The EPICamp will take place online and is hosted by the BOKU University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. It will take place on March 31th to April 1st 2022, submission deadline for all types of thematic contributions is 7 March 2022, registration is open until 30 March 2022.

Please find attached a PDF version of the Call for Participation

Conference abstract

Rapid urbanisation turns cities into highly dynamic building blocks of sustainable development. Urban sustainability is regularly examined in relation to the living environment, its design, supply of ecosystem services, its appropriation and transformation, both on an object scale (e.g., what do streets or urban green spaces look like, how can they be transformed along the mobility shift and what are their effects) and on a larger scale (e.g., green space provision and green space justice), and includes both immediate and long-term effects of the XXI century crisis such as effects of climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic on societal needs, expectations, and behaviour. Sustainability at the urban scale is thought of not only as an interdisciplinary, cross-cutting issue between different topics like urban landscape planning, mobility, urban environmental justice, or waste management, but also as tightly related to the relationships with the urban hinterland.
Cities are already characterised by a relatively low per-capita resource use and emissions as compared to national averages. However, cities also heavily draw on complex supply chains from their national hinterland or from other countries, inducing significant resource use and emissions elsewhere which increases the overall ecological footprint of goods and services consumed by city residents. Considering this spatial disconnection between production and consumption is essential in urban sustainability analysis. Consequently, cities have to be thought of as embedded in their regional rural hinterland, as well as in the wider national and global economy and in a multi-scale and multi-layer ecosystem services system. Promoting local circular commerce and reducing outsourcing of environmental burdens in production chains may allow reducing emissions, ecological footprints, and increasing care for the environment. This EPICamp will identify contemporary challenges and best practice examples for cross-border, interdisciplinary research collaboration.
List of keywords and sub-themes (other related topics are welcome):

1. Relationships between cities and rural hinterland in the context of sustainability
2. Urban and regional sustainability transition and environmental justice
3. Urban metabolism, incl. trade and resource footprints
4. Renewable and efficient energy production
5. Landscape and urban planning
6. Green infrastructure, nature-based solutions and human-nature interactions in urban context
7. Social aspects of urban sustainability transformation and citizen engagement in decision making
8. Digitization, smart cities and bio-cities
9. Water and solid waste management, resource use, and circular economy
10. Urban remediation to recover the land and the original value
11. Built-environment and land take, incl. land sealing
12. Sustainable transportation and mobility
13. Urban climate change mitigation and adaptation
14. Urban and peri-urban ecosystem services and biodiversity
15. Public health in urban areas and role of landscape planning, incl. COVID-19 related issues

Early career researchers

Potential participants of the EPICamps should have a general interest in conducting interdisciplinary research and/or working in a transdisciplinary manner with non-university partners. You should have a proven interest in the topic of the EPICamps you wish to attend. However, no previous experience in the field and/or inter-and transdisciplinary work is required. 

Based on the format of the barcamp/unconference, the program of each EPICamp will look different and open up opportunities to present and discuss research and projects in mini-thesis presentations, poster sessions, panel or group discussions, etc., but also space for ad-hoc meetings, one-on-one video chats, academic speed dating sessions and methodological exchange.