Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CoprodAction (CoprodAction: Addressing the coproduction of urban environment in Quito, Ecuador)
Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2024-09-30
CoprodAction addresses the problem of societal restructurings stemming from rapidly advancing climate change in combination with the current COVID-19 pandemic that has triggered major additional challenges in cities across the Globe, and especially in Global South. The case of the Comuna de Santa Clara de San Millán in Quito reveals both critical encounters of these multidimensional problems and also community-based innovative experiments that have achieved coproduction of more sustainable and resilient urban environments. The main objective of CoprodAction is to understand to what extent the application of community-led practices influences or contributes to improving the coproduction of such environments, affecting the effectiveness of urban planning and social equality. To this end, CoprodAction will employ both qualitative and socio-spatial approaches. Therefore, the research will be developed through theoretical research about practices and concepts, including the comparison between conceptualization and application of co-producing urban environments. Further, the empirical research includes both traditional spatial analysis, ethnographic analysis and collaborative analysis, such as co-mapping and permanent coproduction laboratory with local actors as civic organizations, NGOs, municipal authorities, urban planners and other relevant stakeholders. The project will provide in-depth understanding on how such alternative knowledge may inform and contribute to the elaboration and implementation of novel approaches for the governance of contested urban territories, with transferable results to other geographical contexts in cities across Latin America and Global South. Finally, it defines a new and broader conceptual framework of coproduction, and also processes and mechanisms preparatory to the success of coproduction. Further, it presents a co-designed proposal for updating and adapting the planning and transformation model of the resilient, sustainable and equity-oriented urban environment.
“CoprodAction: Addressing the coproduction of urban environment in Quito, Ecuador” is a research project is SOC -Social Science and Humanities Scientific area hold on by Institute of Regional Science (IfR) of KIT. It is an HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships action.
CoprodAction is seeking to better understand how people shape, negotiate, imagine and collaboratively manage their environments. Hence, the main research aim of CoprodAction is to understand to what extent the application of community-led practice influences or contributes to improve the coproduction of more sustainable and resilient urban environments. CoprodAction projects addresses three specific gaps, that are (i) the lack of empirical research about institutional environments allowing the coproduction of resilient and sustainable urban environments in marginalised neighbourhoods; (ii) the community-led coproduction of space has not been sufficiently explored as a viable solution capable to improve resilience and to face vulnerability and (iii) how self-organisation may activate alternative understandings of space and society and inspire novel epistemological paradigms for change and development, as well as informing the institutional practice of urban governance. Therefore, CoprodAction methodological approach addresses each of research objectives (ROs) and their relative applied methods and steps. Firstly, CoprodAction compares community-based practices with the official rhetoric on SDG and urban governance); more specifically, the research follows the methodological path of the critical policy analysis based on archival and desktop research, as well as socio-spatial analysis and in-depth interviews. This phase allows for the discovery of hidden knowledge, as well as theoretical and experiential frameworks that may not be fully apparent to those engaged in the field. In this way, documents, information, and policy and planning systems are brought to the surface, enabling comparisons with other case studies and illuminating both relative and absolute strengths and weaknesses. Secondly, it analyses the transformative potential of community-based urban planning and practices of coproducing by doing an extensive effort in further in-depth interviews, and extensive ethnographic research; moreover, the project will perform periodical collaborative mapping workshops with local stakeholders. This step provides insight into the real mechanisms of local co-production, alliances and rivalries, and the gears that enable the co-creation of sustainable habitat fragments as well as resilient community behaviour. In addition, it provides windows of theoretical and conceptual insight that are useful both for local academic circles and for international debate.
Finally, the third step consists in Co-designing a bottom-up model for the collaborative management of contested territories. This delicate phase, is developed by applying collaborative data analysis, stakeholder workshops, and, especially, by performing the long laboratory of co-production with stakeholders, public actors, and citizens. This final step, describes the present and future scenario of the collaborations, contributing to improve citizens' awareness of their territory with its potentials and fragilities, but also allows to arrive at proactive conclusions of shared territory management towards a more sustainable context and a community more aware of resilient behaviours. These results feed into planning guidelines both at the neighbourhood scale and at the municipal and metropolitan management level, thus contributing to the transferability of the results obtained.
CoprodAction is seeking to better understand how people shape, negotiate, imagine and collaboratively manage their environments. Hence, the main research aim of CoprodAction is to understand to what extent the application of community-led practice influences or contributes to improve the coproduction of more sustainable and resilient urban environments. CoprodAction projects addresses three specific gaps, that are (i) the lack of empirical research about institutional environments allowing the coproduction of resilient and sustainable urban environments in marginalised neighbourhoods; (ii) the community-led coproduction of space has not been sufficiently explored as a viable solution capable to improve resilience and to face vulnerability and (iii) how self-organisation may activate alternative understandings of space and society and inspire novel epistemological paradigms for change and development, as well as informing the institutional practice of urban governance. Therefore, CoprodAction methodological approach addresses each of research objectives (ROs) and their relative applied methods and steps. Firstly, CoprodAction compares community-based practices with the official rhetoric on SDG and urban governance); more specifically, the research follows the methodological path of the critical policy analysis based on archival and desktop research, as well as socio-spatial analysis and in-depth interviews. This phase allows for the discovery of hidden knowledge, as well as theoretical and experiential frameworks that may not be fully apparent to those engaged in the field. In this way, documents, information, and policy and planning systems are brought to the surface, enabling comparisons with other case studies and illuminating both relative and absolute strengths and weaknesses. Secondly, it analyses the transformative potential of community-based urban planning and practices of coproducing by doing an extensive effort in further in-depth interviews, and extensive ethnographic research; moreover, the project will perform periodical collaborative mapping workshops with local stakeholders. This step provides insight into the real mechanisms of local co-production, alliances and rivalries, and the gears that enable the co-creation of sustainable habitat fragments as well as resilient community behaviour. In addition, it provides windows of theoretical and conceptual insight that are useful both for local academic circles and for international debate.
Finally, the third step consists in Co-designing a bottom-up model for the collaborative management of contested territories. This delicate phase, is developed by applying collaborative data analysis, stakeholder workshops, and, especially, by performing the long laboratory of co-production with stakeholders, public actors, and citizens. This final step, describes the present and future scenario of the collaborations, contributing to improve citizens' awareness of their territory with its potentials and fragilities, but also allows to arrive at proactive conclusions of shared territory management towards a more sustainable context and a community more aware of resilient behaviours. These results feed into planning guidelines both at the neighbourhood scale and at the municipal and metropolitan management level, thus contributing to the transferability of the results obtained.
CoprodAction provides access to ancestral forms of co-production, thus unique to the territory under study. These forms of land management are conceptually aligned with recently published academic results, yet they differ in certain socio-spatial urban factors that thus contribute to enriching the range of urban habitat co-production practices. Moreover, they provide interesting avenues regarding forms of co-governance and sharing of responsibilities and competences on the territory by uniquely stitching together the neighbourhood scale with the metropolitan scale, translating ancestral practices (so called “mingas”) into modernised tools introduced in ordinary and extraordinary land planning and management. In addition, it demonstrates a new role for the academy in making a direct and significant impact in the transition to sustainability and urban awareness.