The INDIGO Project

United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III)
2016-10-17 - 2016-10-20 | Unnamed Venue, Quito, Pichincha, Ecuador
Parallel worskhop on community development, land tenure and social innovation under conditions of rapid urban transformation
Questions of land tenure have been of major interest to urban development policy makers and practitioners in cities of the South. Many communities, and particularly the urban poor communities fell victim to eviction, displacement, lack of tenure rights and exclusion from urban services (drainage, water supply, waste collection, maintenance, etc.). In the last 50 years, approaches to these problems have evolved from outright negative attitudes or neglect by public agencies and urban professionals to a more empathic and constructive approach looking for potentially more positive solutions.
This Conference Workshop seeks to bring together about 50 action-researchers and policy analysts from all continents working in the area of land tenure and urban development, together with key experts and practitioners and other interested stakeholders to share state-of-the-art knowledge and to set the agenda for future research, policy and practice in this area. The workshop set-up explicitly allows for flexible approaches to actively stimulate exchange between the academic world and policy makers and practitioners.

International Conference Lesvos, Greece. Making Space for Socio-Spatial and Socio-Ecological Justice in Research and Action strategies
2017-07-02 08:00 - 2017-07-06 17:00 (Europe/Brussels) | The aim of the Lesvos Conference is to provide a forum for sharing experiences, practices, critical reflections, methodological as well as empirical advancements on research for and about social ecological and socio-spatial justice. What tasks do social innovation and territorial development research have today and in the future? What role can the territorial commons play for greater socio spatial justice? What methodological and structural constraints and challenges exist for action research in social and social-ecological change strategies? These and other pressing questions will be the focus of what we hope becomes a stimulating gathering of academics, activists, policy makers, artists.

IASC’s XVIth Biennial Conference in Utrecht, 10-14 July 2017. Practicing the Commons.
2017-07-10 08:00 - 2017-07-14 17:00
The ‘Institutions for Collective Action’ research team of Utrecht University as well as the researchers affiliated with Utrecht University’s Strategic Theme ‘Institutions for Open Societies’ are proud to jointly host the global XVI Biennial Conference, ‘Practicing the commons: Self-governance, cooperation, and institutional change’ of The International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) in the historical city centre of Utrecht, 10-14 July 2017.
The conference is expected to attract over 600 participants from all over the world: academics, practitioners, and others interested in the field of commons, common-pool resources, and cooperatives.
The IASC is the world’s leading professional organization for the interdisciplinary study of commons, common-pool resources, and other resources that are (or could be) held or used collectively by communities, both in developing and developed countries. The association is devoted to understanding and improving institutions for the management and governance of such resources. The IASC is open to both academic scholars as well as expert practitioners, and hence has become the (non-profit) association par excellence for the mutual exchange between scholars and practitioners on commons’ issues.
The 2017 Biennial IASC-Conference will be an excellent opportunity for scholars and practitioners from all over the world to meet each other, to learn from each other’s research and experiences, to exchange ideas, and to learn from successful examples of management and governance of common-pool resources. The conference will focus on examples from all over the world, but will also pay much attention on the significant current-day developments on common-pool resources and cooperatives within the Netherlands (such as knowledge commons, energy cooperatives, care cooperatives, urban commons, and other citizens’ initiatives), not only by inviting representatives of those Dutch initiatives to join as conference participants, but also by offering them an opportunity to draw attention to their initiatives, e.g. by organizing public events and field-trips.
Both the hosting team and the IASC are confident the impact of this conference will not only be beneficial to the conference partners involved, but also to citizens’ initiatives and other forms of commons and self-governance within the Netherlands.

INDIGO Public lecture: MAKE IT COMMON. Differing and composing common spaces and common-places
2017-12-14 18:00 - 20:00
INDIGO Public lecture by Laurent Thévénot (EHESS)
MAKE IT COMMON. Differing and composing common spaces and common-places

The model of orders of worth [grandeurs] analyses conventions of equivalence and evaluation which aim at public legitimacy, insofar as they are based on a characterization of the common good for humanity and are put to a reality test through action. This model does not address the good of a community, except through the utopian conception of a single-worth cité which extends to the whole common humanity. Therefore, it does account for the making and maintenance of a pluralistic political community, conflicting and circumscribed in space and time. The presentation will be devoted to this last question. On the basis of comments and criticisms addressed to the limits of the model of orders of worth, further analytical developments will be presented, drawing on the work of a network of collective international research (in West and East Europe, North and South America) on practical experiences of building commonality and difference in a shared space.
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INDIGO Research Seminar: From the Théorie des Cités to the creation of Landed Commons
2017-12-15 10:00 - 16:00
INDIGO Research Seminar:
From the Théorie des Cités to the creation of Landed Commons
On the 15th of December 2017, the INDIGO-research-consortium organises an International Research Seminar on the “Théorie des Cités” and how it can be applied in Action Research on the Concrete Landed Commons, with contributions by Laurent Thévenot (EHESS), Bruno Frère (Université de Liège), Antoinette Dumont (UCL), Frank Moulaert, Pieter Van den Broeck, Sofia Saavedra Bruno (KULeuven, Planning & Development). We cordially invite you to the presentations and the methodological discussions on Friday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., Maria Theresia College, Leuven Centre. Please subscribe via this link.
Detailed programme and flyer

INDIGO Inspiration Day and booklaunch with OIKOS & Common Lab Antwerpen
2018-11-13 | Unnamed Venue, Antwerp, Belgium
