Urban Agriculture and participatory urban policy

How about that? I can grow my own vegetables in my back yard in large boxes or huge bags provided by people who devoted their time to help people like me who are concerned about their carbon footprints but have no time to do anything meaningful to compensate it. I could grow potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce and what not...and you bet I will do it ! Well done urban agriculture team

I think the debate and discussion was quite interesting too. We were divided into groups that contained different actors like farmers, urban residents, urban planners and policy makers. And each group had a different social mix and complexity. I had a lot of fun playing the farmer who in the first place was against the idea because I was afraid of losing clients but then I realised this was quite a well-off neighbourhood where I could sell my services in different forms (consulting, guiding, etc). Good learning experience.

Next lecture we moved to the field of urban politics. After my lecture on the regime theory, the regulation approach and the role of structure and agency we had a student-led debate on the participatory governance. The research team was specifically interested in the role of immigrants in the policy making processes and their debate was quite interesting. We had role playing this time with a different scenario in which immigrants, policy makers and residents had to find effective policy instruments to increase the social, cultural and political participation of immigrants. Well-done people!

In both occasions it was good to see the progress made in the field researches in Antwerp and Rotterdam. I am pleased, as I also said in the class, with the results so far even though you had very little time to conduct your field work. I must also say that I will miss the synergy in this group. It does not happen very often that such motivation and energy combined with continuous enthusiasm and harmony appears in a group. Am I lucky or what? From next week onward we are going to have workshops in the classroom to make comparative analysis to get the groups ready to present their results. Talking about participatory democracy the students have also voted for having a mid-term exam (to my surprise) so 16th of April we will go through that process and have another (and final I'm afraid) movie night. Which movie am I going to show this time? Well will be my final surprise...

Have a good Easter break!

Tuna

Hi

What a mess around the Rotterdam Central isn't it? We almost couldn't meet! We had definitely a better weather in Rotterdam compared to the miserable and rainy day in Antwerp ! It was not only a perfect day to conduct a field research but was simply a fantastic day to enjoy in a sunny terrace and you have all deserved it. I think you were all happy with your results also because now you know what you want out of this study. You were simply asking the same questions you did ask in Antwerp. Comparison is fun and I can't wait to see the results in your blogs!

The following lecture's topic fit very well in between the District 9 discussion and student-led debate on social segregation. Racism, of course, is a hot topic. Following my lecture we went into a heated discussion on what is racism actually and why does it matter ? I ended my lecture with a page from The Independent which shows the race map of Britain to provoke discussion. What is wrong knowing where people from different ethnic, religious, cultural backgrounds live? Are we exaggregating this whole 'political correctness' idea ? etc. It worked very well as I had difficulty stopping you to let the research team on social and ethnic mosaic of cities to go on with their presentation and debate.
The following discussion was quite good too as the student team divided us into two groups and asked us to develop ideas for social exclusion and social mix. I have to say I had a lot of fun, and also got some innovative ideas for my own research (such as the 'national hug and kiss day ;))

Excellent you guys! Your motivation makes me even more enthusiastic about this course! See you tomorrow to talk on urban ecology...

Dr. Tuna Tasan-Kok