Faculty of Economics & Business - Zagreb

UNIC city laboratories 2021: Resistant Zagreb

During 2020 and 2021, the City of Zagreb was suddenly faced with several major crises that will mark entire generations and whose consequences Zagreb will deal with at least for a decade.

Zagreb, like the rest of Croatia, Europe, and the World, is coping with all the challenges of the Corona crisis, and the burden of the crisis increased sharply when on March 22, 2020, Zagreb was hit by a devastating earthquake. After the devastating earthquake, Zagreb faced a major flood in July, only to relive the severe epidemiological autumn, and finally at the end of 2020 strongly suffered two new devastating earthquakes in central Croatia. In addition to all of the above, Zagreb and Croatia are expecting subsequent crises, such as the economic crisis, the mental health crisis, and the deteriorating well-being of the population, along with already earlier crises caused by climate change, potential political crises, etc.
However, Zagreb, as the capital of Croatia, has numerous capacities and resources, and above all the human resources, knowledge, and expertise that exist within the academic community, numerous private and public organizations, as well as a strong civil sector that has been mobilized from the beginning. Zagreb also has numerous natural resources, as well as strong political and geo-traffic importance.
 
What will Zagreb look like after all these crises? Will crises be an opportunity to improve many aspects of quality of life, acquire new skills, and develop new solutions? The answer to these questions depends on its resilience capacities. Resilience capacities are the ways in which local resources are put in to function as well as the processes, decisions, actions that enable an adequate response to the crisis. Resilience capacities enable adequate anticipation of future risks and crises, as well as their avoidance.

The UNIC project of the European University of Post-Industrial Cities, which has been implemented since 2020 in cooperation with 8 European universities, has the launch of urban laboratories as one of its important components. City labs are designed as physical or virtual places of discussion to identify key challenges and generate potential solutions related to the issues facing modern cities.
As part of the City Laboratory 2021: Resistant Zagreb, efforts will be made to contribute to strengthening the resilience capacity of the City of Zagreb, through the following outcomes:
1) generating issues that can serve decision-makers and relevant stakeholders as an instrument of self-assessment of the key challenges facing the city as well as resilience capacities;
2) mapping of strengths, i.e. areas in which resilience capacities have been developed;
3) detection of weaknesses, ie areas in which resilience capacities and problem formulations are insufficiently developed;
4) generating solution proposals that will strengthen insufficiently developed resilience capacities;
5) implementation of some of the solutions that strengthen resilience capacities.

Achieving the intended outcomes will go through several stages
I.   MAY 2021- LAUNCHING A LOCAL POP-UP CITY LABORATORY within which outcomes will be achieved 1) generating issues that can serve as an instrument of self-assessment of key challenges facing the city as well as resilience capacity to decision-makers and relevant stakeholders; 2) mapping of strengths, ie areas in which resilience capacities have been developed; 3) detection of weaknesses, i.e. areas in which resilience capacities and problem formulations are insufficiently developed
II.  JUNE 2021- Virtual International Platform / International Hackathon with partner UNIC University to generate solution proposals
III. SEPTEMBER 2021- Implementation of some of the solutions that strengthen resilience capacities

All sections of the first city laboratory will be held in the period from May 14 to 25, 2021, in the online format, according to the following schedule (PDF)
 
We hereby invite you to participate in the work of the first city laboratory, in a section/sections of your choice. All sections will take place through the online platform, and you will receive a link after you make an application using a short form.
 
Please register no later than May 16,.2021. by form https://forms.gle/ZfckX45TrBUaKe7a9

For all additional questions, please feel free to contact the heads of city laboratories, Prof. Nino Žganec, Ph.D., nzganec@pravo.hr, or Assist. Prof. Ana Opačić, Ph.D., ana.opacic@pravo.hr.