Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality (KNOW)

Duration: 10/17 -12/21

With over half of the world’s populations living in urban areas, improving the living conditions in every country depends on humanity’s capacity to address urban challenges. Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality (KNOW) is a response to growing inequality in cities and seeks to build and strengthen pathways to urban equality through the co-production of knowledge, transformative research, and capacity building.

KNOW is guided by the aspiration to produce more equal cities with a focus on three development challenges: delivering prosperity, tackling extreme poverty, and building resilient cities. Led by Professor Carne Levy (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit DPU), KNOW brings together a global consortium of researchers and partners across 13 institutions and 11 cities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The road towards greater urban equality requires policy and planning which actively engages all actors in the city and which explicitly address differential power relations on the basis of class, gender, ethnicity, age, race, caste, sexual orientation, and differential abilities. Through a process of ‘knowledge in action’, partnerships with equiveillance, and responsive urban learning Hubs, KNOW is striving to build fairer cities for all.

Project website

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Primary Management Team
Caren Levy (Principal Investigator)
Andrea De Santis (Project Manager)
David Heymann (Communications Officer)

Work Package 1: City Knowledge Co-Production
Vanesa Castan Broto, Co-Lead Investigator
Cassidy Johnson, Co-Lead Investigator
Wilbard Kombe, Co-Lead Investigator and KNOW African Region Lead
Barbara Lipietz, Co-Investigator
Catalina Ortiz, Co-Investigator
Emmanuel Osuteye, Research Fellow

City Partners
Somsook Boonyabancha, ACHR City Partner
Jorge Peña Díaz, Havana City Partner
Schuaib Lwasa, Kampala City Partner
Joseph Macarthy and Braima Koroma, Freetown City Partners
Tim Ndezi, Dar es Salaam City Partner
Paulo Dam Mazzi and Belan Desmaison, Lima City Partner

Work Package 2: Comparative Inquiry for Urban Equality
Colin McFarlane, Lead Co-Investigator on Extreme Poverty
Henrietta Moore, Lead Co-Investigator on Prosperity
Allan Lavell, Lead Co-Investigator on Resilience
Christopher Yap, Research Fellow and for Work Package 6

Work package 3: Ethics of Research Practice
Jane Rendell, Lead Co-Investigator
Yael Padan, Reserch Fellow

Work package 4: Translating Research into Practice
Alex Frediani, Lead Co-Investigator
Michele Acuto, Co-Investigator
Camila Cocina, Research Fellow
Stephanie Butcher, Impact Champion

Work package 5: Multiplying Translocal Learning in HigherEducation
Adriana Allen, Co-Lead Investigator
Aromar Revi, Co-Lead Investigator and KNOW Asia Region
Neha Sami and Shriya Anand, IIHS Research Partners
Julia Wesley, Research Fellow

Work package 6: Expanding UK ODA Research Capacity
Colin Marx, Co-Lead Investigator

Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)
University College London
– The Bartlett Development Planning Unit
– The Bartlett School of Architecture
– Institute of Global Prosperity
University of Sheffield
Durham University
The University of Melbourne

Polytechnic Uni Jose Antonio Echeverria
Sierra Leone Urban Resource Centre SLURC
Catholic University of Peru (PUCP)
Centre for Community Initiatives (CCI)

Asian Coalition for Housing Rights
Makerere University
Latin-American Social Sciences Institute (FLACSO)
Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS)

• Transformative research for urban equality through the co-production of knowledge with selected city partners in the global South to address prosperity, resilience and extreme poverty.

• Building research capacity in the UK and beyond to tackle the challenges and opportunities of vulnerable urban communities through partnerships with equivalence between networks and organisations of the poor, government, the private sector, and academia.

• To co-create responsive Urban Learning Hubs in target countries to co-produce relevant knowledge to analyse, plan, monitor, and compare city progress towards national and global goals on urban equality, in particular, the SDGs and the Habitat III New Urban Agenda.

Lessons from Havana: Reflections on KNOW’s second annual meeting
2 May 2019

Co-identifying and co-analysis of energy briquettes capacity gaps and needs in Kampala
20 March 2019

Advancing community-led development as a pathway to urban equality
14 March 2019