Space SyntaKS

Effective governance requires sufficient data. This also applies to urban development. Lack of data leads to a lack of response to challenges that arise in the city settlements.  

The City Lab will bridge the gap between the research focus of academic institutions and the requirements for city development and management needs. The City Lab’s main activities will include creating technological tools to generate data necessary for monitoring urban development, facilitating data gathering processes and conducting applied research for city-relevant policy solutions. To build a sustainable network of researchers and young professionals, the City Lab will facilitate informal educational activities and trainings, engage educational institutions, organize co-creation workshops and provide affordable coworking spaces. 

The team aims to contribute to expanding the use of geospatial data and engage the scientific community in Kosovo to nurture innovative approaches to data gathering and analysis. The City Lab will offer complementary educational programmes to promote the need to harness data as an opportunity that enables sustainable growth and the needed shift towards data-driven governance. The suggested curriculum will amplify the importance of disaggregating data by gender and mediating objective and subjective data sets to produce results that include the needs of women, especially with regard to tackling gender–based violence and discrimination.

Through the systematic use of urban indicators and GIS analysis techniques, one can monitor different urban issues and their effects on the quality of life of the population and therefore apply its results to target the most disadvantaged areas of the city to implement effective remedy policies. 

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