Action 2 – Regional Campuses

Unravelling wicked urban problems and developing recommendations for action

The SMUS Regional Campuses stimulate scientific excellence clusters in Latin America, East and Southern Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. Nine Regional Campuses across these three world regions explore agreed-upon wicked urban problems (WUP) and look at how they manifest and entangle themselves in each region’s urban spaces. Ultimately aimed at developing region-specific recommendations for action, the focus lies on developing tactics and strategies for WUP through practice-led, transdisciplinary, and spatial “research and teaching”.

The process runs as follows (Figures 1 and 2): after “preparing the grounds” in the nine core partner universities (2025), three Regional Campuses run in parallel each year (2026-2028), alternating hosting roles. Each Regional Campus consists of three core partner universities and a fourth invited university from the same region. In the first stage, they integrate the selected WUP into a Master Class, after which a small delegation of 3 students and a lecturer from each university travels to the host university, where the Regional Studio lays the groundwork for a regional Expert Workshop. Each Regional Campus produces one publication that features expert contributions, selected outputs from the Master Classes and Regional Studios, and joint recommendations for policymaking and action. The underlying international layer ensures cross-pollination via partner workshops and a lecture series.