Astrid Ley, Josefine Fokdal and Yassine Moustanjidi co-edited the 137th issue of the Trialog Journal on “Co-production of knowledge in urban development”.
Around the world, but particularly in the Global South, contemporary urbanisation processes have called attention to inclusiveness as one of the primary challenges of urban development. Co-production of knowledge has emerged as a promising mode of governance during such processes as it provides innovative approaches to relationship-building and shared decision-making in practise and research. The term ‘co-production’ covers a broad range of meanings. In the fields of planning theory and development studies, the term relates mostly to the co-production of urban development in terms of infrastructure and services. However, it can also relate to the collaborative production of knowledge within both urban research and urban development processes. This issue of TRIALOG offers an alternative perspective to the rather widely dominating discourse in urban sustainability that calls for transdisciplinary research and, consequently, co-production of knowledge in order to incorporate the complexity of unstructured problems. This is contrasted by the discourse in development studies that recognises co-production of knowledge as a means of empowerment. Both discourses share the aim of developing innovative and applicable solutions to cope practically with major societal challenges. However, empirical evidence that sheds light on co-production of knowledge in urban development is limited. This issue of TRIALOG is an outcome of the 2019 Trialog Conference in Stuttgart on coproduction processes in urban development and research. It showcases empirical evidence from across the globe in an attempt to fill that gap.
