Enabling the City is a collaborative book that focuses on how interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary processes of knowledge production may contribute to urban transformation at a local level in the 21st century, striking a balance between enthusiastic support for such transformational potential and a cautious note regarding the persistent challenges to the ethos as well as the practice of inter and transdisciplinarity. The rich stories reflect different research and local practice cultures, exploring issues such as ageing, community, health and dementia, public space, energy, mobility cultures, heritage, housing, re-use, and renewal, as well as more universal questions about urban sustainability and climate change, and perhaps most importantly, education. Against this backdrop, aspirations for the 21st century are related to the international, national, and local agendas expressed in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and in the New Urban Agenda (NUA), raising fundamental questions of how to enable development. We highlight aspects of transformative learning and ways of knowing, critical to any collaborative and participatory process.

Profound transformations in residential practices are emerging in Europe as well as throughout the urban world. They can be observed in the unfolding diversity of residential architecture and spatially restructured cities. The complexity of urban and societal processes behind these changes requires new research approaches in order to fully grasp the significant changes in citizens lifestyles, their residential preferences, capacities and future opportunities for implementing resilient residential practices. The international case studies in this book examine why ways of residing have changed as well as the meaning and the significance of the social, economic, political, cultural and symbolic contexts. The volume brings together an interdisciplinary range of perspectives to reflect specifically upon the dynamic exchange between evolving ways of residing and professional practices in the fields of architecture and design, planning, policy-making, facilities management, property and market. In doing so, it provides a resourceful basis for further inquiries seeking an understanding of ways of residing in transformation as a reflection of diversifying residential cultures. This book will offer insights of interest to academics, policy-makers and professionals as well as students of urban studies, sociology, architecture, housing, planning, business and economics, engineering and facilities management.