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Info and Program

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The United Nations’ New Urban Agenda (NUA, 2016) aims at fostering sustainable and resilient urban development worldwide. It calls for innovative action in the field of territorial governance and spatial planning. In this light,UNI‐NUA aims at developing a better understanding of the mechanisms and opportunities for universities’ engagement in complex territorial governance processes and of the actual potentials for knowledge transfer and multidisciplinary joint action in territorial policies, and spatial planning practices.

Practices in which researchers are involved can empower different actors,either through capacity building processes or thanks to other interventionsand initiatives that may also include direct consultancy for public of private sector. A crucial issue concerns demand‐driven/oriented research dynamics and the degree of researchers’ independency in times of R&D public spending cuts. Contributions are expected on applied research experiences (for instance, city labs, spin‐off), legal frameworks, social responsibility which characterise the third mission of universities in the field.Moreover, universities may strongly influence urban development dynamics through their action as collective urban players. Hence, the Seminar willreflect on the urban agenda of universities and on its links with the sustainability goals, with particular attention to the SDG11. The NUA also calls for new training of professionals in the field of planning. In more general terms, some universities are adapting their courses and programs to take into the objectives of the Urban Agenda and the SDGs, and to create new learning environments. A session will focus on examples andpractices from different universities in Europe, Asia and US.