We’ve been scoping, meeting, having dialogues and developing plans. And we are excited about the Uppsala Liveable City Forum coming up in November. Here’s a little introduction and background to Live Baltic Campus Uppsala.
Uppsala and the Uppsala region are in an expansive period, and we believe that the active involvement of Uppsala University in this process can play an important role in the development of the whole region.
Uppsala University together with the state property owner Akademiska Hus initiated “Campus Plan 2040”, a vision that will guide the development of the university in the long term. Recently, Uppsala University also adopted a new policy document for sustainability, outlining a program and action plan for how the university – through its research, education and collaboration with other regional societal actors – can contribute to a more sustainable world.
In particular, Uppsala University and the Uppsala municipality (Uppsala kommun) have started a partnership targeted on sustainable urban planning. Hence, the LBC project, highlighting the need for long term and participatory design thinking in the face of current and emerging sustainability challenges, comes at a very timely and interesting moment in the history of Uppsala University and its relationship with the wider Uppsala region.
Our hands-on project within the LBC is to distill out various campus development scenarios of the Polacksbacken campus area, a campus area which together with the surrounding rapidly growing townships will be a site for major change in the coming decades.
Moreover, our further and more general project, closely connected to the realisation of the Campus Plan 2040, is to create a physical meeting & maker space in the center of Uppsala. This space, which is under construction and which we tentatively label as a “Sustainability Hub”, will in itself act as a lab and prototyped space for participatory and sustainable campus/urban development in Uppsala during 2017.
The explicit research projects that will be carried out will investigate (i) geographical presumptions for lively and flourishing campus milieus, and (ii) the institutional dilemma of participatory and collaborative design from a political science perspective. We will also actively involve students, through CEMUS and other channels, in research projects. More on all of this to follow in future posts.
Participants from UU and partners:
– University management; Kay Svensson
– Building division; Annika Sundås Larsson and Anna Wikström
– Institute for Housing and Urban Research and Department of Government; Nils Hertting
– Department of Social and Economic Geography; Jan Amcoff
– Center for Environment and Development Studies (CEMUS); Isak Stoddard, Lakin Anderson and Sanna Gunnarsson
– Department of Chemistry – Ångström Laboratory; Henrik Ottosson
– Uppsala University Innovation; Pirkko Tamsen
– Innovation support in the Uppsala region; Per Lundequist
– Uppsala municipality; Johan Elfström
Posted by: Lakin Anderson
