The Open City Initiative is a new global network of transdisciplinary education, research, and societal partnerships. The focus is on issues related to cities as open frontier spaces that belong to everyone, and urban studies that are widely open to any discipline. In the face of current events (e.g. BLM, climate crises, pandemic-lockdown, widespread urban evictions) in established cities and the rapid pace of urbanisation across continents, there is an increasing need for an open platform to tackle the urgent societal questions regarding inclusivity, sustainability, and ‘openness’ of urban spaces and research. To provide such a platform, the Initiative has joined forces from geographers, urban planners, anthropologists, humanity and international development scholars at Utrecht University.
The Initiative will be launched through a series of webinars and workshops planned in two weeks from March 16 to March 26. They will provide an opportunity for sharing and exchange of knowledge about the Open City. A wide range of academic and nonacademic speakers will be present, such as NGOs, activists, researchers and students.
Who we are
The organization of the initiative is led by: Abigail Friendly, Kei Otsuki, Francesca Pilo (Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning); Martijn Oosterbaan (Department of Anthropology), and Babette Berrocal (Centre for Global Challenges, UGlobe) at Utrecht University.
If you have any questions regarding one of our events, please feel free to contact us by e-mail through: opencity@uu.nl
Webinars & Workshops
- Keynote: Open City: The Spatial Justice of Urban Sutainability | March 16, 14:30–15:45 (CET)
- Webinar: Pandemic (In)securities: Violence and Order-Making | March 17, 13:00 – 15:00 (CET time)
- Webinar: Coping with Corona in the Margins: Urban Vulnerabilities and Inequalities | March 18, 13:00 – 15:00 (CET time)
- Workshop: Inclusive Cities and Global Urban Transformations | March 19, 13:00 – 15:00 (CET time)
- Workshop: The More-Than-Human City | March 23, 10:00 – 12:00 (CET time)
- Webinar: Sustainable Solutions for Open Cities: How Citizens Deal and Shape Energy and Climate Challenges | March 24, 13:00 – 15:00 (CET time)
- Webinar: Politicizing the Pandemic: Legitimacy, Integrity and Governance | March 25, 13:00 – 15:00 (CET time)
- The Open City Initiative: Future Steps | March 26, 15:30 – 16:45
For more information and how to register, visit the website here.
Last Updated: 22nd March 2021 by Coordinator
Research report: How collective action can influence the direction of a land reform: lessons learned from civil society mobilisation in Senegal
How collective action can influence the direction of a land reform: lessons learned from civil society mobilisation in Senegal
Download the report here.
Reference: Delville, P., Diagne, D., Richebourg, C. (2021). Influencer collectivement les orientations d’une réforme foncière : enseignements de la mobilisation des organisations de la société civile au Sénégal. IIED, London.
https://pubs.iied.org/12610FIIED
Last Updated: 22nd March 2021 by Coordinator
Arab Land Initiative: Women and Land
Women’s housing, land and property rights are catalyst to ensure the social and economic development of communities and increase food security. They contribute to the realisation and enjoyment of a broad range of human rights such as the right to adequate standard of living, adequate housing, health, work and education. Housing, land and property rights increase women’s empowerment and participation in decision making within the household and in the public life. They help protecting women from gender-based violence and other health hazards, and they enable women to play an active role in the stabilization of societies affected by crisis and conflict.
The challenges women face in relation to the access and enjoyment of their housing, land and property rights is part of the broader gender inequalities that reflect many aspects of the Arab society. The Women and Land Campaign promoted by UN-Habitat, the Global Land Tool Network and the Arab Land Initiative aims at raising awareness on how to overcome such challenges and at empowering women to improve their housing, land and property rights while drawing the public’s attention to this important theme.
The Campaign is promoted by UN-Habitat, as part of its mandate to achieve a better urban future for all, and by the partners of the Stand for Her Land Campaign, including the World Bank, the International Land Coalition, Landesa, and Habitat for Humanity.
Visit the website of this campaign here!
Last Updated: 28th May 2021 by Coordinator
LANDac Discussion Starter UN FSS: “Centering Women’s Land Rights for Equitable Food Systems Transformation”
Centering Women’s Land Rights for Equitable Food Systems Transformation: A discussion starter on UN FSS Action Track 1: Safe and nutritious food for all
As part of the Decade of Action, the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021 (UN FSS) focuses on ‘bold new actions, solutions and strategies’ to transform food production and consumption and progress on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is because the success of each SDG relies, to varying degrees, on healthy diets and sustainable and equitable food systems. The COVID-19 crisis shows that transformative change and nutritional resilience are more urgent than ever, especially for the most marginalized. With slow and unequal progress on malnutrition, and with hunger and obesity on the rise, food systems must become nutritious and efficient, but also equitable and inclusive so that no one is left behind.
This discussion starter, written by Michelle McLinden Nuijen, poses that the governance of tenure—or the ways society manages access to, control over, and use of land and natural resources —is a fundamental pillar of any food system. Women’s land rights especially are fundamental to the long-term sustainability of the food system as a whole as well as to reaching progress on all SDGs.
Download the full discussion starter for the UN FSS here.
Posted: 19th March 2021 by Coordinator
OPINION: Why are tribal women in India still robbed of their land rights?
Shipra Deo is Landesa’s director of women’s land rights in India, explores in this opinion piece in Thomson Reuters why tribal women in India are robbed of their land rights.
When it comes to land ownership, India’s culture and practices have always been discriminatory to women, but women in tribal society are doubly disadvantaged, first as women and second as tribal women. Widowhood only compounds these problems. Inheritance rules for tribal communities are governed by customary laws, not by statutory rules that apply in non-tribal areas.
Why is this so? The lawful ‘owners in waiting’ who are men by default, see a single woman – whether a widow, sister or mother – as a barrier to the full control over and enjoyment of their rights. They perpetrate all kinds of violence – physical, verbal, emotional, sexual – to evict women from the land or the property that they are waiting to own.
Read the full opinion piece by Shipra Deo here.
Last Updated: 19th March 2021 by Coordinator
Studentship opportunity: PhD scholarship on The Housing ‘Trilemma’: Geographies of Precarity in Rural Scotland
Deadline for applications: 31st March 2021
This PhD studentship seeks to understand how precarity is produced, experienced and resisted in relation to housing in rural Scotland, in order to develop a novel ‘housing trilemma’ approach. Discussions of precarity might include, for instance, ideas surrounding housing security, affordability, quality and access, but also broader relations with income (in)security, work, migration and social dimensions such as family connections.
The new ‘housing trilemma’ will explore the relative importance of different dimensions of precarity, contributing to contemporary debates in Geography and Housing Studies. It will also be used to identify tensions and trade-offs informing future government policy concerning rural and island housing in Scotland. There will therefore be conceptual and policy outcomes gained from the studentship, which although focused on Scotland, will have relevance for many countries where housing in rural areas is under pressure.
Information on the project, eligibility and how to apply on GradHub is available on the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science webpage.
For more information, visit the website here.
Posted: 19th March 2021 by Coordinator
Opening of 2 PhD positions at VUB and KU Leuven in the field of housing and neighborhood studies
Deadline for application: 3rd May 2021
For a new project on ‘Reconceptualizing the right to housing from a personal and neighborhood perspective’ Cosmopolis Centre of Urban Research of Vrije Universiteit Brussel and OSA Urbanism & Architecture of KU Leuven are jointly recruiting two PhD researchers. Reconceptualizing the right to housing from a personal and neighborhood perspective. Public housing systems are under pressure due to the limited offer, declining social cohesion and increasing shifts towards private provision and middle-income target groups. In response to a permanent housing crisis and declining public housing systems, civil society, activist groups and housing movements are setting up new housing initiatives. We are interested to understand how the right to housing is guaranteed or reclaimed in the new bottom-up initiatives and in the public housing strategies that aim to provide affordable housing solutions. In deprived or low-income neighborhoods the spatial expression of the housing crisis becomes apparent in substandard housing conditions, affordable housing shortage and processes of social exclusion and gentrification. On the personal level, poor and insecure housing conditions produce residential alienation. Based on a mapping of affordable housing solutions and in-depth interviews with residents of these new initiatives and public housing projects in two neighborhoods in Brussels and Antwerp, we aim to contribute to a new theoretical understanding of the right to housing. By reconceptualizing the right to housing from a personal and neighborhood perspective, we contribute to a better understanding of the legitimacy of affordable housing solutions, whether they are public or bottom-up initiatives or combinations of both.
Offer
We offer two full-time PhD fellowships for 48 months starting inSeptember 2021under the joint supervision of profs. Ryckewaert, d’Auria and Aernouts.The PhD candidates will be hired at Cosmopolis VUB or OSA KU Leuven respectively, and will spendtheir research time in both research units. The candidates will enroll as PhD students at VUB and KU Leuven and will obtain a joint-PhD degree from both institutions.
For more information and how to apply, click here.
Posted: 19th March 2021 by Coordinator
Land MDPI Special Issue “Land Perspectives: People, Tenure, Planning, Tools, Space, and Health”
Good land administration helps to secure property tenures. It also protects the land rights of people (including individuals, communities, and the state) through good governance principles and practices. Therefore, probing land administration practices—whether in developed or developing countries—is essential to developing tools or methods for securing natural resource rights for people, especially for youth and women. Understanding the land and health or wellbeing nexus is crucial for adequate living conditions for people in living urban, peri-urban, and rural areas. A broad knowledge gap exists on the land/water/forest–people–health–wellbeing nexus of natural resource administration research and practical tools.
This Special Issue presents insights on theories and practices on land administration in the context of land/water/forest–people–health–wellbeing nexus relationships. We, therefore, invite conceptual, case studies, field research, and review articles focusing on (but not limited to) the following themes:
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2021.
Special Issue Editors
Guest Editor
Interests: land methods; land-use/spatial planning; land tenure; land management; land administration; land governance/policy; rural/(peri)urban development; women’s land rights
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals
Guest Editor
Interests: land use change, natural resource management, land use planning, environmental governance; rural-–urban interaction, social justice; disaster risk reduction; extreme events; sustainable development goals
Guest Editor
Interests: environment governance; production of space; land use and management; rural-urban interactions; sustainable development goals; gender issues; inequality
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals
For more information, please visit the website here.
Last Updated: 19th March 2021 by Coordinator
Young Farmers Open Letter Contest
Young Farmers Open Letter Contest
BACKGROUND
In 2020, the consortium Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA) and La Via Campesina (LVC) through the ASEAN Farmers’ Organisation Support Programme (AFOSP) – Asia-Pacific Farmers’ Program (APFP) platform conducted the “Young Farmers Dance Challenge” with the following objectives: 1) to attract young people to join Farmers Organizations; 2) to build friendship and cooperation among young farmers; and, 3) to raise awareness about young farmers contribution in preventing the spread of COVID19 as well as their contribution in the recovery from the pandemic. The contest was participated by 15 young farmers groups from Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Visit this page for more information: https://asiapacificfarmersforum.net/young-farmers-dance-challenge/
As a continuation of the efforts to promote agriculture to the youth, AFA-LVC will hold another activity aimed at young farmers: the “Young Farmers Open Letter Contest”. This activity will be a platform for young farmers to express to policymakers their story and the challenges they face in farming, and at the same to communicate these issues to a bigger audience via social media.
OBJECTIVES
The Young Farmers Open Letter Competition aims to:
WHO CAN JOIN
• Young farmers (15 to 35 years old)
• Must be a member of any of the farmers’ groups within the AFOSP-APFP partners (as certified by NFO and NIA)
For more information, please visit the website here.
Last Updated: 4th March 2021 by Coordinator
The Open City Initiative
The Initiative will be launched through a series of webinars and workshops planned in two weeks from March 16 to March 26. They will provide an opportunity for sharing and exchange of knowledge about the Open City. A wide range of academic and nonacademic speakers will be present, such as NGOs, activists, researchers and students.
Who we are
The organization of the initiative is led by: Abigail Friendly, Kei Otsuki, Francesca Pilo (Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning); Martijn Oosterbaan (Department of Anthropology), and Babette Berrocal (Centre for Global Challenges, UGlobe) at Utrecht University.
If you have any questions regarding one of our events, please feel free to contact us by e-mail through: opencity@uu.nl
Webinars & Workshops
For more information and how to register, visit the website here.
Last Updated: 3rd March 2021 by Coordinator
MLRF | Vacancy Communications and Event Management Specialist
The Mekong Region Land Governance together with our partners; FAO and Land Portal will be organising the Mekong Regional Land Forum 2021 in May. We are currently looking for a Communications and Event Management Specialist. The application is pretty short as we will be closing on 24 February. The Applicant will be contracted for 25 working days. Compensation will be commensurate with the successful applicant’s qualifications and competitive with global standards in the industry. More information about the position here.