The role of research and knowledge generation in collective action and urban governance: How can researchers act as catalysts?

There is a need to combine different ways of producing knowledge, ranging from scientific knowledge, practice-based knowledge and local citizens’ knowledge, to enable different actors to work together in improving urban governance and collective action to tackle poverty issues in cities. Yet this approach to urban governance is a potentially divisive process. Broadening the types of actors participating in local policy formulation and giving legitimacy to knowledge other than ‘expert knowledge’ overturns the current patterns through which urban development is channelled and existing power relations in cities.However, the main argument of this paper is that scientific research can play a more integral role if it is carried out as part and parcel of the urban governance process. This requires a more participatory process of research agenda setting with local citizens, a research practice that recognizes and makes explicit the value of localized types of knowledge, and a changed role for researchers themselves from external experts into resource persons in the urban governance process.