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FORWARD-LOOKING URBAN INNOVATIONS TRENDBOOK: 
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

​CHALLENGE 
In an increasingly volatile and uncertain world, being committed to learning from past mistakes can make a difference in whether knowledge revolutions embrace the current challenges they are confronted with, or whether they are defeated by them. Urban systems have been especially vulnerable to these ripple effects, blurring the borders between the impacts’ social, economic and environmental aspects.  
In this playing field, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are challenged with cutting across urban challenges and continuing to radically evolve as knowledge institutions. The EU-funded Erasmus+ Urban GoodCamp project empowers HEIs to tackle pressing urban challenges across six European cities (namely, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Ljubljana, Madrid, Paris and Venice) by engaging their local stakeholders in urban communities.  
 
FORWARD-LOOKING URBAN INNOVATIONS TRENDBOOK 
As part of the project activities, we are searching for forward-looking written contributions for a Forward-Looking Urban Innovations Trendbook. Based on the consortium’s investigation of current urban challenges across the six partner cities, consultation events with the local communities of stakeholders and forward-looking trend analysis of urban challenge solutions, we identified four key activities for urban innovation. 
These key activities bring together multiple actors, disciplines and perspectives to connect, exchange knowledge and prototype new trans-disciplinary solutions that address urban challenges’ intricate social, environmental, cultural and/or economic aspects. Specifically, the key activities can be described as:   

• Transdisciplinarity in Research: how to approach urban challenges in a way that prioritises high-impact transdisciplinary research and design methods integral to the social web needs  
• Urban Experimentation Labs: how to co-create innovative settings, where multiple actors jointly develop and test urban solutions that can be adopted smoothly and swiftly by all involved actors  
• Media & Advocacy Actions: how to utilise media communication and advocacy activities to amplify just and inclusive approaches in addressing urban challenges and spread ideas to convince and mobilise communities 
• Citizen engagement: how to best adopt participatory design and empower citizen-led and -organised activities for identifying and addressing urban problems in a way that combines empirical and peer-reviewed knowledge and expertise 

The contributions of an eclectic group of voices of change in sustainable transition, environmental sciences, economics, innovation for public purpose, journalism and community building, among others, will allow us to analyse the key characteristics of the four activities for urban innovation. Based on it, in the book, we will present trends and recommendations on the potential role of European HEIs in coordinating, supporting, participating and/or promoting the optimal activities for systemically addressing urban challenges. 
And here is the challenge for you… 
 
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS 
For whom? 
We search for a wide range of contributors that work on the social, environmental, cultural and/or economic aspects of urban challenges across academia, public and private sector, NGOs and multilateral organisations, in positions such as:  

• research centre’s directors and senior researchers;  
• foundations and think tank strategists; 
• civil society and grassroots organisations for community engagement professionals; 
• private sector and service providers, and 
• media representatives, among others.  

 
What is the contribution about? 
We are looking for bite-sized thought pieces of 500-600 words that address the following questions to shed light on the four activities for urban innovation and the role of HEIs in pursuing and strengthening them: 

• In the future, which of the four activities do you imagine being prioritised for understanding, researching, and addressing pressing urban challenges, and why? 
• For the chosen activities, what should be their main goal, who are the most appropriate stakeholders to be involved, and how should they be organised and operated best to synthesise knowledge from different actors, disciplines and perspectives? 
• How have you/your team or organisation been working to contribute to the organisation, empowerment, or support of the chosen activities? Can you mention specific good practices from your professional journey? 

• Going forward, what role can HEIs play in coordinating, supporting, participating and/or promoting the optimal activities for systemically addressing urban challenges in local ecosystems? 

How will contributors benefit? 
We aim that the Forward-Looking Urban Innovations Trendbook’s contributions will inspire the project partners’ urban communities, and also urban innovators across Europe. More specifically, contributors will benefit from:  

• Having the online book (with an attributed ISBN) with their thought-pieces being disseminated in the Urban GoodCamp’s, as well as the partners’ networks and social media, and 
• An invitation to talk at the Urban Challenges Jam online event, as part of the Urban GoodCamp project at the end of November (date TBD)  

 
TIMELINE FOR SUBMISSIONS 
The due date for submissions is October 25th, 2023.  
We kindly ask you to submit your written contribution through this page.  
Once your contribution is submitted, two editors will review the submission and get back to you with editing suggestions before November 3rd. You will then have time until November 15th to confirm or make final alterations. The publication will be finalised and published mid-December 2023.  
 
GUIDELINES FOR YOUR SUBMISSION 
Send us an opinion-style article, which combines creative and visionary language with solid rhetoric. 
Please seek to: 

• use an engaging opening that invites the reader into the article; 
• use examples, stories, statistics and evidence to make your points, if you wish; 
• have a main message or express three points you would like to make; 

• offer something unexpected to the reader;  
• bring in your own professional perspective e.g., academic, community,  business- or policy-maker perspective; 
• avoid acronyms or highly specialised language by considering that you are writing for an informed but not highly-specialised audience, and 
• do not include any graphs or tables.  

Finally, we ask that you avoid in-text citations since it is a thought piece. However, feel free to share suggested follow-up readings to continue further learning on the explored topics. 
 
CONTACT FOR SUPPORT 
If you have questions on the process of submission, reach out to kortesidou@uiin.org  
 
COPYRIGHT
​All submissions will be synthesised into an open-access publication (with an attributed ISBN) as part of Urban GoodCamp – Tackling urban challenges; a KA2 Knowledge Alliance 2020 -2023 project (Agreement No. 621686-EPP-1-2020-1-ES-EPPKA2-KA) 

SUBMIT YOUR CONTRIBUTION HERE!