The complex environmental, social, and economic challenges and their interdependencies are inherent to research on sustainability and require holistic and prudent approaches to deal with uncertainties.
Participation, Co-Learning and Co-Creation
Participation, co-learning and co-creation are essential in promoting collaboration and innovation in sustainable urban and regional development. These approaches enable a more comprehensive involvement of heterogeneous actors, creating an environment in which different perspectives can be considered, and solutions can be jointly developed (e.g., GreenCityLabHuế or Build4People). Instead of hierarchical top-down governance, the focus is on the needs and ideas of target groups with special requirements. Knowledge production occurs in the conceptual sense of actionable knowledge.
These approaches form the cornerstone of the SURE collaborative projects. Within the projects, co-learning and co-creation processes are promoted through which solutions in the context of climate change and adaptation are developed together with local actors in Southeast Asia and China. One example is the living lab approach, which avoids hierarchies between science and practice and instead promotes dialogues between all stakeholders (e.g., in URA, PolyUrbanWaters or LIRLAP). Local project offices facilitate co-design, co-development, and co-production processes and their solutions as well as co-dissemination of results (e.g., in FloodAdaptVN). Through co-learning and co-creation processes, knowledge, skills and resources are exchanged between actors and bundled in a targeted manner.