Sustainable governance of land and water: ARL Summer School 2013

There are big challenges in the governance of land and water in urban regions – managing ground water resources, flood risk management and space for the rivers policy, water supply and wastewater treatment in dynamic urban regions, and many more. These challenges affect many different disciplines and reach beyond administrative and national boundaries. Also, these challenges require more intense research to cope with the socio-economic and environmental dynamics of our time. So, what would be more obvious than assembling 12 on-going PhD projects researching at the frontiers of these challenges from various disciplines and different countries and also invite 6 professors in the field to discuss, reflect and give feedback on the projects in order to explore sustainable governance of land and water?

So, the German Academy for Spatial Research and Planning (ARL) and the Urban and Regional Research
Centre Utrecht (URU) organized an international Summer School where the young and senior researchers shared their passion, approaches and ideas on governance questions and challenges of land and water.
Disciplines covered spatial planning, hydraulic engineering, economics, infrastructure planning, policy science, landscape planning, political economy, law, and others. Dr. Andreas Klee, Dr. Thomas Hartmann, and Prof. Dr. Tejo Spit organized this event which took place in the historical academy building in the centre of Utrecht.