R-LINK: Redressing Long-term societal challenges through space for Incremental urban development, small-scale and bottom-up initiatives to produce New Knowledge for vital and inclusive urban regions

Small-scale and bottom-up initiatives, and incremental urban development dominate various political agendas. These initiatives, termed Community-Linked Incremental Urban Developments (CLIUDs) here, remain underexplored. CLIUDs evolve around the concept of linking social capital with an emphasis on the capacity of citizens and community to engage with those in power. It remains unclear how these increasingly popular new initiatives and alliances connect with long-term social and spatial issues of accessibility, urban vitality, inclusiveness, sustainability and economic competitiveness. In fact, discrepancies exist between CLIUDs and the necessary level of scale, time frame and governance for resolving strategic urban challenges. R-LINK aims to find smart solutions to address economic, social and environmental challenges through spatial transformations. These transformations affect and contest conventional urban development and governance models, thus requiring new action perspectives. R-LINK proposes to bridge the gap between the practice of large-scale, strategic urban ambitions and policies and that of the new alliances (government, market or citizen initiated) for CLIUDs. R-LINK is designed in close collaboration with practitioners and relevant stakeholders. Its implementation brings together scientists, the public sector, civil society and market players. This ensures co-creation of new knowledge and a practical focus. At the same time, the multidisciplinary expertise within the consortium enables fresh intellectual and transdisciplinary insights to be developed on the issue of how to realize strategic urban ambitions through CLIUDs and how to improve existing practices.