The EdiCitNet Summer School 2020 at IRI THESys, originally planned to take place from 27th of September – 2nd of October 2020, has now been postponed despite efforts to shift the event to an online platform. The Humboldt University administration has declared that it is best for all actors involved to look for new dates for the Summer School, the ECS Forum and the Conference, to also include on-site parts, that can’t be easily developed in a digital way.

However, we are happy to announce that the planned EdiCitNet Annual Meeting will take place as scheduled from October 5th to 6th, 2020! The event will be held completely online. More details to follow!

The EdiCitNet partner city of Ville de Carthage – known for its ancient sites – is a city within the Greater Tunis conurbation where 2.7 million people live. Greater Tunis produces about 10 percent of the national fruit and vegetable assortment. However, farmland is increasingly being lost to urban growth. The fragmentation of land ownership, labour shortages and water shortages have been recognised by the local government and now addressed through planning efforts. For the city of Carthage, a solid master plan on Edible City Solutions (ECS) is being developed within the EU project EdiCitNet, coordinated by Ina Säumel at the IRI THESys of the HU Berlin.

The goals and work of the EdiCitNet project and the Edible City of Carthage will be presented to a broad public on the occasion of the national holiday of the Tunisian Republic. The local EdiCitNet team, the City Council of Carthage and Mayor Hayet Bayoudh, who is one of the first women in the Arab world to accompany the Mayor’s office, will discuss with the Tunisian Minister of Culture Chiraz Latiri on the integration of edible urban solutions at the Carthage site level, with the Minister of the Environment Chokri Ben Hassen on the impact of the project with the objectives of adapting to climate change and promoting sustainable development.  The German Ambassador to Tunisia, Carsten Meyer-Wiefhausen, and the members of the City Team, local initiatives and citizens will exchange views and experiences.

We are sure that this event will strengthen the further development of the Edible Cities Network in the Arab region.

After our kick-off meeting in June at the Living Lab Hellersdorf, we held the first co-creation workshop directly at this location last week. While at the kick-off meeting we first clarified a lot of organisational matters and were given a guided tour through the manor garden, at the first workshop we got straight into the topic by discussing in group work on the topics of neighbourhood, education and ecology. First the problems at the site were identified, then goals were set and initial measures were already being considered. In the end, the other group members were also allowed to rate the individual points in order to identify priorities.At the end the date for the next workshop was set, where five different Edible City Solutions were to be determined, which are to be realized in the manor garden in the next 3.5 years.

On 18th of June the EdiCitNet Kick-off Meeting took place in the new Living Lab Berlin Hellersdorf. It was a great experience for all participants (city administration, SME, gardeners, project coordinators) to be able to meet personally and exchange ideas. The meeting took place mainly outside, with a guided tour through the manor garden and a subsequent plan discussion. Those who could not attend were connected via video call. We are very much looking forward to the next workshop on the co-design of the City Team Berlin-Hellersdorf which will take place on 16th of July.

We are happy to announce that our project officer Dr. Ina Säumel is part of the Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership as leader of the research group “Multifunctional Landscapes” for the year’s focus topic “Land use practices in a globalised world”.

The Postdoc Academy is designed to train the next generation of leaders in sustainability and transformation research and it is an initiative of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and a joint project of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the four academic centres:

• Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (IRI THESys),
• Leuphana University of Lüneburg
• Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) and
• the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT), Rotterdam.

It provides an intensive high-end training with four seminars in two years that broaden the research competencies of postdocs and promote their qualifications towards transdisciplinary leadership. The program also offers seed funding (e.g. for stakeholder meetings or proposal writing activities) to small groups of participants who plan to initiate research collaborations.

Furthermore, an active network of current and former participants of the program will be established.

Find further information here: https://www.iri-thesys.org/education/postdoctoral_research/postdoc-academy and here: https://www.bosch-stiftung.de/de/projekt/postdoc-academy-transformational-leadership

We are happy to invite you to hand in a paper to the IALE-Russia online Conference, held from 14th to 18th of September 2020, for the category “Land assessment and planning” – “Envisioning multifunctional sustainably productive and biodiversity friendly landscapes: Mainstreaming Nature Based Solutions beyond demonstration projects in urban and rural areas”. (Find further details here: https://iale-russia.ru/index.php/en/conference-topics)

As a special offer, selected proposals for the session will be invited to submit a paper in the upcoming special issue on “Urban agriculture and resilient cities” of the MDPI publication ‘Smart Cities’. The chairs will search for a similar possibility for publications in rural landscapes.

It is possible to do either a long oral presentation (15 min) or a flash-presentation (5 min). The abstracts for flash presentations will be accepted until 31 August 2020. Flash-presentation is a 5-minute talk which we offer as a substitute for a poster. We reckon it will get better feedback in an online format than a poster could do.

The deadline for abstracts submission for a long presentation is 15 July 2020.

The online Format provides better opportunities for perception of presentations and their further discussion. As an option, the presentation can be recorded and sent to the organizers in advance to ensure the stable display during the session.