News | Realising Just Cities

Snapshot from the digital map locating examples of social and solidarity-related economic activity in and around Greater Manchester.

The following feature article about the Jam and Justice Action Research Collective's work mapping the social solidarity economy in Greater Manchester was originally published in The Meteor (themeteor.org) on 25 August 2018:

Read more about Mapping solidarity in Greater Manchester

There are many critiques of existing forms of urban governance as not fit for purpose. However, there is just as much contestation over what alternatives might look like. Coproduction is proposed as a response to address complex wicked issues. Achieving coproduction is a highly complex and daunting task. Bottom up approaches to the initiation of coproduced governance are seen as fruitful, including exemplification of utopian alternatives though local practices.

Read more about Coproducing Urban Governance Special Edition Published

This workshop is jointly organised by the Sheffield Methods Institute and the Urban Institute

Read more about Post-doctoral early career workshop - Methodological Issues and Emotional Labour in Co-Produced Research

This year’s DevRes conference took place over two days on 22 and 23 August 2018 in Gothenburg and was themed around ‘rethinking development’. Twenty years after the publication of a special issue devoted to this very question, similar concerns prevail: the prevalence of language, theory and methods rooted in Global North academic knowledge production, legacies of structural adjustment and failed projects, and aid flows that still represent global inequities of resource distribution.

Read more about Development Research Conference 2018

The Urban Institute are delighted to welcome three new members to the team. Charlie Spring and Kristina Diprose are both research associates working at the Sheffield-Manchester Local Interaction Platform funded by Mistra Urban Futures.

Read more about Welcome new staff

Space in Common is a Jam and Justice project led and delivered in partnership between The Democratic Society and the Action Research Collective.

Read more about How can we have better conversations about spatial planning in Greater Manchester?

One of Jam and Justice's action research projects is now calling for participants to join an inquiry into care at home.

Evidence and policy suggests that better services are delivered when a wide network of expertise is drawn into policy development, particularly from those with lived experience of needing care at home for themselves or family members.

Read more about Join Shared Future's Inquiry into Care at Home

Jam and Justice is a three-year research project funded by the ESRC that aims to test and learn about more participatory methods for urban decision-making. We want to seize the opportunity to make devolution matter in Greater Manchester by creating spaces for social innovation and inspiring and igniting change.

We are excited to announce that there are 8 projects up and running. All projects have been coproduced by the Action Research Collective and have a focus on citizen engagement with the aim of being more inclusive. See flyer for more information.

Read more about Jam and Justice - new coproduced ARC projects

We’re pleased to announce that the Urban Institute have now today joined the International Observatory of Participatory Democracy (IOPD) network as a collaborating member.

Read more about Urban Institute Joins the International Observatory of Participatory Democracy

The Action Research Collective, part of the Jam and Justice project, has just returned from a peer exchange in Glasgow hosted by our Scottish partner, Dr. Oliver Escobar, University of Edinburgh, What Works Scotland Co-Director. The aim of the visit was two-fold:

Read more about Greater Manchester - Scotland Peer Learning Exchange