Care-Informed Urban Planning: Learnings and Exchange Across Countries and Sectors
We are excited to announce an upcoming workshop to be held on September 3rd, 2024 at Flemingsberg, Södertörn University, Stockholm. This event is a collaborative effort by our project team from Södertörn University, with Miriam Williams from Macquarie University, Australia, and Johanna Ohlsson from University College Stockholm.
Spatial planning, as a professional practice and form of urban governance, focuses also on the health and well-being of humans and environments through transformative strategies such as infrastructure provisioning, resource allocation, land-use strategies, and environmental regulations (Gunder et al., 2017). Current crises have raised awareness of the need for new approaches to address existing and emerging socio-economic and environmental problems. These crises prompt reflection on who is responsible for caring for people and the planet, and whose responsibility it should be to facilitate flourishing.
Care is a vital human need and practice (Lawson, 2007; Williams, 2020; Power & Williams, 2020), central to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 11: “Sustainable Cities and Communities” (UN, 2015). Yet, during the last pandemic, we woke to the reality of care beeing largely neglected and there is a need to open up the debate and further work on care practice as it is vital to creating inclusive, just, resilient, and sustainable cities (Williams, 2017; Fine & Tronto, 2020).
Exploring Care Ethics in Urban Planning
Care-informed planning is informed by the Ethic of Care, rooted in empathetic relationships and contextual responsiveness. It is a normative framework and transformative ethics, defined by Tronto and Fisher (1990) as “a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible.” As such it offers a transformative lens through which to reevaluate urban planning strategies and provide a foundational principle for navigating contemporary social and environmental challenges toward more sustainable urban environments.
Purpose of the Workshop
We recognize the importance of individual approaches, strategies, frameworks, and projects that challenge prevailing models privileging capital generation over collective well-being. As an emerging area of urban scholarship, there is a need to further explore and understand these approaches and examples, and to discuss the possibilities and challenges offered by care-informed planning. This workshop aims to contribute to emerging debates and examples of care-informed planning, creating a space for exchange and learning across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries.
Join us as we delve into the transformative potential of care ethics in urban planning and governance. Through this workshop, we hope to inspire new ways of thinking and foster collaborations that prioritize care and well-being in urban environments.
Day Program
09.00 Welcome by Romina Rodela, Södertörn University
09.15–09.45 Inspirational Opening Talk: Why Care Matters in Spatial Planning: Examples from Australian Planning Theory and Practice Dr. Miriam Williams, Associ Prof at Macquarie University, Australia
10.30–10.45 Coffee Break
10.45–12.30 Presentation of empirical cases
12.30–13.30 Social Lunch
13.30–15.00 Hands-on Activity
15.00–15.15 Coffee Break
15.15–16.15 Discussion: Identifying Key Challenges to Care-Informed Planning Interventions
16.15–16.30 Closing Session and Plans Ahead
NB: All inquiries about the event should be submitted to: romina.rodela@sh.se.
For more further information about our work follow us on https://medium.com/youth-plan).
Stay tuned for more upcoming “In Conversation with Caring Cities” feature interviews here.
