Symposium: Transforming Cities in Times of Turmoil

Friday 13th September 2024
10:15-15:15
Stichting Historie der Techniek & Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Venue: de Brandweerkantine, Capucijnenstraat 21, Maastricht, https://brandweerkantine.nl/

We would like to invite you to our symposium, “Transforming Cities in Times of Turmoil,” set to take place on Friday, 13th September 2024, in Maastricht. Hosted by the Stichting Historie der Techniek & the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, this symposium delves into discussions around urban sustainability challenges and their implications for urban transformations.

The symposium explores how cities respond to contemporary sustainability challenges, with a specific focus on four key themes: mobility, urban crises and disasters, waste, and extractivism. These themes are deeply intertwined with urban infrastructure and have profound spatial implications. While urban infrastructures are designed to enhance efficiency and comfort and address issues like waste disposal and mobility, they also disrupt the environment and exacerbate climate issues. Moreover, cities are important hubs in global flows of goods, knowledge, data, and natural resources. These flows have big spatial and sustainability impacts on cities.

Interdisciplinary humanities and social science knowledge about (urban) sociotechnical dynamics can make important contributions to urban sustainability challenges. Understanding historical processes and decisions, we can learn how the past continues to condition present and future possibilities. Societal problems of today have a long history and are rooted in choices and decisions made in the past. By knowing their history, we can better understand the reasons for the, often-times tenuous development of transformations, and the persistence of problems.

This symposium aims to delve deeper into questions such as: How can the history and sociology of technology provide insight into the room for urban transformation? How can this knowledge become better aligned with today’s sustainability challenges? And how can scholars in the interdisciplinary field of humanities and social sciences, make their research more actionable and relevant for urban transformation in the future?

We invite scholars studying (urban) sustainability and transformation from different conceptual and methodological perspectives, to participate in this symposium. We hope to welcome around 25-30 participants.

Preliminary Symposium Programme: Transforming Cities in Times of Turmoil

Welcome coffee/tea

Introduction to symposium (Anique Hommels)
10:15-10:30

Session I: Mobility (Chair: Frank Veraart, Tu/E)
10:30-11:30

Jonas van der Straeten (Tu/E)
Denver Nixon & Marc Dijk (UM)

Session II: Crisis and disaster (Chair: TBA)
11:30-12:30

Carola Hein (TU Delft)
Jochen Monstadt (UU)

Lunch
12:30-13:15

Session III: Waste (interview format) (Chair: TBA)
13:15-14:00

Anna Harris (UM) ERC Consolidator project “The Upcycled Clinic”
Hospitals in particular have become sites of disposability in recent years. Attempts to address this can be top-down and technocratic, often still reliant on a mode of further production. The Upcycled Clinic takes a different route into the problem. It focuses on creative practices already happening in the clinic, involving making the most of existing materials. Anna’s team will conduct fieldwork across five carefully selected clinical sites around the world where such improvisations are highlighted due to different constraints, including Antarctica, Ghana, the Netherlands, the U.S and U.K. Her team will do fieldwork and interviews to find out more about the conditions which cultivate and curtail creative material engagement in the clinic. Contributions from the rich case of the clinic aim to help articulate conditions under which healthcare can leverage creativity and pay better attention to local solutions to wastefulness and shortage.

Vincent Lagendijk (UM & Rathenau Institute) project “Radioactive waste in the Netherlands
On behalf of the State Secretary for Infrastructure and Water Management, The Rathenau Institute is working towards an advice on what decision-making on the long-term management of radioactive waste could look like. The file revolves around a technically complex subject. The Netherlands must make decisions about matters that will last far into the future and therefore involve many uncertain factors. The question is how this can be handled in a socially responsible manner. To this end, we look at how radioactive waste policy has been designed since the 1950s, how other European countries have organized their decision-making processes and how the knowledge system is structured. We also look at how experts, stakeholders and citizens think about decision-making and what issues they see. This also concerns the conditions for the participation process, but also questions such as: how do we keep citizens and stakeholders involved for a longer period of time? How do we take the interests of future generations into account?

Session IV: Extractivism (Chair: Wiebe Bijker, UM)
14:00-15:00

Kei Otsuki (UU)
Timothy Makori (UM)

Tea/coffee break
15:00-15:15

Session V: Action and Intervention (Chair: Erik van der Vleuten, Tu/E)
15:15-15:45

Panel discussion with Ernst Homburg, Frank Veraart and others, wrap-up and conclusions

Inaugural lecture Anique Hommels
Transforming Cities in Times of Turmoil: Obduracy, Sustainability and Experimentation
16:30-17:15

Aula UM Bestuursgebouw, Minderbroedersberg 4-6, Maastricht