Co-production of Knowledge: Emancipatory Strategies for Urban Equality

Chair: Professor Cassidy Johnson (UCL DPU)

Introduction to book

Professor Vanesa Castán Broto (University of Sheffield)

The challenge to addressing pathways to urban equality: the KNOW programme

Professor Emeritus Caren Levy (UCL DPU)

Co-production in the context of precarious neighbourhoods in Lima, Peru

Belen Desmaison (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima)

Approaches to co-production in Freetown, Sierre Leone and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Dr Emmanuel Osuteya (UCL DPU)

Co-production and international agenda setting

Dr Camila Cociña (International Institute for Environment and Development, London)

External commentators:

Professor Agnès Deboulet (Université Paris 8/CNRS)

Professor Beth Perry (University of Sheffield)

Co-production of actionable knowledge as a development strategy entails working in partnership with different institutions and sharing power so that communities can participate in planning urban futures. From housing, access to land, services and livelihoods, co-production strategies serve to advance collective interventions to improve inhabitation in cities around the world.

Over time, experiences of co-production have generated critical insights about the opportunities and limits of such partnership strategies. Co-production of Knowledge in Action engages with this critique from the perspective of practice. It examines how co-production is articulated and deployed in cities such as Lima, Freetown, Kampala, Dar es Salaam and Delhi, and explores ongoing experiences of co-production-inspired action, mapping the different aspirations that inform co-production practices and the impacts on urban communities.

While the volume recognises the limitations of co-production, and the ways it can serve to reproduce power structures if emptied of its political, transformatory intent, the authors also seek to understand the emancipatory potential of co-production as an incremental strategy that has the power to transform urban planning practices.

https://uclpress.co.uk/book/co-production-of-knowledge-in-action/