The ‘Nexuses of the Urban: Interactions between water, energy and food provision for sustainable cities’ workshop is being led by Dr Saurabh Arora from SPRU – Science Policy Research Unit at University of Sussex and will take place over two days in University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
We now have over 100 people registered for the event. If you would like to be added to the waitlist, please click on the Eventbrite button.
Dates: Thursday 12 and Friday 13 May 2016.
Venue: University of Sussex, Brighton. UK.
AIMS
Cities are dynamically connected with other urban and rural localities, both distant and proximate. Most critically perhaps, cities rely on an elsewhere to produce much of the food, water and energy they consume. And as cities grow and extend their boundaries, this reliance on elsewhere generally expands, despite the emergence of activities such as peri-urban agriculture and community energy installations.
Thus we need to look beyond the boundaries of cities at processes of urbanisation to develop an understanding of social, cultural, environmental and economic dynamics of provisioning food, water and energy for and by urban inhabitants.
issues
The workshop will be structured around the following questions:
1. What divergent framings and understandings of ‘urban nexuses’ are emerging and why are they important, in what ways and to whom?
2. What are the implications of these understandings and their foci for governance of nexus interactions by public, private and hybrid arrangements?
3. What implications do these understandings hold for political-economic action by, and for alliances between, civil society organizations, businesses and social movements striving for
sustainability and justice?
4. What kind of relations (inter- and trans-disciplinary alliances, engagements with the material world) underpin the making of the emerging understandings of ‘urban nexuses’?
5. What new inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches (and concepts) do we need to further understand interactions at ‘urban nexuses’, including the interdependent vulnerabilities associated with access to food, water and energy in cities?
More information
For more information see the workshop page or email Cian on info@thenexusnetwork.org
Image credit – with thanks to Joy Banerjee on flickr.
