URBAN RETROFIT PhD Scholarship

URBAN RETROFIT – Place adaptation and urban retrofit ‘on the move’: Urban policy mobilities and transnational planning for the climate emergency.

Project details

For centuries urban planners and policymakers have looked beyond national boundaries to identify innovative ‘best practices’ that might help address local policy challenges and create new policy networks with stakeholders in other cities and countries. The search for translatable urban policy solutions has been accelerated by the urgency of the climate emergency as local policy actors look globally for ‘fixes’ that can be readily adopted at the local level to support more sustainable development. The aim of this supervisor-led doctoral scholarship is to produce a new critical evidence base on the transferability of policies and practices geared towards place adaptation and urban retrofit by examining how and why place adaptation concepts and urban retrofit practices move between places and whether policies that work in one place can be successfully transferred to another. Using and developing critical theories on ‘urban policy mobility’, which conceptualise policy innovations as being ‘in motion’ and moving across and between national and cultural boundaries through dynamic human networks, the studentship will be an integral part of the wider URBAN RETROFIT UK research project which ultimately seeks to create a series of global evidence exchange hubs where planning and development stakeholders can come together to share emerging practices. Further refinement of the research questions, methodological approach and geographical focus of the studentship will be determined by the doctoral student in collaboration with the project supervisors as the project evolves. The successful candidate will be strongly encouraged to take ownership of the project and develop it to suit their skills and interests.