探花直播 of Cambridge - Ash Amin

Opinion: Only by keeping close ties with Europe can UK research remain globally competitive

sc604 — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 11:44:40 +0000

探花直播best ideas do not respect national boundaries. Great research and scholarship has always relied on cross-border interactions. Rivalries, such as that between Newton and Leibnitz over the invention of calculus, and collaborations, such as those at the CERN project in Switzerland involve people from different nations working on common problems. Since at least the philosopher John Duns Scotus in the 13th century, the mobility of scholars has been a major channel of progress.

探花直播UK鈥檚 vote to leave the EU on June 23 poses a challenge to this status quo. 探花直播UK will now have to work hard at exploring new ways of belonging in Europe, because in recent decades, EU mobility, collaboration and funding has lain at the heart of the country鈥檚 global research excellence.

Looking elsewhere

探花直播referendum result leaves researchers with acute uncertainty about the commitment of the UK to maintain the open environment in which the best research can take place and into which the best researchers are recruited. Unlike many countries, the UK鈥檚 recruitment procedures are very open and focused on attracting talent, rather than simply favouring success in a national competition. Many fine people have been able to build whole careers here.

So the uncertainty over the status of non-UK nationals from the EU and European Economic Area is especially disquieting. They make up 16% of academic staff in UK universities and in certain departments it is far more: more than 50% of professors in LSE鈥檚 economics department for example.

We know of and have heard of colleagues who are being offered jobs elsewhere in Europe, and we know of prospective job candidates who have turned down positions in the UK since the referendum. At this early stage it is difficult to say whether the humanities and social sciences are more affected than other disciplines in this way but the mood music in the community is very uncertain.

探花直播UK is not as attractive a place for researchers as it was before the referendum. This may be just an initial shock and it may all die down, but on the other hand a reputation once lost is very hard to regain. We have many competitors overseas and the best people move to the most flourishing environments to work.

探花直播language used in the referendum against migrants was felt as a personal attack by many staff at all levels within the academic community, as well as by students. Facing such emotions, it is understandable that many may re-evaluate what they thought they knew about working in UK research.

Cementing collaboration

When it comes to collaboration, UK research is internationally competitive in part because it seeks out the best international partners: 60% of our international collaborations are with our EU partners, and in the EU鈥檚 Framework Programme 7, for 23 of the 27 member states, collaborations with UK-based researchers ranked the highest or second most frequent.

Since the referendum, our European partners are noticeably asking us to stand aside as principal investigators or step out of consortia bids entirely.

探花直播government has said that nothing has changed legally. This is true. But partners in the EU are evaluating their options. They may decide, from a 鈥渟afety first鈥� perspective, that collaborations with the UK come with too big a risk

One simple solution would be for the UK government to guarantee or underwrite every application to the EU鈥檚 flagship Horizon 2020 research programme from now until a new relationship with the EU is stabilised. This would mean promising to pay for research if European funding is withdrawn at a later stage. Legally, if nothing has changed, then the government ought to be happy to put its best foot forward in the short term, and thereafter, negotiate accordingly in order to support its world-leading research base. Here is a challenge that the government needs to meet squarely head on if it values national research excellence and its contribution to economic competitiveness and creativity.

Funding at risk

Until now, the UK has been very successful in gaining EU research funding. Such success should not be punished. In the humanities and social sciences, UK-based researchers have won a third of all advanced grants and starting grants ever awarded by the European Research Council (ERC). This is an incredible achievement 鈥� a sign of established research excellence.

There is no UK equivalent of the ERC in terms of scope and size so what will happen if we leave the EU and cannot access funding streams such as Horizon 2020? 探花直播success and international standing of the humanities and social sciences needs to be protected.

From our rough calculations using data on past and future research allocations in the UK, and data sent to us by the ERC, the value of the awards won by UK-based researchers each year from 2007-15 from the ERC is equivalent to 27.5% of the annual budgets of Economic and Social Research Council and Arts and Humanities Research Council combined. It was around 10% for the life sciences and physical sciences and engineering.

As the government negotiates its new relationship with the EU, it should realise that until now the EU has provided resources that do not exist in the UK. These instruments may well need to be created anew in the UK. If that is the case, the government will need to take some clear and prominent steps to ensure the UK remains bound to and relevant to the global scholarly endeavour if it wants the country to remain attractive to researchers from around the world.

探花直播challenge Britain now faces is one that raises risks for its purpose, identity and capability to compete internationally and remain relevant at home. Business as usual it cannot be. Of course, new international collaborations will be sought and nurtured by UK researchers and institutions. UK research will not remain paralysed after Brexit, but it does not make sense to walk away from the European interactions that have served us so well so far.

Ash Amin, 1931 Chair in Geography and Fellow of Christ's College, 探花直播 of Cambridge and John Bell, Professor of Law, 探花直播 of Cambridge

This article was originally published on 探花直播Conversation. Read the original article.

Ash Amin (Department of Geography) and John Bell (Faculty of Law) discuss the importance of European research collaborations, and how they might continue post-Brexit.聽

探花直播text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Living on the edge: succeeding in the slums

lw355 — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 13:20:24 +0000

Dr Felipe Hern谩ndez was born and raised in Cali, Colombia鈥檚 third biggest city and one of the country鈥檚 most dangerous 鈥� riven by fighting between drug trafficking gangs and the grinding poverty of its shanty towns.

One of the most violent neighbourhoods is Potrero Grande along the Cauca River. 鈥淲hen I was a child I never went to the settlements along the bank, although they were only nine or ten miles away. They had a reputation for being dangerous. It took several years and some geographical distance for me to see how deeply divided Cali was then and remains today. As recently as 1997, the city鈥檚 most prestigious club denied membership to Black people.鈥�

Various schemes have been initiated to regulate the development of Cali and address the levels of violence in its notorious poorer districts. Although these schemes have commendable objectives, and valuable aspects, they fail to take people鈥檚 lived experiences, especially their social networks and productive capacity, into account

As Hern谩ndez says: 鈥淭eaching music to poor children is useful because it gets them off the streets. But what happens when they grow up and need to earn a living? How many children have the opportunity to follow a career in music? In a city called Pereira, there was a proposal to train a community in carpentry, but the people who might have benefited have no tradition of working with wood, instead they were farmers.

Over the past nine years, Hern谩ndez, from the Department of Architecture, has concentrated his research efforts on poverty and marginalisation in Latin America. In 2013, he established Cities South of Cancer 鈥� a group dedicated to researching the urban environment in the southern hemisphere. Its participants include four PhD candidates in Cambridge, among them Angela Franco, former Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research at Universidad del Valle in Cali, who left her position to undertake research in urban redevelopment supervised by Hern谩ndez.

Hern谩ndez has looked, in particular, at the expanding informal settlements 鈥� slums and shanty towns on the margins of cities 鈥� which are home to the disempowered and dispossessed. Where you live plays a large part in shaping your destiny; huge stigma is attached to the terms slum and shanty town. In the course of researching one of the barrios of Medell铆n in Colombia, for example, Hern谩ndez discovered that residents often deny that they live there.

Yet it is in these largely unplanned urban settings that millions of people have, for generations, lived, worked and brought up their children. Globally, an estimated one billion people live in slums lacking basic infrastructure, and the United Nations (UN) predicts that this number could rise to three billion by 2050 as cities grow and the numbers of national and international migrants increase.

Informal settlements and the influx of migrants have often been seen as problems to be solved. However, diversity and a flux of people is good for cities, says Dr Wendy Pullan, who leads the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research in the Department of Architecture. 鈥淐ities demand diversity. It makes them robust and flexible 鈥� places that can thrive and prosper. 探花直播question is how to support the activities of communities and encourage social cohesion without losing the diversity. Planning and architecture have an important role to play in this.鈥�

Hern谩ndez agrees: 鈥淚t seems clear that cities will continue to attract people from rural areas and that pockets of poverty will persist. People who arrive at cities frequently encounter a functioning system to which they are peripheral and from which they are marginalised. Inevitably, there are conflicts between the established population and the new arrivals. And when people from different communities are thrown together in the same slum conditions, the result can be violence.鈥�

鈥淚n fact, conflict is as part of the human condition as city building,鈥� adds Pullan, who is working on a book on the nature of urban conflict based on her research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

鈥淲e have to find better ways of living with the conflict 鈥� using and channelling it in a constructive way, rather than thinking we can remove it or banish it,鈥� she says. 鈥� 探花直播urban topography 鈥� the city鈥檚 streets and courtyards, roads and rooftops, tower blocks and slums, and all of the activities within them 鈥� are as much a part of the problem as they are a part of the solution. When we design cities we need to understand the sociopolitical processes at play and the potential for flashpoints.鈥�

When Hern谩ndez and his team looked more closely at the dynamics of Cali, they made an important discovery: 鈥淲e mapped the invisible boundaries of these areas and we discovered that there were neutral spaces 鈥� the church, the school, an adult training centre and sports fields 鈥� which sometimes cut across the divides.

鈥淎rmed gangs control the neighbourhoods. On Sundays, however, the gang members put down the guns and played football together.鈥�

He suggests that careful planning can capitalise on these safe zones, creating and connecting 鈥渃orridors of conflict suspension鈥� to form a landscape with the potential for safer mobility.

His team works in partnership with practitioners and researchers in Colombia, Mexico, Indonesia and the USA. One of the central tenets of the project is the concept of articulation. 鈥淲e use the term 鈥榓rticulatory鈥� to describe a fluid approach to the interaction between the informal economy and the dominant systems,鈥� he says. 鈥淚n terms of planning and architecture, this approach might mean looking at the ways in which people build their houses and use land, and it also means reflecting on how productive activities can be supported.鈥�

For Hern谩ndez, a project undertaken in Quer茅taro, Mexico, had proved a steep learning curve for their research in Colombia. He explains: 鈥淚鈥檇 taken a team of undergraduate and PhD students out from Cambridge to work with a Mexican architectural group, Taller Activo. Together, we鈥檇 organised workshops in the local community and, with local people, we built three different buildings in the same neighbourhood with the objective of helping to articulate different aspects, and areas, of the community.鈥� One of these buildings 鈥� a shared resource with a kitchen 鈥� was particularly successful and won first prize in the Servicios y Asistencia P煤blica category of the 2014 CEMEX Awards.

He believes that academia occupies a privileged position to address the subject of urban programmes that are sustained over long periods and are adaptive to marginalisation. 鈥淯niversities are vitally important repositories of knowledge and experience, largely unaffected by the pressures to generate revenue that drive private-sector participation.鈥�

Academic research can provide sustained expert advice in the continuous process of building cities. Cities South of Cancer has already generated a substantial body of knowledge on a number of cities in the developing world, and a methodology that could help many others around the world.

Working with local universities in Cali and Bogot谩 in Colombia, his team produced a map of activities that, although they might operate outside formal structures and not pay taxes, make a positive contribution to the economy, and have real potential for growth. Research of this kind also questions the conventional categories of employed and unemployed: people who are officially unemployed may well be participating in productive activities outside the formal economy.

One example that Hern谩ndez gives for Cali is sand extraction, an activity that provides a living for large numbers of people. Communities living on the Cauca River have built machines to extract sand that is transported to construction sites 鈥� where it enters the formal economy. These same people have established dwellings and businesses on a flood plain where there is danger of inundation. Because they have built sturdy houses (concrete and brick), often on stilts, drowning accidents are rare. Not surprisingly, the owners of these houses and businesses don鈥檛 want to be moved away from the river as they would be separated from their workplaces and their long-standing community.

On the periphery of Cali, people living along the Cauca River, in District 21, keep cows, pigs and goats for milk and meat. At present, meat from this area enters the market surreptitiously, and waste is disposed haphazardly into the river. Hern谩ndez argues that, because these activities have established social structures, they could be developed relatively easily: quality controls could be established and the environmental footprint could be reduced, maximising benefits for the local communities and the city at large.

Similarly, animals and plantations kept by people along the riverbank also present an opportunity. 探花直播entire seven-mile riverbank could be transformed into a productive linear park, thus recuperating the river for the city. He says: 鈥淎 park of this kind could be a place where children go to become more involved in the production of food and learn about rearing animals. Instead of maintaining current socioeconomic divisions, this form of urban articulation would bring two 鈥榙istant鈥� communities together, contributing to the search for peace.鈥�

Here, there is a subtle emphasis on building the 鈥榰rban commons鈥� 鈥� areas of collective ownership and resource management 鈥� in ways that benefit the poor, signalling an approach to slums that is neither about gutsy survivalism nor about handouts. This approach is developed by Professor Ash Amin, from the Department of Geography, in his new book with Professor Sir Nigel Thrift, Seeing Like a City (Polity 2016).

Currently, argues Amin, slums and informal settlements tend to get narrated either as uncongenial spaces where people on very low incomes face multiple deprivations 鈥� ill health, insecurity, violence and harassment 鈥� or as spaces of hardship negotiated successfully by enterprising residents and entrepreneurial capability, from where the rural poor may begin their journey towards becoming middle class.

Slowly, however, argues Amin, 鈥渁 new language of facilitation is being used by institutions like UN-Habitat, who seek to identify how the poor can be enabled to participate in and derive benefit from the urban growth machine of the larger city. This might be through improving access to goods and services, jobs and opportunities, information and knowledge, or skills and capabilities.鈥�

Amin thinks that this language of facilitation should be pushed much further than the current policy emphasis on harnessing the capabilities of the poor as a way of dealing with the challenges of slum living and debilitating informality.

鈥淭here is a need for international policy on poverty reduction to stop romanticising slums 鈥� countering the hyperbole of blockbuster films like Slumdog Millionaire 鈥� and to get behind the 鈥榗apabilities鈥� of the poor in underserved cities left to fend for themselves,鈥� says Amin. 鈥淲hat this means is offering the poor a set of infrastructural rights of access to the staples of the urban commons 鈥� water, electricity, basic health care and education, sanitation, and the like 鈥� along with rights to basic income, so that the ground for the more active participation of marginalised communities in city life can be prepared on a sustainable basis.鈥�

In this way, slums (and those who dwell in them) can be seen by governments and policymakers as 鈥榚nabled鈥� spaces 鈥� much in the same way as cities are offered to elites and middle classes. Neither neglected nor swept away in wholesale clearances, but upgraded in ways that allow collective life to flourish at low cost and with considerable gains, according to Amin.

Hern谩ndez argues that the formal and informal economies are not separate entities but meshed together 鈥� and that this fluidity represents an opportunity. He says that a more productive approach is to support the positive activities that thrive in these settlements, and to create ways of connecting them to the formal economy.

Slums might not exist in the developed world on the same scale as in the developing world but interaction between formal and informal activities applies as much in London or New York as in Bogota. 鈥淲e鈥檙e talking about the same key issue,鈥� explains Hern谩ndez, 鈥渙f people finding ways to make a living however they can.鈥�

鈥淚t is the weaving together in cities of humans, technologies and infrastructures that gives cities their world-making power,鈥� adds Amin. 鈥淚n past cities, leaders have understood this collective agency; contemporary policymakers need to return to the question of how the material and human interdependencies that constitute urban provisioning systems can be harnessed for the many and not just the few. 探花直播city is brim full of opportunity when it is organised as a commons.鈥�

Images: Top and lower two: making a living with small businesses in Medellin, Colombia; credit: Alejandro Arango on flickr.

Second: Community Centre in Quer茅taro, Mexico; credit: Felipe Hern谩ndez.

Cities exist in a state of constant flux: not always 鈥榮mart鈥� and successful, they can be vulnerable, chaotic and seem on the edge of failure. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the shanty towns and slums. How can these informal settlements, and the wider city, be helped to succeed?
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There is a need for international policy on poverty reduction to stop romanticising slums and to get behind the 鈥榗apabilities鈥� of the poor in underserved cities left to fend for themselves

Ash Amin

Marcin Gabruk

Street basketball

探花直播text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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