EFI Biocities 2024 Winter School - CALL IS OPEN
Cities call Forests and Back (CFB-WS)
Venue: Romagna Acque Società delle Fonti, Centro Operativo di Capaccio, SS 310, Km 48,8. Località Santa Sofia (Forlì/Cesena)
Start: Sunday 1 December 2024 at 19.00 (7 pm) CET
End: Sunday 8 December 2024 at noon
To whom the EFI Biocities CFB-Winter School is addresse
The EFI Biocities CFB-Winter School, organized in collaboration with AlberItalia and SISEF, is designed for Early Career Researchers (ECR, PhD, Post-doc) and postgraduate students (PhD students, Master students) in and outside Europe, who are carrying out research and studies on the ecosystem of relationships between forests and cities.
Travel arrangements and costs are up to each participant, and to support travel costs, 20 scholarships will be provided (see below). Students will be awarded scholarships according to a competitive evaluation of their applications, complemented by their CV.
All the students will be granted.
Scholarship
- 250 Euros for attendees coming from Italy.
- 400 Euros for attendees coming from European countries (EU, EEA, Swiss, UK).
- 750 Euros for attendees coming from other European and global countries.
How to apply
The Organizers will select up to 20 Early Career Researchers and postgraduate students (approximately between 21-35 years old) with a wide set of backgrounds dealing with Forest, Urban and Environment issues. These include, tentatively but not exclusively, forest sciences, ecology, environmental sciences, applied biology, urban and territorial planning, agroforestry, agricultural sciences, landscape architecture, bioeconomy, social sciences, policy sciences.
Application process
Official language: English
Pre-requisites for admission: PhD, MSc in Agriculture, Forestry, Geography, Soil Sciences, Urban Planning, Natural Sciences or related field, and working experience in the field of mountain areas planning and protection.
Lodging and meals are free of charge for the selected grant holders.
Scientific Committee: Prof. Giuseppe Scarascia Mugnozza, Prof. Marco Marchetti, prof. Renzo Motta, Prof. Fabio Salbitano
Organizing committee: Dr Sergio Gallo, Dr Gabriele Locatelli, Dr Angela Rositi.
Certificate of Participation
The Organizing Committee will release a certificate of attendance. Any additional document needed by attendees should be discussed, approved, and released after negotiation between the attendees and the organizing committee.
Eligibility criteria
Applicants to EFI Biocities 2024 CFB-Winter School must fill and submit the application form at https://forms.gle/P9cHV3zEeZ4x7Mz69
The Call will be opened on 3 October 2024 at 10:00 CET and will close on 18 October 2024 at 12:00 CET.
The selection of attendees will be based on the motivation expressed and the profile of the applicants.
EFI Biocities CFB-Winter School: Background
Cities are the places where the majority of people in the world live. They are key nodes of business, with decision-making power and a natural capital footprint that goes far beyond the physical urban sphere. Cities’ societies, via diversified policy arrangements, exert their hegemony in wider surrounding and remote regions, and are the engine of global colonization and migration processes. The awareness of this influence is decisively increasing, leading to proposals to change or update the concept of Anthropocene, where human impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems is dominant. Effectively, the newly introduced concept of Urbanocene emphasizes the determinant role of global urbanization’s footprint on the interactive dynamics of the biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and lithosphere.
Characterized by high population density, cities are surrounded by rural areas, which are less densely populated with a minority of built-up space. Rural areas are perceived as a mosaic of land uses having various degrees of naturalness. Notwithstanding certain benefits that rural areas gain from cities, such as market access, investment inputs, or employment opportunities, cities have generally developed a resource-demanding relationship with those areas. The countryside is historically perceived as a source of food, water, materials, energy, leisure, relaxation and tourism opportunities to serve the needs of cities, which behave as accumulative economic nodes. Urban dwellers, particularly in middle to high-income countries, are physically and mentally disconnected from the rural world. The process of urbanization of mindsets and lifestyles rapidly increased in the last three decades. Almost 76% of Europeans live in urban areas in 2023 but the urban behavior in terms of use of resources, shopping and transport preferences, leisure and culture priorities, time organization, socialization approaches and housing standards concerns 98% of people living in Europe: urbanization goes far beyond the city’s boundaries.
The BioRegion concept refers to a refined urban regional scale that includes the BioCity and its surroundings and is formulated and defined by natural and social interconnections (e.g. watersheds, foodsheds, and food systems) rather than administrative and economic boundaries. This means that the term BioRegion is more consistent with a ‘network’ rather than with a spatially compact region. In the circular BioSociety, formulated by the BioCity and its BioRegion together, the use of resources and the economy around it is more cyclical. The impact on nature and the dependence on energy sources, such as fossil fuels, is minimized, and climate change and adaptation to global and regional environmental change are integral to its functions.
The social-ecological system of a BioCity and its BioRegion comprises a variety of organisms, compartments, and processes, with distinct traits and interdependent flows of ecosystem functions and services across a blue and green network within the landscape.
Objectives
- Providing knowledge on urgent and emerging issues linking cities to forests and providing the tools to transform cities as we know them today to Biocities;
- Developing discourses, methods, and research insights as collaborative outputs of co-produced Living Labs;
- Strengthening transdisciplinary collaboration, with the goal to translate knowledge to action for a sustainable future of the urban environment.
How to get to Santa Sofia
TRAVELING BY CAR
Please select on the car navigator or smartphone the following coordinates: https://maps.app.goo.gl/j3YggQ19dfsfV72R9
TRAVELING BY AIRPLAN + TRAIN + BUS/MINIBUS CONNECTIONS
The best and closest airport to reach the final destination is BOLOGNA GUGLIELMO MARCONI AIRPORT (around 120 km/90 minutes car drive from Loc. Capaccio).
Arriving by public transport, proceed to Bologna Centrale railway station (Marconi Express, Bus, Taxi: see at https://www.bologna-airport.it/benvenuto-all-aeroporto-di-bologna/?idC=62175#section-park-form ) and get a train to Forlì railway station. Next to Forlì train station, in Piazzale Ilario Bandini there is Forlì Punto Bus, where you can get a bus to Santa Sofia, line 132, final destination Campigna. The bus timetable is available at https://www.startromagna.it/downloads/orari/Forli_Extra_Linea_132.pdf
Milan and Florence airports are also acceptable options in terms of flight availability. In the latter case, you must calculate the transfer time and costs from Milan’s airport to Milano Centrale train station or from Florence’s airport to Firenze Santa Maria Novella train station. Proceed to Forlì railway station as explained above.
Other nearby airports are FORLÌ LUIGI RIDOLFI, RIMINI FEDERICO FELLINI, and ANCONA RAFFAELLO SANZIO, but they offer limited destinations and flights.
Arriving by train, please follow the suggested travel instructions to Forlì railway station and consider bus/minibus solutions.
MINIBUS SERVICE (Navette)
The organizers will provide transportation free of charge from Forlì railway station to the venue upon your arrival and departure
- Sunday 1 December 2024, at 5:00 pm, Departure from Forli Station of the bus transfer to Capaccio. Rendezvous at "PUNTO BUS": once you exit the station go left, then cross the street and find the buses.
Estimated arrival at 6:00 pm, accommodation in room - Sunday 8 December, at 3:00 pm, Departure from Capaccio by bus transfer to Forli station.
Estimated arrival 4:00 pm.
Your stay in Capaccio
Bed and breakfast, lunch, dinner, and coffee breaks are free of charge.
Please note that if you decide to arrive earlier or leave later, outside the course period, all the onsite costs will be your liability.
All participants will be required to share double/triple rooms in the guesthouse according to gender preferences.
Internet WiFi connection is available.
For more info
For any question regarding the scholarship, please contact:
Giuseppe Scarascia-Mugnozza, Head of EFI Biocities Facility
Fabio Salbitano, Senior Researcher and Professor of Urban Forestry, EFI Biocities Facility
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