Actionable Science for Urban Sustainability (AScUS 2024)

March 20-22 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, as well as ecology and environmental science, from basic research to policymakers, NGOs and professionals, 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 place in Troyes (France) from the 20th to 22nd 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 before and during the unconference activities.

During the event, you will encounter the genius mindsets of participants through engaging, participant-driven discussion sessions, thought-provoking keynotes, a public science fair-like poster exhibition, and, last but not least, the AScUS unconference dinner for fun and networking. 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 endeavour to generate a path-to-action document. Such documents shall be finalized and shared with the AScUS community within the following 60 days.

Part of AScUS will also be open to civil society, so we encourage all to suggest discussion sessions or workshops that engage the local community and to prepare a poster of their scientific contribution in non-scientific language.

Submission

The deadline for abstract submission has ended. However, this does not mean that you cannot join and be part of AScUS 2024 in Troyes!

Just register and be part of AScUS.

Remember, the Unconference is on exchanging ideas and identifying new approaches to urban sustainability problems, so impact and visibility is not determined by single talks or presentations. Participation is possible also without having submitted any abstract: Register and upload your presentation video to the Unconference Platform and start discussing with other participants about their contributions and your own research already before the conference. And then come to Troyes and participate in the workshop-like discussion sessions, the networking opportunities and the Unconference dinner!
Looking forward to seeing you in Troyes!

Registration and timeline

Important Dates

  • 29.09.2023 -- Call for submissions (both for abstracts and discussion session proposals)
  • 15.11.2023 -- Submission deadline for abstracts and discussion session proposals
  • 29.11.2023 -- Notification of acceptance
    Unconference website open for registration
    Submission of contributions opens (uploaded by participants)
    Discussion sessions announced
  • 26.01.2024 -- Registration deadline for presenters and session organizers
    (preliminary) unconference program available
  • 04.03.2024 -- Start of pre-unconference activities (online)
  • 20-22.03.2024 AScUS 2024 Unconference

Registration fee

  • On-site scientific participant: 150 EUR
  • On-site discussion session organiser: 100 EUR
  • Remote (virtual) scientific participant: 75 EUR
  • Remote (virtual) discussion session organiser: 50 EUR
  • On-site non-scientific participant (access only to the public part of AScUS): free

All fees include an AScUS annual membership

A limited number of scholarships are available to cover some of the registration costs for students or participants from low-income countries (based on your country of residence).

Regular participants who are residents of 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 of Paris (by train). Apart from the cultural and architectural heritage of the city centre and being famous for the largest amount of painted stained-glass windows in churches and houses, Troyes is at the heart of the Champagne Region. Yes! Some of the best Champagnes come from places not further than 20 km away from Troyes.

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.

Organizing Committee

The unconference is organized by a group of researchers from all over the world. While it is an independent event proposed by AScUS Society (a non-profit organization committed to producing and promoting actionable and multidisciplinary knowledge to tackle urban sustainability challenges across the globe), 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 UniversitĂ©, France | annabelle.duval@univ-nantes.fr
  • Jens Peters | University of Alcalá, Spain | jens.peters@uah.es
  • Matan Mayer | IE University, Spain | mmayer@faculty.ie.edu
  • Nadine Ibrahim | University of Waterloo, Canada | nadine.ibrahim@uwaterloo.ca
  • Oleksandr Galychyn | Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Finland | oleksandr.galychyn@syke.fi
  • Paul Hoekman | Metabolism of Cities, South Africa | p@ulhoekman.com
  • Santiago Perez I University of Technology of Troyes, France I santiago.perez@utt.fr