakers, NGOs and entrepreneurs, we help spark conversations and impulse actionable and scalable solutions.
Unlike conventional conferences, AScUS are participants-driven unconferences. Our mission is to engage participants with stimulating in-depth discussions and participatory sessions. The unconference is organized around a broad selection of discussion topics, all submitted by the participants themselves. The format of these sessions is not pre-determined and can be defined freely by the session organizer(s).
AScUS will take in Troyes (France) from the 13th to 15th of March 2024 and will feature a hybrid format. Registered participants can submit a contribution (e.g., recorded presentation, video, poster, installation…) before the unconference. All contributions will be uploaded by individual participants beforehand and will serve as a basis for discussion and knowledge exchange during the virtual pre-unconference activities. Yes, there will be exciting pre-conference activities!
During the event you will encounter the genius mindsets of participants, through a poster exhibition, thought-provoking keynotes, and insightful sessions. Make sure you bring your best smile to share.
As the objective of the unconference is to produce actionable science, participants will engage in a collective endeavor to generate a path-to-action document. Such documents shall be finalized and shared with the AScUS community within the following 60 days.
General Unconference Topics
The unconference is not limited to any one discipline or any particular topic, but we are listing areas of potential interest:
- Policy and Governance towards Urban Sustainability
- Human Behavior and Psychology related to Urban Sustainability
- Circular Economy at the Urban Scale
- Sustainability and Resilience Metrics
- United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
- Infrastructure Modeling and Design
- Urban Ecology
- Climate Adaptation and Resilience
- Decarbonization
- Water Sustainability for Cities
- Human health and the condition of urban and natural ecosystems.
- Social and Environmental Justice
- Rebound Effects
- Life Cycle Design in the Built Environment
- Sustainable Cities: Open Source Data, Big Data, and Data Mining
- Data-Driven Urban Design
- Urban and Hinterland Relationships
- Education and Outreach in Urban Sustainability Science
- Interdisciplinary Partnerships towards Urban Sustainability
- The future of urban mobility and transportation
- World in turmoil and countries in crisis.
Interested participants are invited to submit:
- Abstracts (300 words). Abstracts can have any format (e.g., text, audio, video,.. ). Abstracts can be sent to contact@ascus-society.org or be uploaded via the conference website.
- Discussion topic proposals (200–500 words). Everyone interested in organizing a discussion session is invited to submit a discussion topic proposal. Proposals should include a brief synopsis of the discussion topic, a list of activities that are planned, and a general idea of the type of path-to-action contribution that is expected (e.g., white paper, podcast, website, performance). Committed to co-construction, we encourage participants to actively suggest discussion topics.
Please submit your abstract to: contact@ascus-society.org
Registration and timeline
Important Dates
XXX: Unconference website opens for submissions
(both for abstracts and for discussion session proposals)
XXX: Deadline for submitting abstracts and discussion session proposals
XXX: Unconference website opens for registration
Submission of contributions opens (uploaded by participants)
Discussion sessions announced
XXX: Deadline for registration
(preliminary) unconference program available
Start of pre-unconference activities (online)
XXX: AScUS 2024 Unconference
Registration fee
- Regular: 150 EUR
- Discounted*: 75 EUR
All fees include the 75 EUR AScUS annual membership fee
**Discounted: students and participants from emerging economies.
A limited number of scholarships are available to cover some of the registration costs for students or based on your country of residence.
Regular participants that are resident in high-income countries pay the full registration fee; all other countries qualify for the reduced registration fee. We use the World Bank's Atlas method. Please review the country list on wikipedia to see if your country qualifies for a reduced rate.
If you want to request a scholarship for the reduced fee, please contact us: contact@ascus-society.org
Venue
Our 2024 AScUS unconference will be held in the lovely city of Troyes in France. It is located 1 hour and 30 minutes south east from Paris (by train). Apart from the cultural and architectural heritage of the city center, Troyes is at the heart of the Champagne Region. Yes! Some of the best Champagnes come from places not further than 20 kms away from Troyes.
Organizing Committee
The unconference is organized by a group of researchers from all over the world. While it is an independent event proposed by the AScUS Society, the unconference is organized in close collaboration with Metabolism of Cities. Feel free to contact any of them for questions related to the unconference. The organizing committee is composed of (alphabetical order):
- Annabelle Duval | Nantes Université, France | annabelle.duval@univ-nantes.fr
- Paul Hoekman | Metabolism of Cities, South Africa | p@ulhoekman.com
- Matan Mayer | IE University, Spain | mmayer@faculty.ie.edu
- Santiago Perez I University of Technology of Troyes, France I santiago.perez@utt.fr
- Jens Peters | University of Alcalá, Spain | jens.peters@uah.es