Author: Andrew Karvonen

EmbedterLabs: Better Embedded Labs for More Synergistic Sustainable Urban Transformation Project Planning is a three-year project funded by JPI Urban Europe to develop capacity for more synergistic urban planning for transformations towards sustainable and resilient urban areas. Project partners include Maastricht University, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Uppsala University, Gdansk University of Technology, City of Maastricht, Maastricht Bereikbaar, City of Gdansk, Community of Gdansk Foundation, Olivia Business Centre, City of Stockholm, and Sweco.

I co-edited a special issues of Frontiers in Sustainable Cities on ‘Techno-Politics of the Sustainable-Smart City’. The open-access collection includes articles on smart farming, crowdsourced disaster data, digital segregation, knowledge transfer, and self-driving vehicles. Thanks to my co-editors Matt Cook and Mark Lemon as well as all authors for their contributions!

I co-edited a new collection of commentaries in the Journal of Urban Technology to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin’s groundbreaking book Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition. The first eight commentaries (including an introduction by Alan Wiig, Colin McFarlane, Jonathan Rutherford, and me) are now available here: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjut20/0/0

I am honoured to join a stellar group of scholars on the editorial board of Buildings and Cities. The journal hosts debates on all scales of the built environment, from buildings, blocks and neighbourhoods to cities, regions, and nations. I look forward to working with Richard Lorch and the editorial team. More info on how to submit your research here: https://journal-buildingscities.org/about/submissions/

I co-authored a new article titled ‘Legitimacy in municipal experimental governance: questioning the public good in urban innovation practices’ in European Planning Studies with Erica Eneqvist, Jessica Algehed, and Christian Jensen. We examine the experimental governance practices in Stockholm and Gothenburg with a particular emphasis on the implications to serving the public good.

I published a new open access article in Urban Transformations titled ‘The “New Urban Science”: towards the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary pursuit of sustainable transformations’ with colleagues from the Humanising the Sustainable Smart City (HiSS) project. We argue that the digital revolution offers multiple opportunities for urban stakeholders to know cities better and draw on examples from Stockholm to show how academics and non-academics can collaborate on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary science interventions. The article can be downloaded here: rdcu.be/cAGVr

I started a new position today at Lund University in the Department of Architecture and the Built Environment. I will lead the Urban Arena and work to build up the urban agenda across the university. I look forward to new collaborations and projects in Southern Sweden! My new profile is here: https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/andrew-karvonen

I wa pleased to contribute to a new online, open-access course titled ‘Smart Cities for City Officials- A Social Sciences Perspective’ developed by Guy Baeten, Chiara Valli and Adriana de la Peña at the Institute for Urban Research at Malmö University. The course features interviews with world-leading researchers about current debates on Smart Cities. It is designed mainly for city officials and practitioners in Nordic European countries, but will be of interest to researchers, students, and citizens who want to know more about smart cities and their social implications.

I co-authored a new journal article with Ahlam Sherif titled ‘Supporting, tinkering, adjusting and resisting: a typology of user translations of the built environment.’ We conducted an Actor Network Theory-inspired ethnography of residential building designers and occupants at Masdar City and identified a range of user responses to the sustainable lighting scripts. The open-access article is available here.

The TRANS-PED project now has a website: https://trans-ped.eu. Thanks to Gerald Babel-Sutter and colleagues at Urban Future for the design and coordination. The project team will be adding project resources and findings on a period basis over the coming months. Check back!