SMUS

Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability

Visit the SMUS Campus Series website: EC(h)OTONING the urban pluriverse

The Global Center for Spatial Methods in Urban Sustainability (SMUS) is based at the Institut für Stadt- und Regionalplanung (ISR) at Technische Universität Berlin.

Since 2020, the SMUS has been promoting international cooperation in the field of urban sustainability together with academic partner institutions in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

The current Phase (2025-2029) addresses intertwined wicked urban problems. The SMUS network partners work together via 5 Actions to develop tactics and strategies on how to best tackle these challenges through transdisciplinary, spatial, and practice-led research.

Wicked Urban Problems

SMUS Phase II explores wicked urban problems (WUP) that underpin the targets of SDG 11 “Sustainable Cities and Communities” of the Agenda 2030.

Unlike tamable problems, which can be “solved”, wicked problems–such as climate change or poverty–are paradoxical, multi-causal, unstable, and socially complex in nature. Because of this, they cannot be tackled in a linear manner but they have to be “resolved” over and over again in an iterative way. Wicked problems are both interconnected and interdependent, thereby giving rise to unforeseeable consequences.

SMUS focuses on the unfolding of wicked problems in urban spaces–wicked urban problems (WUP)–and suggests tackling them through transdisciplinary, spatial and practice-led research. This threefold approach is implemented in close collaboration with nine core partner universities from three world regions: Latin America, East and Southern Africa, and South and Southeast Asia.

SMUS News

SMUS APRI 2025 Postdoctoral Fellows – Policy brief series on wicked urban problems in African cities – Geo-visualising informal settlements in Nairobi

Dr Mildred M. Ambani Songoro's policy brief examines how Nairobi's informal settlements have been mapped repeatedly by different actors using incompatible tools that have produced fragmented and outdated data. Using Mathare as a case study, she identifies weaknesses in the city's geospatial workflows. She proposes utilising integrated visualisation methods—such as ArcGIS StoryMaps and flood simulation—to support better decision-making.

SMUS APRI 2025 Postdoctoral Fellows – Policy brief series on wicked urban problems in African cities – Informal electricity in Mathare, Nairobi

Using participatory systems mapping, special guest contributors to the policy brief series, Mourice Wambua Kausya and Brunilde Verrier, show how informal electricity provision in Mathare is woven into community livelihoods, sustained by affordability constraints and reinforced by punitive enforcement cycles that cut supply to whole neighbourhoods without touching the underlying drivers.

SMUS APRI 2025 Postdoctoral Fellows – Policy brief series on wicked urban problems in African cities – Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in Ghana

Dr. Emmanuel Amponsah's policy brief looks at a failed attempt to introduce a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in Ghana. The introduction of a BRT system was promoted as an integrated reform and a technical fix for urban congestion. What it delivered was a downgrade of the functioning Quality Bus Service and its eventual operational collapse, with numerous attempts to relaunch the service ongoing since 2005.

SMUS APRI 2025 Postdoctoral Fellows – Policy brief series on wicked urban problems in African cities – Corruption in Kisumu’s water and sanitation sector

Dr. Calvince Ouko Othoo’s policy brief examines corruption in Kisumu’s water and sanitation sector. Anti-corruption frameworks exist nationally; county bylaws exist locally. As a result, in Kisumu’s informal settlements, bribery for connections, fraudulent billing, favouritism and engineered delays persist because the integrity architecture was built to catch national grand corruption at the institutional level, not petty grassroots extraction.

News Archive