The EmbedterLabs team met in Maastricht for a few days to discuss our recent research accomplishments and to strategise for 2024. Jake Wiersma (second from left) led us on a guided tour of the city centre and showed us some examples of mobility transitions over the last few decades. Thanks to Denver Nixon, Anique Hommels, and Marc Dijk for hosting us!
I co-edited a new book on Artificial Intelligence and Cities with Federico Cugurullo, Federico Caprotti, Matthew Cook, Simon Marvin, and Pauline McGuirk. The book includes 20 chapters on autonomous vehicles, urban robots, city brains and urban platforms, and urban software agents and algorithms.
I published a new article in Urban Studies on artificial intelligence and cities with Federico Cugurullo, Federico Caprotti, Matthew Cook, Pauline McGuirk, and Simon Marvin. We examine how AI is influencing the development of cities and conversely, how cities are influencing the development of AI. The article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231203386
Tom Hargeaves and I co-edited a special issue of Buildings & Cities on ‘Data Politics in the Built Environment‘. The collection includes an introductory essay (Karvonen & Hargreaves) followed by research articles on an intersectional approach to smart city technologies (Sharma et al.), harvesting sociocultural data from local newspapers (Mello Rose & Chang), the social implications of decarbonising and digitilising energy infrastructures (Sareen et al.), and the platformisation of Dublin’s taxi industry (White & Larsson). All of the articles are open access.
I visited the Brunnshög development in Lund again with the students of my Urban Process course. It was a warm and sunny day and Daniel Wasden served as our tour guide. Daniel provided multiple insights on the visions and implementation of various urban design strategies. It’s great to have such an intriguing example of sustainable urban development within walking distance of the Lund University campus.
I attended the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference in London 29 August to 1 September. Jonas Bylund and I organised two paper sessions on ‘Catalysing Sustainable Urban Transformations’ and I served as respondent in a session on ‘Artificial Intelligences and Transformations to More Sustainable Urban Futures’ co-hosted by Matthew Cook, Pauline McGuirk, and Miguel Valdez. It was fun to meet up with colleagues again and see a bit of London.
Jonas Bylund and I contributed a chapter titled ‘Blessed mess: new modes of thinking, acting, and learning for sustainable urban transformations’ to a new compendium titled A Research Agenda for Sustainable Cities and Communities edited by Kes McCormick, James Evans, Yuliya Voytenko Palgan, and Niki Frantzeskaki. We discuss the potential for small and incremental actions to inform learning, democratic deliberation, and collective action in cities.
It was a pleasure to participate in the international summer school on ‘A Contested Relationship? Urbanisation & the Digital vs. Digitalisation & the Urban’ in Luxembourg from 6 to 8 July. The summer school was organised by the Academy for Territorial Development in the Leibniz Association (ARL) and included keynotes by Rob Kitchin, Julia Rone, Bastian Lange and me as well as presentations by Björn Nordvall, Alisa Uhrig, Alina Utrata, Saebom Song, Khaliq Parkar, Xunran Tan, Benedikt Taiber, Devika Prakash, Karinne Madron, and Maryam Kazemi. We had wide-ranging discussions on the synergies and frictions of sociotechnical urban development. Thank you to Constance Carr, Markus Hesse, Lena Greinke, Rainer Danielzyk, and Christian Schulz for organising a great event!
My LU Living Lab colleague Ivette Arroyo and I joined Eva Dalman and Jon Andersson from the City of Lund on a visit to the HSB Living Lab in Gothenburg. This is a fantastic real world lab where multiple stakeholders are testing housing and living solutions. Thanks to Madelaine Doufrix, Emma Sarin and Susanne Klint for hosting us for the day. I look forward to learning more about their multiple projects in the coming months/years.
Matt Cook and I published an article in Urban Studies on ‘Urban Planning and the Knowledge Politics of the Smart City’. In the article, we apply Artistotle’s intellectual virtues of techne, episteme and phronesis to critique current practices of smart cities and conclude that future approaches to digitalisation need to support a progressive knowledge politics of urban development.
Andrew Karvonen 