Urban vacancy in Europe: A synthetic review and research agenda
Although still a niche within established disciplines, research on urban vacancy has boomed in recent decades, with di;erent research communities investigating different dimensions of vacancy. However, these communities rarely communicate with each other, leading to parallel debates, di;erent conceptual vocabularies and diverging empirical foci. This becomes particularly problematic in the current era, which is best characterized not simply as an ’urban age’, but as one in which city regions find themselves at the heart of economic, ecological and societal crises that are reshaping our world. Vacant spaces can be understood as symptoms of these crises, but also as actually existing and potential sites for experimentation, prefiguring new and more sustainable ways of urban living. To develop this perspective conceptually and empirically, the current paper offers a synthetic review of the existing literature, with a specific focus on the European context. Cutting across different research domains, the paper concludes by proposing an interdisciplinary research agenda on urban vacancy.
Caring is Owning. Designing community welfare infrastructures for a resilient city
As part of the WELCOMIN project, this intensive international workshop explores the limitations and potentials of community ownership and community welfare mixed infrastructures in Brussels. In the framework of a prospective approach and supported by the input of international experts and local actors, research by design will allow envisioning spatial, functional and governance arrangements that can lay the foundation for caring and community-centred policies and cities.