URO provides a world-leading trans-disciplinary platform for the study of civic participation, spatial practices and co-design in cities both nationally and internationally in a historical and contemporary perspective. If technological matter can be considered the hardware and people living in urban areas the software of cities, then URO is concerned with understanding and co-designing the social infrastructure constituted by people, physical matter and technologies; and, in so doing, forge new and generative public and private partnerships.
Cities are increasingly becoming a key concern for researchers, policy-makers and not least the growing number of people living in urban areas. By 2011, more than half of the world’s population lived in cities and with a yearly growth rate on 3% this proportion will most likely rise to three-quarters by 2050. With this rapid urban growth, a number of critical issues have emerged that pressure the cohesion and stability of cities throughout the world: uncontrolled urban expansion, the effects of migration, gentrification and displacement, lack of access to basic services, growing poverty rates, poor housing conditions, intensified surveillance regimes and ethnic and political conflicts.
With URO, it is our ambition to
