Wednesday 20 Mar · 2024 14:30-15:30 CEST

For more details please see: https://2024.ascus-society.org/keynotes/

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Thursday 21 Mar · 2024 09:00-10:30 CEST

Session convenor: Liam O'Brian

Synopsis of discussion topic When considering pathways to mitigate climate change, the residential building sector is often a target for carbon reduction measures. While residential building sector embodied and operational carbon represent a significant proportion of global emissions, the cascading effects of the built form (e.g. household size; location: suburban vs rural etc.) have a significant impact on other aspects of residents’ lives. For example, where you live impacts how far you need to travel to work and school and the infrastructure you use. Household size and associated socio-economic status impact both short- and long-term consumer behaviours such as the volume of products you buy and store. In this discussion session, we will explore the implications of transitioning from building-centric life cycle analysis (LCA) approaches to human-centric LCA. To do this, we will examine the more holistic environmental impacts of residential building form and identify the gaps in how we typically measure these impacts. Then, we will critically analyze these impacts in the context of sufficiency to identify mandatory and discretionary impact categories that are inextricably linked to housing form and location, how these can be reduced and the barriers to reduction. This discussion with experts from the AScUS community will inform the development of a new approach to housing impact assessment.

Activities for the session To open the session, we will begin with a brief presentation on the environmental impact of housing globally, comparing different built forms including single-family detached housing and low- and high-rise multi-family buildings. Then, we will delve deeper into these built forms by introducing specific case study buildings with particular features such as dwelling size and amenities, location and neighbourhood characteristics. The participants will then be divided into small groups and assigned to one of the case study buildings. As a small group, they will be asked to develop resident personas and then document the consumer and travel behaviours of their hypothetical residents, specifically those tied to the housing type. Next, the larger group will reconvene and share-out a summary of their respective persona’s habits and we’ll discuss the key differences that emerge for different housing forms. Participants will rejoin their small groups and be assigned to another group’s persona. Each set of hypothetical resident personas will then evaluate their behaviours through a sufficiency lens, asking themselves to what extent they are a necessity. The groups will be asked to generate specific ideas related to impact reduction which can be technology, policy or education-based and then identify any barriers to these approaches. To conclude the session, the group will come together once more and share their impact reduction recommendations and reflect on any expected outcomes of the discussion session. Finally, we will share the proposed path-to-action process and solicit contributors from the group to continue working together after the conference.

• 20 mins Round table introductions, Background presentation
• 5 mins Activity instructions and distribution of the case study details
• 10 mins BREAKOUT: Groups develop personas and document consumer/travel behaviours of their case study household
• 10 mins Groups will each present the consumption behaviours of each case study household. First group will likely be longer, remaining groups to contrast with the preceding groups
• 5 mins Activity instructions for next breakout including evaluating which consumer behaviours are “necessary” and considering technology, policy or education-based interventions
• 10 mins BREAKOUT: groups discuss how to promote sufficiency in different housing forms
• 10 mins Groups will each present the sufficiency strategies they have developed.
• 20 mins Discuss who is interested in working on a position paper describing how housing form impacts consumer behaviour and pathways to promote sufficiency

Path-to-action contribution Following the conference, the authors and any of the interested participants will prepare a position paper to argue the need for more holistic analysis of the environmental impacts of housing building form and outline some potential pathways to mitigating these impacts. The position paper will eventually form the basis of a funding application (e.g. Alliance International) to conduct these types of analysis more formally through a dedicated research project. Interested participants will also be informed of, and invited to, an upcoming five-year International Energy Agency Annex on Human-centric building design and operation for a changing climate.

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Thursday 21 Mar · 2024 11:00-12:30 CEST

Session organizers: Ana Prades and Yolanda Lechón. Hybrid session, remote participation possible

The terms 'sustainability' and 'sustainable development' are omnipresent in academic and policy discourse in a wide range of areas – including urban planning – yet there is rarely agreement on their concrete meanings and implications. A classic distinction is between conceptions founded on reformist ideas of “ecological modernisation” and those calling for more fundamental structural and system-wide transformations. Critics highlighting the presumed planetary boundaries and advocating approaches such as that of Planetary Wellbeing blame sustainable development for its excessive anthropocentrism, economism and even techno-optimism.

Much greater consensus prevails over the notion that sustainability and sustainable development require transdisciplinarity, that is, collaboration not only amongst experts but also between the academia, policymakers, business, and civil society. To succeed, transdisciplinary requires shared concepts and common ground that could be generated, for example, through collaborative small-scale projects. Projects and experiments at local level are more likely than debates on general concepts to foster the needed dialogue and agreement on shared meanings and objectives. Transdisciplinarity can be hampered by the lack of willingness or ability of experts to leave their comfort zone and engage in dialogue and collaboration disciplines from outside their own field. However, it can also reflect the absence of shared arenas for interaction (e.g., co-working spaces) or time for trans- and interdisciplinary dialogue and action.

This session seeks to contribute to transdisciplinary dialogue and action by bringing together experts and practitioners from diverse disciplines and areas of practice. To provide a basis for and stimulate discussion, the session draws on lessons from the ongoing EU-funded research project, ECF4CLIM, designed to generate a European competence framework for sustainability in education. Three main sources of information used within ECF4CLIM were upon to prepare the session: 1) the interactive transdisciplinary webinars organised in November and December 2022 for education-sector academics and practitioners from various academic and professional backgrounds; 2) periodic reflections by the research team on their experiences of transdisciplinarity in the project activities (e.g., diaries, notes on the conversations and group work sessions at the major project meetings), and 3) survey of literature concerning the practical experience of transdisciplinarity in European research projects.

A brief summary of the key findings, together with a handful of guiding questions tailored to the needs and interests of urban sustainability, will be presented to the participants at the opening of the session. Innovative methods, including visualisation, will be used to stimulate creativity, dialogue and "thinking out of the box".

Our session will allow the identification and further understanding of drivers and barriers for transdisciplinary work (the most efficient to support public policies) in urban planning research and practice. We aim to contribute to transdisciplinary dialogue and action in urban planning by bringing together experts and practitioners from diverse disciplines and areas of practice.

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Thursday 21 Mar · 2024 11:00-12:30 CEST

This session has been cancelled.

For virtual participants: The link for participation has been changed to the one of the parallel session (in order to have no one stuck in an empty room).

We apopologize for the inconvenience!

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Thursday 21 Mar · 2024 13:30-15:00 CEST

Session convenors: Barbara Redlingshöfer (INRAE) and Anastasia Papangelou (University of Antwerp)

Format: Session with presentations in a short format (pitch) + workshop. No online participation possible!

The goal of this session is two-fold: first, to generate a comprehensive update on the various ways urban organic matter is managed at the urban scale. Urban organic matter includes food waste, green waste, biowaste, horse manure, human excreta in different countries; and second, to share research and knowledge about innovative solutions to manage urban organic matter.

Urbanization is a global trend and has been so for millennia. The urbanization level has almost doubled in the past 70 years, from 29% in 1950 to 55% in 2018 and es expected to reach 68% by 2050. As geographical locations that host a growing proportion of the global population, cities host urban organic matter, too. Food waste for example stems largely from activities at the end of the food supply chain which are located in cities. In many industrialized countries, urban organic matter ends up mixed with other municipal solid waste disposed of in landfills or incinerators, while organic management is insufficiently developed (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2017). Opportunities for the organized recovery of valuable organic matter and nutrients for use in agriculture are thus being lost, maintaining cities’ role in disrupting global biochemical cycles. Moreover, organic matter can be a source of odour, pests, climate gases, sanitary issues and leachate.

So far research focuses on one or few aspects (reduction at source, or treatment processes, or energy recovery from treatment products) but not on the entire chain, from waste production to the use of treatment products for energy or return to the soil. Few cross-disciplinary and systemic approaches exist. Thus, we aim to explore what innovative solutions for urban organic matter are implemented in various settings and countries and how they can improve urban sustainability by closing the loop with food production, energy consumption and the urban environment (soils, urban vegetation, etc.). Solutions initiated by companies, local authorities as well as the civil society are of interest for this workshop.

We aim to gather contributions that analyze the link between producers of urban organic matter and the users of the treatment products in terms of spatial organization and stakeholder interaction. Contributors can also address collection challenges. Stakes are high since the quality of the collection will determine the quality of the waste to be treated, and the range of possible treatments and their economic benefits. Contamination (trace metals, microplastics) with implications for health stemming from digestates or compost and returning to soil need to also be considered. Any knowledge of public or private management initiatives that, conceptually and operationally, integrate both reduction at source and recovery are important to be shared: How can we combine these two objectives? What economic models for recovery support the objectives of reduction at source? How can rebound effects resulting in ever higher waste production be avoided? Lastly, knowledge of successful connections between local food policies and policy tools with waste recovery are of interest for this workshop.

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Thursday 21 Mar · 2024 13:30-15:00 CEST

Session convenors: Nicola Bertoldi, Ehsan Ahmadian, Elisabetta Rosa and Daniela Perrotti  

*UC Louvain, Institute for Landscape, Architecture and Built Environment, Urban Metabolism lab, Rue Wafelaerts 47-51, B-1060, Brussels  

This session discusses possible practical applications of the “aISTnexus” project, undertaken at the Urban Metabolism lab (UCLouvain/LAB), which aims to foster a pluralistic perspective on how the concept of “agency” shapes the understanding and modelling of the urban metabolism as an urban social-ecological system. The main outputs of the research will be a conceptual framework and a model decision tree spelling out which features of “agency” are embedded in different concepts, methods, and models emerging from urban metabolism studies. The project’s first work package analyses the notion of “agency” by identifying cognate concepts in the urban metabolism research literature. The second unpacks how this notion informs different modelling methods at various levels. Based on their perspectives, experiences, and expertise, participants will thus be invited to reflect on how conceptual analysis and model characterisation of agency can jointly lead to improving modelling, assessing, and planning practices that rely, directly or indirectly, on the notion of “urban metabolism” by focusing on three questions arising from the project: Who or what is an agent? What do agents do? How are agents identified, conceptualised, and modelled?   

Based on the organisers' input, participants will be invited to suggest answers to such questions through a three-phase discussion process comprising the following activities. First, the organisers will present the two aspects of the research project (model characterisation and conceptual framework building). At this stage of the discussion, the organisers will welcome any clarification questions. Second, participants will be encouraged to join one of two groups, each devoted to a particular aspect of the project. Starting from questions provided by the organisers (e.g., “What alternative words would you use to describe an agent?”, “Based on your experience, are there other influences that this agent can exert on UM?”), each group’s members will be invited to a fishbowl-format discussion aiming to explore how insights from the “aISTnexus” project might relate to their experience. Third, both groups will reunite for a final “aggregation” round, during which they will have the opportunity to share the result of the first part of the discussion and collectively reflect on how to construct a broader understanding of agency in social-ecological systems and how theoretical considerations can inform model decision systems for urban metabolism studies. This last stage will capitalise on the feedback received in the previous phases by identifying paths to action that could bridge the gap between research on concepts and models, on the one hand, and concrete urban metabolism applications, on the other hand. To ensure that the conclusions reached at the end of this discussion process will be followed up, the organisers will submit a survey to all participants aiming at gathering their feedback on the advanced stages of the two main outputs of the research; participants will be able to access the final outcomes of the project soon after completion. This could also constitute the basis for further collaboration, e.g. in the form of joint publications.  

This work is supported by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique - FNRS under Grant(s) n° MIS-F.4536.22, Mandat d’Impulsion Scientifique / Incentive Grant for Scientific Research.  

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Thursday 21 Mar · 2024 15:30-17:00 CEST

Discussion Session hosted by Annabelle Duval and Anne Ventura

How do you define an ecological transition? What conditions the success of a transition? What is a successful transition? Indeed, there are many ways to approach change. This workshop explores the notion of vision in the study of ecological transitions, so as to map the infinitely diverse ambitions and directions the profound set of transformations we collectively need to carry out in order to alter the already raging ecological and biodiversity crisis, of which climate change is only one manifestation. Each of these visions is anchored in a (cultural) context that may to some extent influence the perception of the changes that need to occur. Additionally, each actor from its standpoint experiences objectives and constraints that may differ from another. In some cases, one’s ambition may the other’s limit.

We propose a serious role-playing game à la manière des many Climate Fresk and other pedagogical tools that enable citizens to gather knowledge on a given theme, and step into the shoes of discussion and decision-makers that engage in the governance of the challenge and lay out solutions. This collective thinking exercise draws from the Transition Life Cycle Analysis methodology (Transition LCA). In contrast with Product LCA, it focuses on objectives rather than starting-point, and aims at studying transition scenarii in a situated geographical context and that can be relied to various technological paths. The interdisciplinary exercise combines several theoretical and methodological frameworks including Multi-Level Governance, Ecological Modernisation, Situated Knowledge and Transition LCA. Participants will be invited to engage with the ecological transition of the Loire estuary: a nation-level significant energy and trade powerhouse all-the-while a fragile and endangered territory.

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Thursday 21 Mar · 2024 17:00-18:00 CEST

Aristide is co-founder of Metabolism of Cities and Senior Researcher at the Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems laboratory of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Within his work he attempts to build bridges between the academia, public administrations and “circular” actors in order to accelerate cities’ transition towards a more circular economy and metabolism. During the last years, he has advised and has acted as a external consultant for a number of local, regional and international administration and organisations on the topics of urban metabolism and circular economy.

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Friday 22 Mar · 2024 09:00-10:30 CEST

Schedule:

• Is it possible to have a cleaner heating in cities without harming vulnerable households? An analysis for Madrid urban area -- Mercedes Burguillo Cuesta
• Collecting and redistributing surplus meals from institutional catering to associations: characterizing and assessing the new link -- Barbara Redlingshöfer
• Reasons of non-feasibility of urban densification in the urban center areas of highly densely cities in developing countries -- Kaspia Nahrin

• Panel discussion with the keynote speakers

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Friday 22 Mar · 2024 11:00-12:30 CEST

Session Organizer: Nadine Ibrahim

Presencial Session, no remote participation possible

Discussion Session Focus: Progress and action on sustainable cities require skills, mindsets, and collaborations that enable the understanding of cities which are complex systems that experience a lot of the wicked problems of our times. These skills include systems thinking, sustainability mindset, interdisciplinary knowledge and collaboration, an understanding of complexity, and tolerance to uncertainty. This workshop focuses on “interdisciplinary knowledge and collaboration” and engages participants in hands-on activities to create experiential learning for interdisciplinarity to understand cities and to collaborate more meaningfully and more comprehensively.

Background: Interdisciplinary knowledge weaves together the methods and tools of several disciplines at the start of collaborations and when introducing new concepts. The perspectives from multiple disciplines create the basis of interdisciplinary projects. Drawing from different disciplines does not make a project inherently interdisciplinary; but rather the integration of methods and ideas from these disciplines in a meaningful manner is at the core of interdisciplinary thinking. In an interdisciplinary project, team members endeavour to find common ground for their project while collaborating together. An interdisciplinary project creates a newfound perspective that would not have been possible with knowledge from only one discipline. In interdisciplinary projects, individuals are still experts in their own fields and gain an awareness and understanding of the integration of other methods, which makes this synergy of skills on a project more than the sum of its parts. The theory and framework used in this workshop on interdisciplinarity is based on the paper by Nissani (1994) as the basis for conceptualizing disciplinary, multi-disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge.

Activities: Workshop activities proposed are scaffolded in the following manner: - Theory on interdisciplinarity - Cities as complex systems - LEGO activity to visualize different types of collaborations - Brainstorming and discussion on interdisciplinary knowledge and collaboration - Reflecting on examples from cities, sustainable infrastructure and sustainable technologies as they demonstrate interdisciplinary knowledge and collaboration

By the end of the workshop, participants will have constructed a LEGO model that represents interdisciplinary interactions. Reflecting on the building process and reflecting on the experience will give participants ideas for what collaboration looks like when working together in interdisciplinary thinking as we challenge city building practices and reimagine future cities, and identify opportunities where we can move beyond individual disciplines.

Reference: Nissani, M. 1994. “Fruits, Salads, and Smoothies: A Working Definition of Interdisciplinarity.” Journal of Educational Thought/Revue de La Pensee Educative. http://www.is.wayne.edu/MNISSANI/PAGEPUB/SMOOTHIE.htm

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Friday 22 Mar · 2024 13:30-14:30 CEST

Urban sustainability: Ecological network analysis tracking metabolism through indirect pathways

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