News from our Research and Teaching

As Senegal grapples with the negative impacts of globalised industrial food systems, agroecology is regaining momentum as a sustainable alternative. Within the ARTS programme, we seek to better understand the country’s agricultural transition.

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As a possible solution to growing housing unaffordability, housing cooperatives have attracted increasing attention in Switzerland. High time for the big picture!

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Many cities around the world aim to grow through urban densification, the process of adding new land uses to the existing city. At the same time, many cities seek to expand and improve the availability of urban green spaces. In her PhD, Jessica Verheij researched how cities combine both sustainability goals despite scarce land available.  
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The excessive use and unequal distribution of resources in urban areas pose urgent socio-ecological challenges to sustainability. Urban commons have been proposed a potential to promote sustainability. As an alternative mode of resource governance besides the state and the market they open the case for thinking beyond public-private partnerships – Tianzhu Liu on exploring the urban commons-public partnership in Switzerland.
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What happens when a community's desire for recreational and educational spaces clashes with the relentless march of commercial development? This question drew me to Tema, Ghana, for my PhD field research.
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Many cities in the Global South are growing rapidly and face enormous planning challenges. In central Kumasi, Ghana, the redevelopment of the central market shows that urban planners often ignore the importance of public spaces in the livelihood strategies of women as informal urban workers.
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Many agri-food products are labelled with sustainability claims. However, the standards of most certification schemes are set and enforced by actors based in the global North, and are intended for consumers in those countries. The Participatory Guarantee System – a farmer-to-farmer certification scheme – was introduced to change this. Does it always deliver what is promised?

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In the social life of indigenous communities in Ghana, commonality and reciprocity are deeply rooted principles for organising key resources such as land and housing. How can collective provision of essential goods contribute to sustainable transformations?

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Worldwide, over a quarter of all protected areas are designated by two or more designations. What does this tell us about the utility of protected areas as spatial conservation instruments? In her thesis, Alexandra Murphy examined the case of four partially overlapping protected areas in Engadina Bassa/Val Müstair in Switzerland. Here she shows what relevance protected areas really have in socio-ecological systems.

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Urban densification is a crucial topic in contemporary urban planning, with many countries adopting policies to combat urban sprawl. Despite differences, these nations face similar challenges due to complex property rights in the existing built environment. In her PhD  project, Josje Bouwmeester examined how planning negotiations between planners and landowners shape housing outcomes in densification projects.
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Our colleague, Dr. Deniz Ay, gave a guest lecture in our Political Ecology and Spatial Development course, where she provided a feminist political ecology perspective on how to operationalise “strong sustainability” objectives in urban redevelopment.
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In what ways do local communities use communal land tenure to resist the consequences of climate change and the processes of vulnerabilization imposed by the political and economic elites? 
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Property rights are formative for how actors can gain access to resources, use them or exploit them. An integrative analysis of the distribution of resources is not possible without a stringent understanding of property itself.
An article by Jean-David Gerber

In last week's session of our course on ‘Political Ecology and Spatial Development’, Paavo Monkkonen from UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs presented his research on the housing crisis in the U.S. state of California.

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