As part of the TPS-based Rurban Futures Collective, this project works at the interface (i.e., spatial, social, cultural, political, technological) between the ‘rural’ and the ‘urban’, or rurban. Specifically, we propose a rurban lens to explore and re-imagine rural-urban socio-economic interconnections, everyday materiality and practices, and desirable future pathways. By engaging in experiencing alternative futures through transdisciplinary design and creative methods, we aim to explore the prefigurative potential of such methods and their capacity to affect collective imaginaries about inhabiting rurban space, practising rurban lifestyles, and generating new narratives of sustainable futures. We also focus on political and governance questions behind shifts in everyday practices and on possibilities for collective action to shape and achieve desirable sustainable futures.
The project has three objectives:
- Developing a conceptual and methodological ‘rurban’ framework, centred on recontextualising and relocating sustainability debates through civic engagement, and informing an alternative to growth-driven technological innovation based on inclusive processes of knowledge coproduction and conviviality.
- Examining the imaginative process of knowledge coproduction through prototyping spatial and/or technological interventions in the socio-technical contexts in which local sustainability issues unfold.
- Defining and assessing ‘impact’ in relation to the use of creative methodologies and tools to stimulate engagement, imagination, and action (e.g., shifts in everyday practices, policy implementations).
The project partners with Rurban Ateliers (knowledge networks and citizen-centred laboratories focused on experimentation and collaborative learning, urban commoning, and community agriculture projects. A PhD research project works in parallel with the project.