Enabling the City: Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Encounters in Research and Practice

Enabling the City is a collaborative book that focuses on how interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary processes of knowledge production may contribute to urban transformation at a local level in the 21st century, striking a balance between enthusiastic support for such transformational potential and a cautious note regarding the persistent challenges to the ethos as well as the practice of inter and transdisciplinarity.

The rich stories reflect different research and local practice cultures, exploring issues such as ageing, community, health and dementia, public space, energy, mobility cultures, heritage, housing, re-use, and renewal, as well as more universal questions about urban sustainability and climate change, and perhaps most importantly, education. Against this backdrop, aspirations for the 21st century are related to the international, national, and local agendas expressed in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and in the New Urban Agenda (NUA), raising fundamental questions of how to enable development. We highlight aspects of transformative learning and ways of knowing, critical to any collaborative and participatory process.

Josefine Fokdal is Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the Department of International Urbanism at the University of Stuttgart. Josefine's research focus is on co-production in urban development, governance, and informal dynamics amd she is involved in the Realworld Laboratory for Sustainable Mobility Culture.

Olivia Bina is a Principal Researcher at the University of Lisbon, Adjunct Assistant Professor in the department of Geography & Resource Management, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. She has a degree in Political Sciences and PhD in Geography. Through interdisciplinarity Olivia searches for pathways that balance ever-smarter growth and technology with a recovery of the unlimited potential of human-nature connectedness. Olivia was the Chair of the COST Action Intrepid.

Prue Chiles is Professor of Architectural Design Research at Newcastle and part of the practice Chiles, Evans and Care Architects CE+CA. Prue works to strengthen connections between people, place, teaching, imagination, and architectural design.

Liis Ojamäe is Associate Professor at the School of Business and Governance at Tallinn University of Technology and also at the School of Governance, Law and Society, Tallinn University. Liis' research interests are related to urban housing: residential culture, housing policy and markets, housing re-construction, and sustainability.

Katrin Paadam is Professor of Sociology in the School of Business and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology. Katrin has an integrated approach towards urban and residential dynamics and her research focuses on transforming actors’ practices and cultures on different scales of city space in the interplay of material structures and larger socio-spatial processes.