Sustainable Built Environment and Urban Transition, Linnaeus University, Växjö

Unprecedented urbanisation coupled with population growth, excessive land consumption, climate change and urban environmental risks such as heat and water stress establish the strong need for multiple resiliency measures. The recurring disruptions of the thermal balance and hydrologic connectivity in urban neighbourhoods are creating major concerns for urban authorities and citizens.

To this regard urban green spaces (UGS) are a fundamental asset to a city. They facilitate social interactions, health and wellbeing, recreation and alternate livelihoods. If created, nurtured and enhanced, UGS can extend the resilience and security of energy, health, water, food, and biodiversity systems. UGS are an alternative or complementary alternative to engineered infrastructure to improve life quality and can attenuate urban heat island impact and improve urban water management.

The benefits of urban green spaces are many, sometimes intangible, and hence deserve to be further discussed. While environmental, social and economic benefits of urban green space are well established, there is still a significant lack of knowledge for the site adapted planning and design of a green infrastructure in a given location to meet the challenges of climate change.

This session will then examine how the different green spaces, their provisions, associated benefits, emergent concerns in the European context and plausible strategies for their inclusion in urban planning framework.

Session chair: Prof. Francesco Ferrini, University of Florence, Italy

Session Co-chair: Prof. Johan Bergh, Linnaeus University, Sweden

Climate change requires comprehensive adaptation of cities and regions - both in the Global North and the Global South. This applies to phenomena such as heat waves, floods, droughts, fire, strong wind events, deterioration of air quality, or even sea-level rise. This also raises fundamental questions about how climate perturbations and urbanization processes are related to each other and how climate change can influence the local climate in cities and thus the well-being of city dwellers.

Various approaches to climate change adaptation exist, and there is by no means consensus on all of them. Exciting debates exist, for example, on the questions of technological versus nature-based solutions and top-down versus bottom-up solutions. Even though a combination of different strategies will certainly have to be pursued in the long term, the right mix will be decisive for success. 

Supporting community adaptation and resilience under climate change also requires a comprehensive multi-risk approach that addresses environmental, natural, and anthropogenic risks, for a comprehensive picture of complex natural multi-hazard dynamics and improved predictive models to quantify multiple risks on short- and long-term scales.

Against this background, the session will discuss topics ranging from climate change impact, multi-risks and resilience of urban infrastructure, economic and social consequences, and the approaches to and precondition for implementation of climate adaptation measures in cities of the Global North and the Global South.

Session chair: Prof. Juan Pedro, University of Murcia, Spain

Session Co-chairs: Asso. Prof. Brijesh Mainali, Linnaeus University, Sweden

Prof. Boris Braun, University of Cologne, Germany

Urban history is made up of thoughts and plans to improve the living conditions of what is characterized by the coupling of density and diversity. The ideas of wellbeing have shifted over time depending on values and evaluation criteria. Some periods and cultures are rather pro-urban (cities are the solution), some anti-urban (cities are the problem). In the contemporary times, when urban utopias are not so much on the agenda (except new towns outside European culture), what are the ways chosen by local public actors to shift towards new kinds of urban configurations? What role does the rural play in the figuring of the urban and vice-versa? Particularly how do professionals and elected members position themselves regarding the smart city paradigm or the "city of the quarter of an hour" or the "global health" injunction...

The following axes are suggested for contributions which can combine academic and professional concerns as well as also seek to help the convergence between social sciences and artistic/designerly contributions through speculations and prototypes:

• Anthropocenic urban plans? Prefigurative plans and its role: How do local plans regarding urban forms integrate new paradigms? Here, planning holds a special place and is mainly about reducing the footprint of human activity. Indeed, we speak incrementally of de-planning: reducing the size of cities, de-asphalting, de-equipping (ski resorts on medium-sized mountains), un/making and relearning ways of living. It is often seen as a habitability crisis. Reorientation and revision of planning references are on the agenda, and we can even speak of a paradigmatic crisis regarding the knowledge in question.
• Empowering sensitivity to the anthropocenic condition. Aerial views, climate fictions, design prototypes, artistic installations can be seen as drivers to develop the tangibility of climate change and changed living conditions. They can also perform as things in the sense of gatherings for negotiations of living well when prior assumptions are challenged. Operators for problematization and publicization of the Anthropocene condition are to be debated. They enable an iconic and symbolic enrichment of experience and are also grounded in the everyday, which includes explorations of ordinary hope to counter feelings of powerlessness or discouragement.

This session invites paper-contributions as well as interactive, practice-oriented contributions. It can, depending on the session participants’ suggestions, be held in parts or in its totality in a Tiny House on Wheels that will be parked on campus in Växjö at the time of the conference.

Session chair: Laurent Devisme, Professor of Urban studies, Ensa Nantes, Nantes University

Session Co-chair: Dr. Åsa Ståhl, Senior Lecturer, Linnaeus University.

Climate mitigation at the urban level implies constructing and refurbishing buildings to nearly zero energy levels and creating carbon neutral energy supply systems. At the same time, this may impact solutions for other environmental problem areas, such as sustainable use of natural resources. The built environment is driving most of the abiotic material use via construction and renovation, and it generates one of the main waste flows. Moving to a circular economy is another challenge that needs to be tackled, and the additional materials required for climate mitigation in the urban environment make this ambition more complex. Contributions from academia and industry are welcomed to exchange knowledge and best practices to identify new opportunities and innovative approaches to tackling the complex challenges associated with climate mitigation and circular economy at the urban level. Presentations may discuss circularity and climate mitigation separately or in combination.

Session chair: Prof. Arnold Tukker, French Institute of Advanced Study, Paris, and Leiden University, Netherland

Session Co-chair: Dr. Nieves Espinosa, University of Murcia, Spain

Prof. Ambrose Dodoo, Linnaeus University, Sweden

Energy and resource efficiency of the built environment is crucial to address climate change and other sustainable development goals. Towards that direction, several programs (smart cities, viable cities etc.) and policy interventions (e.g. EU renovation wave, fit for 55 etc.), have been introduced producing a series of successful outcomes. Still, several challenges are yet to be addressed towards the transition to an energy- and resource efficient built environment. The complexity of the built environment demands integrated sectorial, societal, technological, environmental, policy, governance, and business innovation solutions and processes. This session invites participants to share knowledge from success stories in the field, and explore the potential of new approaches on issues related but not limited to district level renovations, innovative business models, supply-side concerns, household behaviour, policy and financing interventions, and the role of the public authorities. Papers can take the form of regular research papers, reviews, and/or case studies.

Session chair: Prof. Krushna Mahapatra, Linnaeus University, Sweden

Session Co-chair: Asso. Prof. Andrea Frank, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

The pandemic has evidenced the importance of space for everyday life and for health, as well as the role of the city as important planning arenas for the provision of basic needs, the organization of daily life, and the safeguarding of a resilient economic base. Cities are asked to foster tailored place-based spatial solutions while  also envisioning the position of places in neighborhoods, cities and in wider, regional settings, mediating between scales and views in often contested multi-actor settings.

This track will raise questions concerning the pandemic’s assumed effects, connected with critical issues such as urban sprawl, climate change and growing  socio-economic disparities, and how these reinforced or disrupted prevailing paradigms (healthy city, happy city etc.) and their governance. The objective is to learn lessons on how health and wellbeing can be supported by involving spatial knowledge, foresight and imagination, in spatial governance, regional planning, urban and policy design.

Employing feminist and critical disability studies perspectives, the session also invites contributions about inequalities concerning wellbeing in cities and the ways of improving the inclusivity in urban areas that would contribute to the wellbeing of diverse groups.

Session chair: Asso. Prof. Valeria Lingua, University of Florence, Italy

Session Co-chairs: Asso. Prof. Irina Kuznetsova, University of Birmingham

Dr Rakib Akhtarm, University of Birmingham

Krushna Mahapatra is a professor of Sustainable Built Environment at Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden. His research interests include energy system analysis, diffusion of innovations, sociotechnical transition, actor behaviour, policy analysis, business models etc., mainly in the area of built environment. He leads the Sustainable Built Environment Research group at Linnaeus University. He is an Editor of Energies Journal and Associate Editor of Frontiers in Built Environment Journal.  

Email: Krushna.mahapatra@lnu.se

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Francesco is a full Professor at the Department of Agriculture, Food, Environment and Forestry – University of Florence (Italy). His Scientific activity includes research and experimental studies regarding ornamental and Arboriculture & Urban Forestry. He is specialty Chief Editor of Frontiers in Floriculture & Landscape. He has published more than 360 scientific and technical papers (116 indexed in Scopus, IF 31; Google Scholar, IF 37).  

Email: Francesco.ferrini@unifi.it

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Johan Bergh concerns silviculture, climate change mitigation and adaptation and how boreal and temperate forest ecosystems are affected by climate change. Adapted forest management is one way to take advantage of the new situation, to mitigate climate change, handle potential risks and to minimise damage. Collaboration with the Swedish forest industry and society constitutes a big part of my work. I also work internationally to give advice on plantation forestry. He is also leader of KM Linnaeus “Green sustainable Development” and deeply involved in Bridge 2.0. Citations according to Google scholar are 3691, h-index 32, i10-index 47.

Email: johan.bergh@lnu.se

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Arnold Tukker is the Professor of Industrial Ecology and served until September 2022 for a maximum 8 year term as Scientific director of the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML, 150 staff) at Leiden University. He retains a small position at the Dutch not for profit research organization TNO. Arnold set up 15 million Euro in EU projects in which the world’s most ambitious and detailed global energy/resource/economic input-output database (EXIOBASE) was built. He led a EU Marie Curie Innovative Training Network of 15 PhDs researching the circular economy  (Circ€uit). He was appointed as a member of the European Academy of Sciences in 2018, and is recognised by the Web of Science group as a highly cited researcher since 2019. His work in the field of sustainable business models is among the highest cited globally.

Email: tukker@cml.leidenuniv.nl

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Juan Pedro Montávez is full professor of Physics of the Earth at the Department of Physics of the University of Murcia, Spain.   He has a extensive research experience on Regional Atmospheric Modeling, working on numerical climate simulations at several spatial and temporal scales, as well as performing statistical analysis  of climate variability and climate change impacts.   He leads the  Modelling Atmospheric Group at University of Murcia  (https://www.um.es/gmar).  He has published more than 100 scientific and technical papers (H-index 35).  

Email: montavez@um.es

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Brijesh Mainali has 25 years of experience working in the field of Energy and Sustainable Development, which includes 13 years in academics and 12 years as consultant with private sector and I/NGO. Mainali has led and coordinated several projects in the area of Energy and Climate change funded by FORMAS and VR. He has also worked as participant researcher in couple of EU projects Horizon 2020 on Energy efficiency and deep renovation of detached households and Erasmus+ project on Capacity building of partners in LESOTHO for developing courses on Sustainable development. Besides, Dr Mainali is project coordinator from LNU side for Doctoral school in Sustainable energy engineering (SEED) and Program manager for Masters Programme in Energy and Management for Sustainable Development at LNU.

Email: Brijesh.mainali@lnu.se        

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Ambrose Dodoo is a full Professor in Building Technology at Linnaeus University, Växjö. He has backgrounds in Building Technology and Environmental Science and Ecotechnology. His work encompasses teaching, research and coordination of the Sustainable Structural Engineering Master’s Programme at the Department of Building Technology. His research encompasses strategies to improve energy efficiency and thereby minimize the climate impacts of construction products and buildings for a circular economy transition.  Recently, he has been an expert reviewer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the working group on climate change mitigation. Look at his 2369 citations, h-index 23 and i10-index 40, and over 100 scientific publications with details.

Email: ambrse.dodoo@lnu.se

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Boris Braun is full professor of Economic and Human Geography at the Department of Geosciences of Cologne University in Germany. His research interests are in the field of economic-geographical environmental research, in particular adaptation to regional climate and ecological change as well as environmental and social standards in value chains - especially in the Global South (South and Southeast Asia, West Africa), but also in the Global North (Central Europe, Australia, Japan). He leads the Graduate School of Geosciences of the University of Cologne and has published approximately 170 academic papers and books (h-index 21, Google Scholar).

Email: boris.braun@uni-koeln.de

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Holding a PhD (University of Tours – France, 2001) and an accreditation to supervise research (ENS Lyon, France, 2014) – Laurent Devisme teaches urban studies. His main research focus is on planning practices, urban theories and new metropolitan territories. Adopting an ethnographic approach of planning activities, his works concern urban professionals at work, foresight and consulting activities, urban sociology and urban studies theories.  

He is part of the Sensibilia research program, “sensitive approaches regarding the transformation of living conditions".

He is vice-president in charge of sustainable development of Nantes University since January 2022.

Email: Laurent.devisme@univ-nantes.fr

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Åsa Ståhl is a design researcher and a senior lecturer at the Department of Design at Linnaeus University. Her work combines participatory design, speculations, feminist technoscience and environmental posthumanism. Together with her long-term collaborator Kristina Lindström she started the Un/Making Studio. Ståhl is one of the founding members of the international Design & Posthumanism Network.

Ståhl is the PI of the research project “Holding Surplus House” where an expanded notion of household is taken as the starting point for explorations into eco-socially just transition. She is also the PI for the upcoming 6-year research environment across four universities on “Design after Progress: Reimagining Design Histories and Design Futures”.

She holds a PhD in Media and Communication Studies from Malmö University - a joint interdisciplinary doctoral thesis with Kristina Lindström in interaction design. Between 2015 and 2016 Lindström and Ståhl were postdocs at Umeå Institute of Design. 

Email: asa.stahl@lnu.se

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Valeria Lingua is Associate Professor on Urban and Regional Planning at the Department of Architecture of the University of Florence, where she acts as Scientific Director of the Regional Design Lab. She is RSA Ambassador for Italy and coordinator of the AESOP Thematic Group on Regional Design and has been an affiliate academic in prestigious Universities and research groups: Bartlett School of Planning, UCL (2014), Delft University of Technology (2016), Paris Sorbonne University (2018), Lisbon University (2022). She is a well-recognised academic on regional planning and design, governance rescaling and visioning, spatial imaginaries. She conducts research activities and consultancies at EU, National and regional level concerning strategic spatial planning, sub-regional and inter-municipal planning, and definition of river agreements.

Email: valeria.lingua@unifi.it

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Andrea Frank is Associate professor in urban and regional planning at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham. Her research interest focuses broadly on nature-society relations and how natural elements in human settlements are integrated, manipulated, restored or preserved. She has been a co-PI on an international grant investigating of different perception and uses of “Green Infrastructure” to enhance urban sustainability comparing Gainesville (FL, USA), Jakarta (Indonesia) and Cardiff (Wales, UK). She is also interested in knowledge and capacity in planning/built environment professionals can be improved.

Email: a.i.frank@bham.ac.uk

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Dr Irina Kuznetosva is an Associate Professor in Human Geography at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham. Her research expertise includes migration, forced displacement, health, and critical urbanism. Her recent projects focus on the social consequences of population displacement in Ukraine, Russia, and Nigeria, including mental health and well-being. She also works on the impact of migration on rural communities.

Email: i.kuznetsova@bham.ac.uk

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Dr. Rakib Akhtar is an Assistant Professor at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham. He is an interdisciplinary scholar with a research focus on technology-oriented urbanisation, infrastructure development and their interconnection with right-wing nationalism. Rakib is a chartered Architect and a Town Planner with extensive knowledge and practical experiences across countries. His research interests sit at the intersection of Urban Planning, Political Economy and Development Studies.

Email: r.akhtar.2@bham.ac.uk

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Description: Nieves Espinosa is researcher at the Department of Physics of the University of Murcia, Spain.  She has an extensive research experience on life cycle assessment, working on the evaluation of the environmental impact of energy conversion and storage technologies, as well as conducting techno-economic analysis to support environmental policy development.   She holds a tenure track at the Modelling Atmospheric Group at University of Murcia.  She has published more than 40 scientific and technical papers (H-index 25).

Email: nieves.espinosa@um.es

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