Session 4: Fostering Transformative Innovations



This event was held 22 July 2021.

Transformative innovation and enabling technologies that connect and enhance young people’s access to opportunities, services, and decision-making spaces in cities can play a critical role in promoting their empowerment and achieving the SDGs. Making this a reality requires enabling systematic processes of learning, knowledge generation and evidence building on what works and what does not to engage technological innovation in support of young people’s aspirations.

In this session, moderated by a youth leader, a global panel of speakers consisting of international development practitioners, youth experts, academics and city officials will engage in an interactive dialogue around learning and evidence building on effective approaches, strategies, principles and actions for fostering mundane innovations and enhancing young people’s access to and use of innovative tech-based solutions that can drive change in urban systems.

The session was be chaired by Dr. Stephanie Butcher, Research Fellow at Connected Cities Lab, the University of Melbourne.

The Evidence to Action for Young People’s Wellbeing in Southern Cities dialogue series is presented by the Connected Cities Lab at the University of Melbourne in partnership with Fondation Botnar.

Speakers

Anni Beukes

Anni Beukes is an urban researcher working at the nexus of poverty, populations, and politics, and how these shape the spaces, lived experiences, and opportunities of residents in urban poor neighborhoods. In her research and practice, Beukes draws across disciplinary methods in the social, spatial, and data sciences to collaboratively generate new data and design knowledge-making processes with young people in urban informal settlements to support sustainable and equitable planning and upgrading in their neighborhoods. She is a former Fellow of the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation at the University of Chicago, where she studied how the processes and technologies of knowledge-making, especially the creation and use of digital mapping tools, affect communities and populations living in marginalized neighborhoods internationally. Before joining the Mansueto Institute, Ms. Beukes spent four years with Slum Dwellers International (SDI), where she was responsible for SDI’s data ecosystem, from community-managed data collection to data platform management, analysis, and partnerships. She led SDI’s efforts at the intersection of organized community groups, researchers, technologists, and software developers to create and refine tools, methods and practices for community-driven knowledge production. Beukes holds degrees (MA, BA Hons, BA) in social anthropology from University Stellenbosch in South Africa. She is currently collaborating as a member of the research team on the Becoming Urban: Understanding the Urban Transformation of Migrants to Phnom Penh project at the Neubauer Collegium.

Annisa Hadny

Annisa is a community architect and urban designer. She works in the Knowledge Management Department of Arkom Indonesia. She has an interest in the field of social-culture architecture and urban context, community resilience, and a community-driven approach. The issue of urban transformative in urban studies is her current focus.

Christelle Lahoud

Christelle is a Lebanese architect and urban planner by profession with focus on emergency architecture and planning. She is working with UN-Habitat in Nairobi, Kenya on developing urban initiatives and looking into policies that support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the New Urban Agenda. Christelle’ s work within the agency focuses on innovation and inclusion of vulnerable groups in co-designing and planning processes.

Gynna Farith Millan Franco

Gynna is an architect and an urbanist. She holds a PhD in digital technologies and cities from Queen Mary University of London and an MSc in Building and Urban Design in Development from The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London. Currently, she works as a postdoctoral researcher in the project “Gridding Equitable Futures in Areas of Transition (GREAT)” at Universidad del Valle, Cali. Her research is driven by the growing calls to contribute alternative configurations of the smart city as an urban agenda in the context of cities in the global South.

Rewa Marathe

Rewa is currently a PhD researcher at the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne. She has a Bachelor’s degree in architecture from the Rajiv Gandhi Technology of University Madhya Pradesh and a Masters degree in urban planning from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Prior to beginning her PhD, she worked with the National Institute of Urban Affairs in Delhi, where she was involved in the development of digital solutions to support capacity building in local government agencies. Her current doctoral work explores how the use of digital technology in feminist advocacy is changing the fight for women's right to the city.