How may spatial methods contribute to transdisciplinary projects regarding the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal # 11 (SDG# 11) ‘Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’? This session aims to present and discuss four different research-and-practice answers to this question, which were developed by teams of academics and professional practitioners (from NGOs and CBGs to local government agencies) in Global South countries ranging from India to Brazil as well as South Africa and Iran between 2023 and 2024. Concerning respectively the Kolkata wetlands, the São Paulo ecologies of urban health, homelessness in Pretoria and bike mobility to Teheran’s schools, the four transdisciplinary projects in focus were forged in the framework of the SMUS Strategic Action “Exchange”. From 2020 to 2024, the SMUS Action 4 has sponsored practical-empirical implementation projects of spatial methods on a global scale with the aim of critically assessing if and how spatial methods may make a difference in the daily professional practice of stakeholders involved in urban sustainability initiatives.
