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Unit

Urban Sociology Laboratory

Laboratory

Summary

The Laboratory of Urban Sociology (LASUR) at EPFL, led by Prof. Vincent Kaufmann, focuses on understanding urban experiences from a social science perspective. LASUR researches social conditions shaping cities, emphasizing daily mobility, residential history, suburbanization, gentrification, public space, and network management. Ongoing projects include studying public benches' impact on urban quality of life and implementing difference-oriented urban planning to promote inclusion in cities. Collaborating with partners in engineering and architecture, LASUR's work contributes to developing seating policies, analyzing urban planning mechanisms in European cities, and training researchers in rural-urban place-making.

Official source

Summary

Official source

Related people (27)

Aristide Henri Roger Athanassiadis

Aristide has a joint-PhD in Urbanism from the Université Libre de Bruxelles and The University of Melbourne on the topic of comprehensive urban environmental assessments. Since 2018, he was co-Chair of Circular Economy and Urban Metabolism at the Université Libre de Bruxelles where he advised local administrations on the regional circular economy plan and facilitated exchanges between researchers, policy makers and practitioners in order to develop projects that helped Brussels' economy and metabolism transition towards a more circular state. During the last years, he has collaborated and worked with/for several universities, research centres, environmental administrations, NGOs, youth organisations and consultancy firms on a great variety of projects around the topics of urban metabolism and circular economy. Finally, Aristide co-created the non-profit organisation and open-source initiative Metabolism of Cities (www.metabolismofcities.org) that aims to bring to create, share and apply urban metabolism knowledge, in policy and practice.

Yves Pedrazzini

Yves Pedrazzini is MER / Senior Scientist in the Laboratory of Urban Sociology (LaSUR), Faculty of Natural, Architectural and Build Environment (ENAC) of the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL). For more than 20 years, he analyses urban dynamics, social practices, urban cultures, violence and insecurity phenomena, in North and South countries. In 1987, he began ethnographical studies of youth armed gangs in Latin-American slums, developing innovative qualitative methods to make them real protagonists of the research process. Since 1997, Yves Pedrazzini added to his urban experience in Latin America (Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, Venezuela) new expertise of African urban contexts (Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Senegal). He published many books and articles on urban violence and Security/insecurity issues, from a sociological and anthropological point of view.

Eloi Antoine Maël Bernier

Related publications (22)

Related people (27)

Aristide Henri Roger Athanassiadis

Yves Pedrazzini

Eloi Antoine Maël Bernier

Urban Sociology Laboratory

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