Andrew Karvonen

I co-authored a journal article with Seyedeh Sedigheh Ghorashi, Ali Mobini Dehkordi, and Jahangir Yadollahi Farsi titled ‘Inclusive innovation in smart cities: a systematic literature review of conceptual fragmentation, dominant themes, and research gaps.’ We identified five thematic clusters of inclusive innovation in smart cities: (1) smart governance and civic participation, (2) digital inclusion and infrastructure, (3) equity, justice and social innovation, (4) environmental sustainability and urban resilience, and (5) knowledge co-production and urban innovation labs. The findings highlight the opportunities and challenges of addressing social equity and justice in digitalisation agendas. The article is open access and can be downloaded here: https://doi.org/10.3389/frsc.2026.1983822

Congratulations to Alexander Craig-Thompson at Uppsala University on the successful defense of his PhD thesis Inverse Urbanism: Mapping Imaginaries of Stockholm’s Subsurface. He studied the role of the underground in Stockholm and challenged its dominant spatial imaginary as an untapped resource to be exploited. He calls for decision makers to embrace a three-dimensional perspective of the city and acknowledge the central role of the underground in achieving densification and decarbonization goals. Alex’s supervisors included Magdalena Kuchler, Ari Tryggvason and Corine Wood-Donnelly. It was an honor to be part of the grading committee with Jenny Norrman, Nils Björling and Wiebren Boonstra as well as opponent Karolina Isaksson.

Christian Thuesen, Rachel Macrorie, and I co-hosted a two-day workshop at the Danish Technical University on circular industrialized construction. In addition to research presentations, we participated in site visits to Næstes (a Danish company that builds secondary structures such as sheds and outbuildings), Galgebakken (a large-scale renovation project of a 1970s residential area focused on improving energy performance, indoor climate, and functionality), and HOME.EARTH’s Nærheden project (a new residential development that has a significantly lower climate impact while
maintaining high architectural quality).

I was pleased to serve on the grading committee at Agnieszka Czachura’s doctoral defense in the Department of Building and Environmental Technology at Lund University. Agnieszka’s study, Solar Access in Urban planning: Early-stage Assessment of Sunlighting and Daylighting, was funded by the Swedish Energy Agency and involved the development of metrics to maximize daylight and sunlight in the early stages of designing new residential neighbourhoods. Her findings highlight the tradeoffs between density and habitability, particularly in northern climates with limited solar access. Congratulations to Agnieska and her supervisors Maria Wall, Jouri Kanters, and Niko Gentile.

Seven new projects have been awarded funding from ShiftSweden for the Geographic Lab: Northeast Lund: The Playology of the Schoolyard (Växtvärket Malmö), From Parking to Place (ViaEuropa Sverige AB), ReInstaLL 2.0 (RISE), No Waste to Waste (Lund University), Metamorphosis (Lund Municipality), Future Scenarios (Lund Municipality), and Digital Inventory for Reuse (Historical Parts Sweden AB). I look forward to working with the project teams on circular building, mobility, and integrated planning.

On 24 April, I participated in the defense of Karolina Pantazatou at Lund University for her thesis Integrating Environmental Simulations and Semantic 3D City Models: A Framework for Requirement Specification, Automated Data Linking, and Visualization in Sustainable Urban Planning. She developed a workshop to apply digital tools to assess solar access and noise in urban environments. Congratulations to Karolina and her supervisors (Lars Harrie, Jouri Kanters, Kristoffer Mattisson, and Per-Ola Olsson)!

I published an article in Urban Transformations with Michael Ornetzeder and Livia Regen on second-order learning and Positive Energy Districts. The article draws upon our findings from the TRANS-PED project in Lund, Stockholm, Brussels, Graz, and Tyrol. The article is available for download here: https://doi.org/10.1186/s42854-026-00097-x

It was gratifying to attend Marikken Wullf-Wathe’s doctoral defense at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Marikken’s thesis Dreaming of smartness: Mobilizing, implementing and motivating the smart city provides insights on how smart city actors assemble technologies and people in specific contexts to realize particular digitalized futures. Karolina Isaksson, Marianne Millstein, and I supervised the research. Thanks to the opponent (David Pinder) and the grading committee (Katharine Willis, Guy Baeten, and Meike Schalk) for fostering a lively and thought-provoking discussion. And congratulations to Marikken!

Yesterday, the Urban Future-Making research training group at HafenCity University Hamburg visited Lund. They spent the morning with colleagues from Urban Arena and CIRCLE to share ideas about urban research as well as interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration. In the afternoon, the research training group toured Brunnshög with Christian Wilke and Katarina Meier from the City of Lund. It was great to strengthen the connections between Hamburg and Lund.

I co-edited a special issue of Urban Planning with Jenni Cauvain and Antonella Bruzzese on ‘Streets as platforms of public life‘. The following articles are free to download:

Streets as Platforms of Public Life
By Jenni Cauvain, Antonella Bruzzese and Andrew Karvonen

From Survival to Solidarity: Reclaiming Santiago’s Streets and Plazas Through Food, Care, and Collective Resistance in Ollas Comunes
By Francisco García and Francisco Vergara-Perucich

“Can She Handle It?” Women Delivery Drivers and the Gendered Politics of Hanoi’s Streets
By Sarah Turner and Hạnh Thúy Ngô

Elevating Informality: Street Vending, Design Politics, and the Remaking of Public Space in Bandung
By Sidh Sintusingha

Reclaiming Public Space Through Governance Transformation: The Case of Piazze Aperte, Milan
By Antonella Bruzzese

Experimental Logics of Street Transformations
By Martin Emanuel, Nima Karimzadeh, William Hilliard, Andrew Karvonen and Daniel Normark

The Social Zipper: Redefining the Role of Streets in Disadvantaged Housing Estates
By Lene Wiell Nordberg, Rikke Borg Sundstrup, Marie Stender, Rikke Skovgaard Nielsen, Mette Mechlenborg and Claus Bech-Danielsen