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Right to the City: Innovative forms of governance and the right to the city, culture, nature, housing and well-being.
To study innovative forms of governance that promote the right to the city, the right to nature, the right to housing, the right to culture or the right to health care. The aim is to rethink and reconstruct the organization of public institutions towards an effective collaboration with stakeholders by mapping and exchanging good practices.
Keywords: co-governance; active and participatory citizenship; social, spatial and environmental justice; digital rights and divides; inclusion and equity; migration, belonging and citizenship; human rights and gender; just society.
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Living labs and dialogue, capacity building and empowerment processes.
To research urban laboratories (living labs) that promote bottom-up initiatives to achieve high levels of participation, empowerment and capacity building of citizens in order to develop innovative processes towards inclusive and sustainable urban regeneration that take account of their identity(ies) and plurality of voices.
Keywords: Collaborative platforms; co-production; decision making; sustainability of processes; local cultures and identities; communities of practice and interest; active and participatory citizenship; shared governance.
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Material and immaterial cultural heritage and the transformations in built environment.
To investigate the cultural heritage, both material and immaterial, which emerges from social experience and from transformations of the built environment and historical landscapes, with the aim of mapping and understanding the production of these spaces and places and their meaning for collective memory.
Keywords: cultural landscapes; genius loci; memory; theory and history of architecture and urbanism; archaeology; placemaking; public space; reuse; digital and virtual plans; urban visuality; disputed spaces and places.
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Urban cultural discourses and practices, knowledge production and social dynamisation.
To map urban cultures and practices that deepen understanding of the social dynamics and knowledge production of societies, aiming to bridge historic and contemporary developments and to highlight the relevance of the history and memories of cities and the agency of citizens.
Keywords: sociocultural construction and cohesion; citizen science; polyvocality, mediation and translation; identities, pluralities and intercultural dynamics; networks, cultures and digital lives; territorial attachment and sense of belonging.
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Artistic, architectural and urban practices as creative interventions in society.
To analyze, critique and catalyze interventions of contemporary culture, from art to architecture, urbanism to tourism, that promote sustainable approaches and alternatives to mainstream policies and practices that are responsible for the economic and social crises of the last 20 years.
Keywords: action-research; cultural mapping; alternative politics; participatory design; tactical urbanism; creative and regenerative tourism; community art; artivism; resistances and contestations; reflexive urban decoding/recoding.
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The role of nature in urban and rural space and the dialogue with human-based ecosystems
To rethink the role of nature in cities, not just as a green structure but as an ecosystem that can transform people's ways of life. This axis aims to develop platforms for dialogue between social and human sciences and environmental sciences, where, for example, agriculture and biodiversity are interwoven with culture and solidarity economy.
Keywords: green infrastructure and nature-based solutions; rurality, urbanity and urban-rural relations; ecological crisis; habitat and biodiversity; more-than-human ecologies; green transition; ecological and environmental justice; well-being; mobilities.
