Urban Waterworlds
What are youth’s perceptions on water in cities in Colombia and Switzerland? What can youth-led imaginaries tell us about the future of water in cities? How can we re-imagine urban environmental futures in relation to climate change from Cartagena, Lausanne or Basel?
This projects brings together youth’s imaginaries on the relationships between urban water and futurity. They draw from their lived experiences in Cartagena (Colombia) Lausanne and Basel (Switzerland) and are inspired by workshops, urban environmental collective walks and artistic works.
Urban Waterworlds is a communication project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Agora scheme, with the support of the University of Basel, the University of Lausanne, the Fundación Grupo Social Cartagena – Plan para el Buen Vivir Comuna 6.
We are a team of academics, grassroots environmental organisations, social workers, teachers, photographs, etc. The Urban Waterworlds project enables us to work across the spaces of academia and activism and to engage in a fruitful dialogue with youth in Switzerland and Colombia.
Urban environmental collective walks
To explore Urban Waterwords, we developed collective walks with the youth in three cities. We drew on the methodolodgy of strollology (Burckhardt 1988) placing attentive walking at the centre as a practice that sharpens our senses, makes us aware of our waterworlds and allows us to grasp their diversity.
As we walked, we placed our feelings, emotions, and senses at the centre, guided by the Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Bordas’ (1978) notion of Sentipensante (‘feeling-thinking’).
Walking guide – ‘Feeling-thinking your Urban Waterworlds’
We have produced a walking guide entitled ‘Feeling-thinking your Urban Waterworlds’ (Sentipensando tus cuerpos de agua) in English and Spanish, which takes us through the past, prensent and future temporalities of Urban Waterworlds. The guide is available and can be downloaded here as a pedagogical tool.
Walks along urban waterworlds in Cartagena, Basel and Lausanne/Renens
Thinking with the Archipelago City
This project builds on a joint research published in 2021 in the peer-reviewed journal Cahiers des Amériques latines.
We define Cartagena as a socially and ecologically fragmented “Archipelago City” and point to the necessity to take urban experiences and social imaginaries related to urban floods seriously.
