USF Urban Urgencies Programme

Grants for innovative projects in the field of urban studies which are based upon partnerships with non-academic organisations.

Founded in 2008, the Urban Studies Foundation (USF) is a Scottish charitable organisation that aims to advance academic research and education in the field of urban studies.

The Urban Urgencies Programme was launched in 2025 with the aim to seed-fund collaborative primary research proposals that engage with the theme of ‘Urban Urgencies’. 

The programme is intended to focus on addressing the most pressing urban challenges through innovative, rapid-response research that responds to the urgency of emergent issues. At the same time, the funded projects should contribute to grounded, rigorous responses that proactively shape inclusive, equitable and sustainable urban futures. 

Proposals must be clearly situated and relevant to the broader academic field of urban studies. Relevant topics within the theme of ‘Urban Urgencies’ include:

• Climate emergency.
• Housing and food insecurity.
• Pandemics and public health.
• Threats to democracy.
• Conflict or urbicide.
• Artificial intelligence and technology.
• Dispossession and inequality.
• Other urgent and existential uncertainties. 

Proposals are invited that link evidence to theory and practice at the convergence between continuity, discontinuity, disruption, and emergence in shaping urban dynamics and form. Particularly welcome are projects that challenge and disrupt existing understandings of multiple and intersecting dimensions of urban urgencies, and that identify practices or methods for shifting current trajectories towards greater justice and sustainability.

Projects must include a meaningful research partnership between a minimum of two organisations, one of whom must be from a non-academic constituency. This type of high-quality collaboration between partners should make contributions in the areas of knowledge production, mobilisation, capacity building, and/or be of relevance to policy and/or practice, as related to the proposed theme.