RESUMEN
There is a growing recognition that responding to climate change necessitates urban adaptation. We sketch a transdisciplinary research effort, arguing that actionable research on urban adaptation needs to recognize the nature of cities as social networks embedded in physical space. Given the pace, scale and socioeconomic outcomes of urbanization in the Global South, the specificities and history of its cities must be central to the study of how well-known agglomeration effects can facilitate adaptation. The proposed effort calls for the co-creation of knowledge involving scientists and stakeholders, especially those historically excluded from the design and implementation of urban development policies.
RESUMEN
Locally based research projects may generate multiple and competing expectations from local actors, particularly when they deal with local issues that are perceived as affecting the local quality of life, such as land regeneration. The sociology of expectations provides an entry point through which the expectations of research projects in the context of an environmental conflict can be investigated. This article analyzes a case study of a project (RECOAL) whose remit was to develop regeneration solutions for coal ash disposal sites in the western Balkans.The sociology of expectations is applied here to explain the linkage between the emergence of political discourses and collective expectations. The analysis suggests that the emergence of collective future orientations of locally based research projects needs to be understood with reference to the specific political positions from which such orientations are expressed. While expectations may shape the political debate, the political debate is also generative of such expectations.