Cities, Human Mobility and Digital Citizenship
The role of emerging technologies is fundamentally reshaping the institution of citizenship and its role for cities. This initiative seeks to understand the challenges emerging technologies pose to the institution of citizenship. It focuses on the impacts of emerging technologies on citizens, on the role of institutions, corporations, and states in shaping civic life through the development and deployment of emerging technologies, and brings citizens and institutions together in a call for exploring new forms of ‘digital constitutionalism’ taking place in cities.
Climate change and urbanization constitute parallel global transformations that characterize current and future migration patterns. These intertwined processes will continue to shape human mobility flows toward cities. Future projections highlight that the poorest and most vulnerable areas constitute the climate in- and out-migration hotspots. Together with the expected natural population increase, human mobility will further challenge the adaptive capacity of cities to provide safe and sustainable living environments
Migration within and across international borders is a story that plays out in the world’s cities. Urban governance and local processes, formal and informal, through which migration is regulated are increasingly shaping human mobility prospects. Municipal authorities, non-state actors and civil society therefore play active roles in the development of urban migration policies as they relate to broader local economic development, regularization of informal labor and provision of education, health, housing and urban services.
This initiative explores the role of current urban mobilizations and of cities as sites of contentious politics (anti-migrant, populist protest as well as migrant-refugee solidarity mobilizations). The interplay of such politics with other social manifestations such as anti-austerity protests creates a complex environment that shapes human mobility and urban narratives.
Participatory research that supports towns and urban neighbourhoods in becoming immigrant- and refugee-friendly spaces that take full advantage of the benefits brought by refugees while finding ways to manage the inevitable challenges of immigrant integration.
New Narratives Repository on Cities and Mobility
Artist and media series (documentaries, photo, webdocs) on cities and human mobility focusing on the production of new narratives through (self)-representation.
