Cooperation and international projects
Since the summer of 2017, the universities of Dortmund, Bochum and Duisburg-Essen have joined forces to form the UA Ruhr Competence Field Metropolitan Research (KoMet), which includes other scientific players in the region. The aim of KoMet is to establish a cross-university main research area with regard to metropolitan research.
www.metropolenforschung.uaruhr.de
In addition to these strong scientific coalitions, JUS has established regional partnerships, especially with the cities of Essen and Duisburg. For example, JUS was intensively involved in the European Green Capital Essen 2017, the digitisation initiative CONNECTED.ESSEN, Smart City Duisburg and the local climate protection concept. Since 2018, the regional partnerships have also included the urban, peri-urban and rural areas of the Lower Rhine, which are bundled in CONUS as an innovation network (see ZLV report). In the context of the Emscher conversion/green infrastructure in the Ruhr area, of particular note is the cooperation with the Emschergenossenschaft public water board.
Nationally, JUS 2017–2019 was a member of the project consortium of the German Committee for Sustainability Research (DKN)/Future Earth on the future of urban research, funded by the DFG – including the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research Leipzig (UFZ), the German Institute of Urban Affairs (difu), TransZent at the University of Wuppertal, the University of Potsdam and EPF Lausanne.
JUS scientists cooperate internationally with the Ecologic Institute (Berlin, Brussels, Washington) and ICLEI. Supported by the New York liaison office of the University Alliance Ruhr, the cooperation with the Centre for Environmental Sustainability, Rutgers University, New Jersey is particularly noteworthy.
Not least through the CityScripts project there is close cooperation with scientific, entrepreneurial and civil-society protagonists in several North American cities (e.g. Cincinnati, New York City, Detroit, Los Angeles, Portland), as well as through JaC-Lab with the Asian mega-metropolis Jakarta (Indonesia) and other urban centres in East and South-East Asia (Philippines, Japan, China).