URA Consortium Workshop Berlin #6 (via Zoom)

On 29th of June 2020, the URA German consortium members met on Zoom primarily to discuss the team’s progress on policy and stakeholder analysis for the Definition Phase.  

The meeting began with a presentation by Merlin Lao (ICLEI East Asia Secretariat) mapping the evolution of key policies at local, regional, and national scales in China, including urban-rural integrated development, territorial spatial planning, and rural revitalisation. The team discussed how policy mapping could be translated to the local level to understand the dynamics of selected townships, villages, or neighbourhoods.  

The second presentation by Alex Han (Technische Universität Berlin) began with an introduction to the Circular Economy vision and its implementation in China, and Taizhou specifically. Following this, Alex presented his stakeholder analysis relating to the team’s identified Urban Rural Living Labs and the wider area, gathering relevant documentation and mapping stakeholder clusters on a digital platform. 

In both cases, the constraints of the current pandemic situation were discussed, including the challenges for Science-Policy dialogue and inability of having stakeholder workshops on site, with research currently limited to desk-based work. 

Following this, the team discussed the upcoming URA conference in September 2020 planned in partnership with IBA Thüringen and AEDES Berlin, aiming to stimulate the international conversation on urban-rural integrative planning and governance. The proposed program combines digital and physical formats, split into two days - one focused on planning and governance, and the other on practical approaches. As well as an open discussion on topics and speakers, various formats were deliberated amongst the team, including live streaming of public sessions and films, roundtable discussions, case study and keynote lectures, and internal URA digital workshops with both German and Chinese consortium members.