Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Food justice and citizen-driven governance of urban agriculture. Assessing the co-creative design of multi-stakeholder governance of urban agriculture initiatives." "Ingrid Moons" "Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change, Marketing" "Food justice and citizen-driven governance of urban agriculture. Assessing the co-creative design of multi-stakeholder governance of urban agriculture initiatives Food has been absent as a concern for urban studies. This proposal reframes food as an urban question through a focus on citizen-driven governance of urban agriculture (UA) and its role in stimulating food justice. UA is a fast developing field and challenges top-down as well as bottom-up urban planning. This project responds to the need to improve our understanding of how multi-stakeholder governance models can be designed to enhance UA's contribution to food justice. The proposed research consists of three research phases. It starts with an overview of the state of the art literature from social sciences (sociology and political sciences), economic sciences (marketing and human behaviour) and design sciences (service design, design for complex systems). All influential parameteres are mapped into a digital system. The second research phases starts by mapping all urban agricultural initiatives in Flandres, based on the research outcomes and variables from the first research phase. A semi-qualitative research is set up (n=50) to evaluate the existing initiatives on their strenghts and weakenesses (eg. actors involved, contribution to food fairness, use of open spaces). The aim is to gain insights in the way citizens and other stakeholders govern urban agricultural initiatives and with what kind of mechanisms concerning inclusion and exclusion they are confronted. The third research phase consists of a co-creative seven steps design process (alternation of workshops, field research, concept development, concept testing) that gives input for the governance and the creation of three urban agricultural initiatives. The aim of this Participatory Research (PAR) phase is to gain insight in the complexity of governance processes by means of initiating co-creative interventions (common problem, common goal, common value creation) and to learn from their effects. The three studies will result in a report with recommendations to enrich the existing literature. The researchers aim to publish four scientific articles. Given the scope of the proposed research, the researchers moreover aim for a wider validation and desimilation of the results." "Informal public governance: The cases of primary education and urban agriculture in peri-urban Kinshasa (DRC)." "Tom De Herdt" "Poverty and well-being as a (local) institutional process" "After a period of transition and civil war, the development priority goes to the reconstruction of the state structures. Yet, throughout the years, a system of 'informal' governance has been founded, which is accepted by the population and by the state. This research focuses on these forms of local governance in interaction with the existing and newly created state policy. Sectors of research are primary education and urban agriculture." "Technological innovations in a dynamic institutional environment: introduction of GMOs in Flemish agriculture" "How much pressure the evolution of agrotechnology experts on the urbanized Flemish agriculture is unclear. Therefore, decoding the structure of the GMO-debate and identifying the criteria linked with the different social vieuwpoints, using a socia-technical scenario analysis, aims to initialize and evaluate decisions made about GMO-technology in Flanders. This even so covers the question of impact for negating this technology." "The Transformation of Agriculture and Women Farmworkers' Political Mobilization for labor rights in Southern Morocco" "Koenraad Bogaert" "Department of Conflict and Development Studies" "This thesis studies the role of women farmworkers in organizing and mobilizing for the right to perform and the right to work in southern Morocco. It wants to understand the political role of women farmworkers by analyzing their relationships with unions, commercial farms, and the state. Furthermore, it researches how agrarian capitalism’s transformation, particularly the agribusinesses’ upsurge, impacts women agricultural workers’ political and material conditions." "Food from Somewhere? Urban Households, Access to Land and Alternative Food Entitlements in the Late Medieval City." "Tim Soens" "Centre for Urban History" "Medieval cities were obsessed by food, food supplies and food shortages. Like in most pre-1900 societies, extreme weather conditions, warfare, trade conflicts easily disrupted the precarious food supplies, resulting in recurrent and virulent price spikes and potentially unleashing social unrest. No wonder then, that urban food supplies or 'Feeding the city' has been a prominent topic in economic history for decades, with a particular emphasis on the later Middle Ages, period of far-reaching crisis, instability and economic transformation in Europe and beyond. All of this literature however, is based upon the assumption that cities, above a certain population level, are basically fed through the market, where rural agricultural surpluses are exchanged against the products of urban industry and trade. Urged by recent articulations of alternative ways of urban food provisioning – notably the rise of Urban Agriculture and all efforts to replace anonymous 'Food from Nowhere' mediated by increasingly globalized food markets by more localized 'Food from Somewhere' – this project aims at revolutionizing our understanding of urban food provisioning in the past, by questioning the self-evidence of the market as hegemonic allocator of food in past urban societies. In this project, the key to achieve such paradigm shift in urban food history, is sought in the access to land. The accumulation of both urban and rural land by urban households has been documented in many contexts, but is mostly explained in terms of capital investment and rent seeking and as a tool of social ascent. The food generating capacity of land is mostly overlooked, or minimized as a sign of economic backwardness, small 'agro-towns' or a mere survival strategy for the urban poor. Either through the direct cultivation of land in the city and its periphery, through deliveries in kind by rural tenants or rural family-members or through access to urban commons, land might have provided a wide range of 'alternative food entitlements' for many different social groups, with or without the capability and incentive to secure a market-independent access to food. Understanding the role of land for feeding the citizens (rather than the city) might be crucial to understand the dynamics of food markets in the later Middle Ages. What if land-based food supplies did not contract but rather expand with the development of food markets? What if dependency of the food markets became connected with lower social status? After all, the social fabric of the late medieval cities was both characterized by an ascent of 'corporate' middle classes, and the disposition of alternative, land-based food supplies, might be one of the instruments through which these middling class tried to emulate the social elites, leaving the food market for the lower strata of urban society. Such observation would significantly change our understanding of 'imperfect' food markets and failing food policies. For Ghent, Norwich and Dijon, three comparatively large cities with a pronounced difference in connection to regional and long-distance food trade, an in-depth analysis of alternative food entitlements at the household level, will allow to reveal the contexts in which alternative food economies flourished; their relative contribution to the supply of urban households; the actors and networks involved in such supplies; the solidarity and dependency they create and finally their integration in or interaction with the urban food market. If successful this project might not only generate important new insights in the history of urban food provisioning in late medieval Europe, but also offer an important historical contribution to present-day debates on the viability and social dynamics of alternative urban food supplies." "Nutrient budgets, flows, and loops: understanding, measuring, and fostering circularity in urban food systems" "Erik Mathijs" Bioeconomics "Cities are important nodes in a food system, even when they lack any agricultural activity. On the one hand, they concentrate consumption and drive food production; on the other, they produce big quantities of nutrient-rich effluents (organic waste, sewage sludge) that are typically wasted and not returned to the soil. Understanding and fostering the circularity of urban food systems through closing, narrowing, and slowing material and energy loops is therefore important in order to avoid this wastage of resources towards a more sustainable food system.With this goal in mind, this thesis set off to analyse the food system of Brussels with a focus on circularity, by studying nutrient flows and budgets at different spatial scales. The main objective has been to understand what urban food system circularity can be, how to measure it, and what spatial scale is most appropriate for such an analysis. To answer this questions, I analysed food and nutrient flows in the food system of Brussels Capital Region and its hinterlands, and tested different sets of circularity metrics.Starting from the city-region itself, I used a multi-layer Material Flow Analysis to analyse the phosphorus and energy flows within the administrative boundary of the city. In addition, I compared how city-scale circularity strategies simultaneously affect the amounts of phosphorus potentially available for reuse and the net amounts of energy recovered from the system. On a second step, I expanded the system boundary to include Belgium, Brussels’ domestic hinterland. Including the hinterland aimed at understanding whether the nutrients produced in Brussels are needed to cover demand in the producing agricultural lands, and how nutrient flows connecting Brussels with these lands would interact and interfere with local nutrient loops. To this end, I used an adapted GRAFS (Generalised Representation of Agri-Food Systems) approach and a spatially explicit comparison between nutrient crop needs and local nutrient supply through manure and human excreta. Finally, I adopted a footprint approach and a functional rather than geographical system boundary, in order to account for the city’s global hinterland. For this last step, I developed a resource-based phosphorus footprint that can be used to quantify direct and indirect phosphorus inputs into the food system, and to identify these parts of the hinterland that cannot be connected in a reciprocal nutrient exchange with the city.The results indicate that valorising phosphorus in urban sewage sludge and organic waste streams will not have to come at the expense of energy recovery for Brussels Capital Region. The lack of agricultural activity within the city, however, limits the usefulness of the city-level analysis and requires the inclusion of the hinterland. The agricultural lands in Flanders and Wallonia, Brussels’ domestic hinterlands, have their own abundant sources of reused nutrients to absorb. The abundance of nutrients in Flanders, mostly produced by livestock intensively reared and fed by imported crops, dominates the analysis and the circularity assessment. Wallonia, on the other hand, could potentially benefit from absorbing some of the nutrients flowing out of Brussels. Designing a more circular food system for Brussels will have to strike a balance between bringing the hinterland closer, so that the extracted nutrients can be returned to the soil, and dealing with the highly problematic nutrient flows and budgets in these near hinterlands. Ultimately, and unsurprisingly, the most effective strategies towards increased circularity are those that radically redefine the consumption and production systems, e.g. shifting away from diets rich in animal products and from intensive livestock production systems." "Urban Academy: a collaboratorium for sustainability issues in Ghent" "Thomas Block, Michel De Paepe, Maarten Van Den Driessche, Brent Bleys, Luce Beeckmans, Griet Roets, Tom Vander Beken, Joris Voets, Ben Derudder, Filip De Rynck, Herwig Reynaert, Ann Buysse, Michiel Dehaene, Jelle Laverge, Bruno De Wever, Korneel Rabaey, Evelyne Deceur, Sara Willems, Lesley Hustinx, Marianne Maeckelbergh, An Cliquet, Joost Dessein, Ine Lietaert, Christel Stalpaert, Alexis Dewaele, Erik Paredis, Kris Verheyen" "Department of Electromechanical, Systems and Metal Engineering, Department of Economics, Department of Criminology, Criminal Law and Social Law, Department of Geography, Department of Public Governance and Management, Department of Architecture and urban planning, Department of History, Department of Biotechnology, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Department of Sociology, Department of Conflict and Development Studies, Department of European, Public and International Law, Department of Agricultural Economics, Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy, Department of Art, music and theatre sciences, Department of Experimental clinical and health psychology, Department of Political Sciences, Department of Environment" "The Urban Academy focuses on socio-ecological problems in the city of Ghent and at Ghent University. Academic staff, students, policy makers, civil society actors, etc. work in inter- and transdisciplinary research processes on problem definitions and possible solutions, (living lab) experiments and upscaling initiatives, (policy) reports and scientific articles. Our theoretical and analytical framework integrates socio-spatial, political-governance, socio-technical and economic perspectives." "Financing for urban development projects near the Antwerp ring road (research lab: financing)" "Tine Compernolle" "Research Group for Urban Development, Engineering Management" "The research lab financing has a twofold purpose. The first aim of the research lab is to gain insight into the demand for financing and the financing available for the Antwerp region. This demand is compared with the financing capacity of the governments involved on the one hand, and the possibilities for alternative financing and income on the other. The second aim of the research lab is to gain insight into the social costs and benefits of the projects of the southern Antwerp ring-road that are not yet part of the decided policy, as well as uncertainties that can influence the costs and benefits over time. In the first phase, attention will be paid to the tunneling, after which the developed method can be further rolled out to the other projects. The uncertainties and development options are mapped out using a decision tree, to examine which development path is expected to yield the highest social net benefit, taking into account other projects or factors that may influence the tunneling projects." "Urban pre-Composter, decentralized pre-treatment of organic waste." "Els Du Bois" "Industrial Vision Lab (InViLab), Sustainable Energy, Air and Water Technology (DuEL), Product development" "The Urban pre-Composter is a public underground system that is used to collect organic waste in an urban context. The added value of this innovative concept is the ability to pretreat the waste in order to reduce its volume. Consequently, less transportation is needed to carry this waste. This directly implies that the environmental impact on these cities will be reduced, and in addition on social domain, the concept reduced the amount of hindrance and annoyance that is currently related to waste collection. During this project the aim is to convert and improve the design into a verified installation concept that can be commercialized." "The multidimensional impact of rural and urban electrification: economic development, security and conservation? Evidence from Eastern Congo." "Marijke Verpoorten" "Development processes, actors and policies" "We measure the impact of electricity provision on economic development, security and conservation. Our case study focuses on rural and urban communities nearby Virunga National Park, in North-Kivu, DR Congo. Impoverished by two decades of armed conflict, the communities complement their livelihoods with the park's resources to make ends meet. These resources are also illicitly exploited by at least eight armed groups that have their hide-outs within the park's boundaries. The electricity roll-out is implemented by Virunga Alliance, a public-private partnership that seeks to bring about security and conservation through development. According to Virunga's theory of change, electrification will spur development, which will in turn reduce people's reliance on the park's resources as well as their support for, and participation in, rebel groups. The theory of change finds support in the literature, but needs further testing. To learn about the causal effect of electrification, we designed an impact evaluation that exploits the gradual roll-out of electricity, in combination with a difference-in-differences estimation. The treatment localities will be connected in the period 2019-2020; the control localities only at a later stage."