SURE Sustainable Development of Urban Regions International Conference - Towards Resilience
SURE Sustainable Development of Urban Regions
International Conference – Towards Resilience
March 17th and 18th 2027 – HafenCity University, Hambur, Germany
Cities and regions face interconnected environmental, social, economic and institutional challenges. Responding to them requires more than individual technical solutions. It also depends on the capacity to anticipate and adapt to changing conditions, connect different forms of knowledge, cooperate across sectors and translate research into action. Building resilience is therefore a long-term process in which knowledge, capacities and relationships can contribute to sustainable transformation.
The SURE initiative has tackled these challenges through transdisciplinary urban research across Southeast Asia, China and Germany. Working with actors from science, public administration, civil society and practice, the projects have developed and tested approaches to sustainable urban development under diverse institutional and cultural conditions. As the initiative approaches its conclusion, the final conference provides an opportunity to bring these experiences into dialogue with perspectives from beyond SURE and critically reflect what they contribute to more resilient cities and regions.
The conference explores this question through four thematic sessions:
- Decision Support for Resilience – how knowledge, data and tools can support betterinformed decisions under conditions of complexity and uncertainty.
- Sensitive Design for Resilience – how context-sensitive approaches can help develop resilient solutions that respond to local environmental, spatial, social and cultural conditions.
- Communities for Resilience – how participation, collaboration and local capacities can enable communities to shape and sustain urban transformation.
- Innovative Practice for Resilience – how new approaches can move from experimentation towards implementation and longer-term practice.
During the conference, together, we would like to investigates what enables resilience in practice: which tools and approaches prove useful, how they need to be adapted to different contexts, what makes collaboration work, and what is needed for knowledge and innovation to remain relevant beyond individual projects. By connecting researchers, practitioners, local partners, policymakers and other interested actors, Towards Resilience aims to identify lessons that can inform future research and practice as well the implementation of the SDGs – locally and globally.