UP Research Day 2025 breakout sessions

In our group, we discussed 8 different research projects, that I found shared important commonalities, despite the diversity in objects and levels of analysis. Almost all shared an interest in not merely describing and analysing the status quo, but also in transforming and innovating beyond it, and to varying extents, contribute to vital socio-ecological transformations. Many of us did so by uncovering underappreciated ways of knowing, that included feminist perspectives, neglected epistemologies such as an attention to affective and sensory experience, under-researched standpoints such as the grassroots, emancipatory ideologies such as post-growth, and finally, the politics of knowledge per se.

Methodologically speaking, most of us relied on a classical spectrum of methods, that included surveys, focus groups, interviews, mapping and GIS, document analysis and participant observation. What stood out in this respect was Ran Zhang’s use of mobile video recordings by participants themselves, that were followed by interviews and mapping to make sense of varied sensorial responses during inner-city cycling. As for the research sites, Amsterdam and to a lesser extent Barcelona stood out as the most researched sites, demonstrating the extent to which a high degree of familiarity with research sites is promising in terms of the depth of insight derived from (mostly) qualitative research. Given the international background of the group, this meant venturing beyond these two sites, and examining case studies in Milan, and more notably outside of Europe, in Santiago de Chile, Turkey, Shanghai and New Delhi, contributing to a provincialisation of European knowledge production.

Finally, despite divergent theoretical and methodological directions and innovations, a strong desire to contribute to the improvement of urban planning and/or to grassroots strategizing is apparent .

The members of the group 5 shared some common research interests on spatial justice, right to the city, more than human, prefigure and decenter planning and they presented their research on human-plant interactions in green infrastructures, entrepreneurial urban governance and community politics, energy vulnerability in refugee camps, cultural politics of mobility, (re)imagination of a city of proximity and urban care framework for evaluating nature-based solutions. Also, they shared methodologies on participatory observations, multispecies ethnography, literature review, textual analysis, mapping energy stories, workshop and real life experiments, semi-structured interviews, q-short methodologies and GIS spatial mapping

After each of us had presented their current work, we discussed how it reflects the ASP broader aims. Firstly, as a group of researchers focusing on real pressing issues across cities, we cannot resort to individual disciplines. Multi-, cross- and interdisciplinary approaches often demand adaptability and flexibility in terms of research methods to incorporate the viewpoints of practitioners, residents and other stakeholders. Here, many of us pay specific attention to incorporating marginalized groups’ viewpoints in a just manner.

A selection of research slides from the breakout sessions.