About the event
On the path toward the Reframing Urban Resilience Conference 2028, the Urban Resilience Research Network is launching thematic Unconferences in 2026 and 2027 to explore which emerging concepts can offer resilience, and the synergies pushing toward the transformative capacities it missed in past years and agendas.
This Unconference responds to rising interest in regenerative development, thinking, and design, emerging from both practice and science. A recent call to shift “from adaptation to regeneration on the road to 2050” has just been made in a recent editorial of Nature’s Urban Sustainability, along with the special collection titled “Regenerative Development: Design Applications in the Urban Environment”. From the other end, consultancies like Arup and organisations such as Future of London or Regen Melbourne are increasingly starting to use regenerative concepts and principles in their work; some research institutions have built frameworks, like Building a Regenerative Future for Our Cities by the Centre for Livable Cities in Singapore, and we’re seeing more events and courses addressing related topics.
This growing interest poses the transdisciplinary challenge of translating and integrating regenerative thinking into current urban theories and practices, spanning from the institutional to sector-specific or community domains. The unconference is an invitation to think about these integrations and mainstreaming potential, identifying gaps and ways forward to translate regenerative ideas into architecture, urban planning, community work, placemaking, governance and other related fields.
The event is an unstructured conference (“unconference”) where the agenda is created by the attendees, as a collective sensing exercise to map and discuss pathways for regenerative thinking for urban systems, proposing research lines, and topics and sessions for the URNet Reframing Urban Resilience Conference 2028.
Participation in the unconference is limited to 20 applicants, who will have the event fee waived by the Urban Resilience Research Network. Details of the event and application process can be found HERE
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS
What we are looking for
Anyone can submit a topic, question, or curiosity about how to integrate regenerative thinking within different urban domains, or what research or practice should address to facilitate this integration and the way forward. Whether or not you’re able to join us in Barcelona, share with us your thoughts. This is one of the ways we are mapping the field as broadly as possible and identifying the challenges to discuss and propose for the Reframing Urban Resilience Conference in 2028.
- If you’re not attending in person, you can submit a curiosity or topic you’d like to see explored.
- Everyone else who joins in person should contribute with a session idea. You might bring a critical unanswered question, a paradox leaving regenerative development far from being mainstreamed in cities, lead a walk to show why and where its implementation fails, share a good practice and its enabling mechanism, facilitate a conversation around a new perspective to test or contribute in organising the event (specific roles are detailed in the form).
Formats
A session can take many shapes; we are open to whatever fits what you want to explore: a question, a conversation, a provocation, a practice, an experiment,, a mapping exercise, a collective inquiry, a creative practice, a disagreement, a failure, a prototype or other creative formats are welcome. At the application stage, we are expecting ideas from which we are going to work together to make a coherent agenda.
Eligibility
Open to anyone with experience and an active relationship with regenerative development in the built environment (through research, practice, study, community work, or lived experience). This includes practitioners, researchers, students (MA/PhD), self-taught people, community organisers, policy workers, artists, public servants and similar roles at any career stage.
Costs & Logistics
We want to make this event as accessible as possible, so the Urban Resilience Research Network is offering 20 fellowships to attend, including coffee breaks and lunch on both days.
Participants cover all travel and accommodation costs, but we will offer help and guidance based on different needs and budgets.
We offer support letters and agreements between institutions to support mobility or other exchange grants or visa processes.
How to apply?
Fill out the form linked below. You’ll be asked for:
- Your experience
- Your curiosity, question, or area of focus
- How you’d like to engage (share your work, host a discussion, make something together, etc.)
- Whether you’d like to take on an active organising role and contribute to the participatory experiment that is the unconference
Application form: https://tally.so/r/Bzr6JK
Process and Timeline
Call for Curiosities – 18 Sept – 4 October
Mapping the field, seeing what we are curious about.
Selection – 4 – 9 October
Submissions are evaluated by a group of organisers and volunteer curiosity readers:
- 10 places are curated for a mix of practice area, career stage, and geography
- The remaining 10 places are filled by open lottery among qualifying applicants
No matter the selection outcomes, all curiosities will still be woven into the agenda, and you’ll have access to the published outputs.
Pre-event warm-up – October – November
- Introductions, logistics, informal sharing in a common group
- Warm-up Zoom call (1.5 hrs): getting to know each other, shaping a social contract for the unconference, finalising the agenda together
The event – 10–11 December
Gathering in person, exploring our curiosities, mapping the path for contributing to the Reframing Resilience Conference 2028.
Follow-up & Continuing the work – January – March
Publish proceedings (format still open, likely a living document or map)
Further exploration of the raised topics & curiosities, weaving them into the conference preparations
Contact
For any questions and inquiries, email Tímea Szőke tszoke@uic.es