‘Surface for Urban Innovation: The Politics of Designing Poverty in Colombia and Czechia — SURBANIN’

The project SURBANIN explores the global operation of social innovations that tackle urban poverty through architecture, art or design (AAD). These innovations have played an increasingly important role alongside more established global and national social policies. However, regardless of their positive or negative impacts, they are very often locally decontextualised and isolated from the urban and cultural politics that make poverty. As a result, such innovations may not eliminate poverty, but rather redesign it. The project will focus on a number of heterogeneous social innovations in cities of Colombia and Czechia to establish a novel understanding of how innovations globally emerge and travel, how they are locally implemented and with what impact. Rather than fully embracing or rejecting AAD innovations, the project inquires why they are adopted and whether the context of adoption determines their outcomes.