R-LINK, Redressing Long-term societal challenges through space for Incremental urban development, small-scale and bottom-up initiatives to produce New Knowledge for vital and inclusive urban regions

R-LINK has been awarded close to €1,5 million in funding and €0,5 million in co-financing from institutional and private partners. The R-LINK project aims to find smart solutions to address economic, social and environmental challenges through spatial transformations via Community-Linked Incremental Urban Developments (CLIUDs). CLIUDs evolve around the concept of 'linking social capital' with an emphasis on the capacity of citizens and community to engage with those in power. It remains unclear how these increasingly popular new initiatives and alliances connect with long-term social and spatial issues of accessibility, urban vitality, inclusiveness, sustainability and economic competitiveness. In fact, discrepancies exist between CLIUDs and the necessary level of scale, time frame and governance for resolving strategic urban challenges. Transformations through CLIUDs affect and contest conventional urban development and governance models, thus requiring new action perspectives for civil servants and other practitioners in urban development. R-LINK proposes to bridge the gap between the practice of large-scale, strategic urban ambitions and policies and that of the new alliances (government, market or citizen initiated) for CLIUDs.