As a consortium of Higher Education Institutes (HEI) in urban areas (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Lisbon, Paris, Vienna) we are increasingly aware that we, students, teaching & research staff, have a role in contributing to develop a more sustainable, inclusive and resilient economy and society in our cities. We build on experience since 2007 with an international intercity cooperation programme for students: International Virtual Consulting Firm (IVCF) related to city marketing questions from companies & municipal departments. In 2020 the needs of cities and HEIs have changed. Cities struggle to reclaim a balance between the popular central area and unpopular peripheral areas. The narrative of cities needs to be enlarged. Urban peripheral areas are new centres of interest. HEIs need to prepare students to be critical thinkers in the age of information and for jobs which have not yet been defined. The Researching the City: Mapping Imaginaries (IMAGE) method combines these needs. A new approach uses mapping tools to bring attention to the peripheral, often neglected, areas of our cities and maps them as enclaves of dynamism and creativity. With this method students are trained to actively search for information, stimulating critical thinking. Students work with city partners such as city council, inhabitants, citizens initiatives and local cultural organisations and companies on real life societal challenges. In interdisciplinary and intercultural settings they share their research findings with colleague students abroad in this way enhancing the solutions to include knowledge and experience from other cities. This cooperation as partners is the core of this method. Original partners in the IVCF cooperation, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Ramon Lull University/Blanquerna and Ecole Supérieure de Gestion de Commerce Paris are joined by University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna and Escola Superior de Comunicação Social at Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa. At least 10 city partners are involved as associate partners. Cooperating in the assignment design with specific examples, expertise and network. Also contributing to teaching material and training of teaching staff. During the final interactive conference they present and showcase on location. Data generated by the project is used by them in their policy plans and implementation of solutions. METHODOLOGY The 2-year project will produce 6 Intellectual Outputs (IO) together forming the IMAGE teaching & research method. Each IO and activity is led by a HEI based of its experience and expertise. During three testing pilot rounds teaching staff will design a prototype, test, evaluate and then revise the prototype with all stakeholders, students, teaching staff, city partners. All partners feel joint and equal responsibility for the results of the project. Three pilots for students and teaching staff to work with the IMAGE method, will contribute to the dissemination of the project within the HEIs and partners. Two training events will prepare the teaching staff for the development and running of the pilots. Transnational Project meetings will contribute to team building, the common understanding of the project, the tasks, the responsibilities and the lines of communication. A final multiplier event will present and share the results of the project. A popular scientific magazine and a documentary will show the training of students, the mapping of the peripheries, the train the trainers and the outcomes of the student research findings. A community of practice on Researching the city is established including stakeholders from HEIs and city partners. RESULTS & IMPACT A suite of open access materials (IOs) can be used by everyone to implement the IMAGE method; the Knowledge Hub platform, teaching case & process guide, teacher training material, mapping toolkit. Individual impact: students develop in their understanding of places and their employability skills, including first generation HEI students from peripheral areas. Teaching Staff become researching the city experts. Inhabitants and city partners in the city peripheries experience an uplift of the image of the area they live in and feel empowered. Institutional impact: IMAGE is an influential research-based didactical method at all partner HEIs and part of the curricula. Regional/National/international impact: engaged extended European intercity network of stakeholders, including HEIs, municipalities, business and civil life. Peripheral areas have become more visible and prestigious, an integrated part of the city as a whole. Beyond project time IMAGE is to be further disseminated within partner university networks to enhance growth of collaboration projects. Project results will be multiplied outside the local project teams in each (city) partner via the media in the cities and in an Expanded Researching the City Network. Written during Covid-19 times, IMAGE gives us hope for the future.
With the development of IMAGE we wanted to achieve a more active involvement of all participants and implicated (local) parties by stimulating research and cooperation between students and city partners as a way of learning in-and-from-within places. In prior years we had experienced that becoming more aware and acknowledged of local urban dynamics could help to better capture the nature of our cities and to go beyond the national and global images and stereotypes that are still influencing (European) international relations and academia. By operationalizing an intercity cooperation in-and-from-within we stimulated a more equalitarian basis for cooperation at all levels. Students working together at a distance in international intercity teams with a Researching the City Mapping Imaginaries methodology became better equipped to get into local places imaginaries in a more authentic and elaborate way. It also wanted to emphasize the importance of vernacular languages as carriers of meanings. Connecting and understanding places in-and-from-within helped to shed new light in the process of intercity cooperation and co-creation by actually contributing to a more up to date mapping of our cities including their flows of connectivity.
As a consortium of Higher Education Institutes (HEI) in urban areas in Amsterdam (Zuidoost), Barcelona (el Raval), Lisbon (Carnide), Paris (La Defènse) and Vienna (St Marx) we became increasingly aware that we, students, teaching & research staff, have a role in contributing to develop a more sustainable, inclusive and resilient economy and society in our cities. We wanted to turn our awareness into specific actions. In order to become involved we required a method of continuous learning and informed knowledge about our cities. The Researching the City: Mapping Imaginaries (IMAGE) method. We saw that our understanding of places and ditto economies was very much influenced by strong binaries between what is seen as attractive in a city and what is not attractive. This meant that our areas, often understood as peripheries, remained under the radar. Thanks to the support of Erasmus+ we found each other in the aim to visualize and connect our cities, with a more up-to-date view, understanding cities in their current dynamics describing them as, according to some inspiring literature*, polyphonic and polycentric. *Allen J. Scott, ‘Creative Cities: Conceptual Issues and Policy Questions’, Journal Of Urban Affairs, 28.1 (2015)