Sida Consolidation Year 2020–2021
In early 2020, Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, granted Chalmers as host of Mistra Urban Futures funding for a “Consolidation Phase” during 2020. This grant amounted to 10 MSEK. The main objective was to extract, collect, reflect and help institutionalise good practices and share the findings of Mistra Urban Futures programme to relevant target groups.
The expected outcome was that practitioners, urban policy makers, researchers and civil society in low and middle-income countries would co-create knowledge and engage multi-stakeholder groups in solving urban problems that matter to people living in poverty. By sharing and discussing findings with targeted stakeholders at local, national and global levels, and by strengthening the capacity of cities and research institutions we would substantially leverage the overall impact of the Mistra Urban Futures programme and contribute to the realisation of just cities.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic, declared in March 2020, considerably changed the playing field, plans and budgets for the year. Thanks to Sida, it was possible to rethink and reschedule the project and also to add 3 more months, hence prolonging the project to 31 March 2021.
The 15-months programme during the period from January 2020 through March 2021 was coordinated by Gothenburg Centre for Sustainable Develoment (GMV) with local leadership for clusters of activities in Cape Town, Kisumu and Gothenburg.
The consolidation phase of the programme includes the following partners:
- Urban Futures and Gothenburg Centre for Sustainable Development (GMV) at Chalmers and University of Gothenburg,
- the African Centre for Cities at University of Cape Town, South Africa,
- the KLIP Trust in Kisumu, Kenya,
- other partners in Sheffield, Skåne, Shimla, Buenos Aires and at Royal Holloway, London.
The 15-months programme was built around 11 work packages and a number of events, some of which had to be cancelled whereas others were developed to replace the physical events.
Mistra Urban Futures was established in 2010 to promote urban sustainability through transdisciplinary research and co-production of knowledge with local and global stakeholders. Mistra Urban Futures has successfully pioneered research and transdisciplinary collaboration in different urban settings such as Cape Town, Kisumu, Gothenburg, Sheffield/Manchester, Buenos Aires and Shimla breaking out of traditional silos to address concrete problems related to transportation, housing, waste management etc. The funding from Mistra ended on 31 December 2019.
Please contact Jan Riise for more information.
Photo by Ashley Jurius on Unsplash
