1. Networking urban science, policy and practice for sustainability
- Author
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M’Lisa Colbert, Timon McPhearson, Bob Webb, Xuemei Bai, Brenna Walsh, Debra Roberts, and José G. Siri
- Subjects
Knowledge management ,010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences ,business.industry ,General Social Sciences ,010501 environmental sciences ,01 natural sciences ,Action (philosophy) ,Political science ,Urban science ,Scale (social sciences) ,Global network ,Sustainability ,Global policy ,Key (cryptography) ,business ,Composition (language) ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences ,General Environmental Science - Abstract
Networks are increasingly important for advancing urban science, policy and practice. The complexity that cities present to stakeholders of all kinds demands systems-based and networked approaches to solving sustainability challenges. This article analyses the contemporary rise of global networks of urban science, policy, and practice. We provide an overview of urban science, policy, and practice networks followed by a detailed case study of the emerging Future Earth Urban Knowledge Action Network (Urban KAN), highlighting its vision, initial activities and impacts, and challenges and remaining tasks. Findings from the case study reveal that a network across science, policy and practice can make significant contribution in cutting-edge knowledge generation, global research agenda setting, timely contribution to global policy processes, catalyzing the formation of new national and thematic research-action networks, among others. In contrast, such a network also faces challenges, in terms of attraction and representation of the composition, maintaining initial momentum, turning the science-policy integration and collaboration into reality, and obtaining strong and continued financial and institutional support. We conclude that networks across the boundaries of science-policy-practice are still in their infancy, and deeper collaborations across sector, scale, and networks that enable the implementation of effective new actions will be key indicator in measuring the success of these networks.
- Published
- 2019
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