ISTP News

The global COVID-19 pandemic is manifesting differently in every country. The new video of our "ISTP4Public" series sheds light on how the urban poor mitigated their risk of infection in Accra and Johannesburg at the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak. Researchers Antoinette van der Merwe from the Swiss Minerals Observatory and Kathrin Durizzo from the Development Economics Group talk about their research's main findings and the policy implications.

In collaboration with SECO, the virtual  "Urban Development Round Table," which took place on Tuesday, November 10, brought together some of the world's major players and funders of urban development, including the World Bank, the Cities Alliance, the Cities Development Initiative for Asia, and IDB. Reaching out beyond academia, Prof. Hubert Klumpner and Michael Walczak had a chance to explore how to devise collaborative solutions to the most pressing urban challenges.

(Re-​post from ETH News) Ten years ago, ETH took the bold step of establishing a presence abroad in the form of its very own research centre. This year, the Singapore-​ETH Centre launched its third research programme – and new insights are already making their way back to Switzerland.

Adequate responses to city-​making and the production of inclusive environments are needed to tackle the segregated landscape and structural challenges in South Africa's young democracy that cannot be generated by one theoretical framework alone. In our upcoming colloquium, Anne Graupner, co-founder of 26´10 south Architects, talks about a unique mode of thinking that led to intertwining theory and practice, the co-production of knowledge and capacity building.

The "Social aspects of public lighting" lecture will take place online on Monday, October 12, 2020, at 14.30.

COVID-19 has already challenged many countries, causing concern about what will happen in African countries. To understand how the urban poor mitigate their risk of infection, ISTP PhD student Antoinette van der Merwe together with researchers from the University of Ghana and the University of Pretoria conducted a survey with 1,400 poor households in Accra and Johannesburg. They concluded that a costly shutdown of public life is only effective with a well-informed population.

Why does so little of the vast knowledge about fighting climate change make it into policy? In the new video of our "ISTP4Public" series, ISTP Member ETH Prof. David Kaufmann highlights the need for policy advice that includes considerations of implementability and acceptance of the proposed policy. To help climate scientists provide such utilization-focused policy advice, Prof. Kaufmann worked together with various researchers and formulated a six-point checklist.