About IUR

About IUR

Future social, ecological and economic challenges are all strongly linked to urbanization processes. The UN estimates that today’s 3.5 billion urban population will have increased to 6.5 billion by 2050. This increase will trigger the ‘biggest building boom humankind will ever undertake’. Global corporations such as IBM, Siemens and Google have all entered the urbanization market and offer smart city solutions across the globe. This raises a range of new urban questions and urban challenges. At Malmö University, a strong research environment, including a PhD education in Urban Studies, has developed around urban issues and policies over the past 10 years.

The Institute for Urban Research (IUR) seeks to consolidate and widen this urban research environment at Malmö University. Based at the Faculty of Culture, IUR exposes contemporary challenges emanating from urbanization processes. IUR brings together knowledge from various disciplines to propose possible solutions to urban societal challenges. IUR engages with citizens, civil society, private actors and public authorities to communicate our research results and find ways to implement solutions. Our main research themes are housing and urban renewal, social sustainability, urban migration, urban economics, mobilities, smart cities and urban ecology.

Aims

Contribute to our new university status

  • Lift the academic level of urban research at Malmö University in line with Malmö’s new university status through embedding existing research more thoroughly in the international research front.
  • Be the first institute for urban research in the Öresund region – the region with one of the highest urban growth rates in Europe.
  • Consolidate urban research at Malmö University and make Malmö University grow into one of the most prominent places for urban research in Sweden, Scandinavia and Europe.

Make our research more competitive

  • Create a collective identity for urban research at Malmö University that puts Malmö University on the national and international map.
  • Create a research body that, through its reputation, adds competitive power to each individual researcher – a necessity in today’s highly competitive research grant and publication landscape.
  • Increase the amount of output (publications, research proposals) through intensified cooperation amongst Malmö-based urban researchers.
  • Create a research body that enables collaboration and exchange with other institutes and centers for urban research in Europe, North America, Africa and Asia.
  • Identify new urban challenges and new areas for urban research.
  • Provide a research infrastructure that clearly meets the research priorities of the Swedish government and the European Union for the next decade.

Intensify collaboration amongst researchers at Malmö University

  • Enable communication and collaboration between researchers and research groups that do urban research in dispersed departments at the university.
  • Create a platform for communication and collaboration between urban research fields that have no tradition of cooperation, such as the social sciences, and the technical and health sciences. By doing so, we will create possibilities for innovative methods and theories, as well as innovative dissemination of knowledge.
  • Participate in public debates around urban issues and influence public opinion