We aim to contribute to sustainable, democratic and just urban development through research and teaching. We enhance the understanding of and develop possible solutions for policy and planning challenges that emerge in urbanized regions globally. We are an interdisciplinary group working at the intersection of public policy, planning and urban studies.
In June 2023, Dr. Gabriela Debrunner, postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at IRL/SPUR, received the “Prix-ROREP” 2023 of the Swiss Study Association for Spatial Planning and Regional Policy (ROREP). Her funded project entitled «Who decides on our cities – how, and why? Actors, players, and net-works in the planning of our life spaces» aimed to find out more about the topic of landownership and property in Swiss cities.
A new article by Katrin Hofer, Michael Wicki and David Kaufmann was recently published in World Development. It examines people’s support for state-led participation in local infrastructure and housing provision in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Nadine Antenen joins the SPUR team and its Humanitarian Planning Hub as a researcher in the project "Flood Risk Mitigation for Humanitarian Settlements".
The SPUR research group has published a new paper on housing precarity in six European and North American cities. Urban residents worldwide are challenged by increasing housing precarity, such as unaffordability of rents, insecurity of tenancy contracts, or residents’ displacement. The paper thus aims to contribute to this urgent topic by asking, “Who experiences housing precarity how?” in six major cities of the Global North (Berlin, Chicago, L.A., London, New York, Paris).
Dr. Niels van Doorn joins the SPUR team as a Visiting Professor conducting research on the spatio-temporal evolution of online and locally tethered labor platforms. He will also work on his next book project, based on his completed Platform Labor project.