Andrew Karvonen

I co-authored a new peer-reviewed journal article in Urban Transformations titled ‘Learning ecosystems in urban transformations: a research agenda‘. This is an outcome of the FORMAS project ‘TRANS-LEARN: Ecosystems of learning for urban sustainability transformations’ that formally ended on Tuesday. Thanks to Jonathan Metzger for leading a dynamic group of co-authors (Sara Brorström, Jonas Bylund, Anique Hommels, Martin de Jong, Paula Kivimaa, Meike Levin-Keitel, Raine Mäntysalo, Amanda Winter, and Marc Wolfram) through many vibrant and thought-provoking discussions on how urban stakeholders can learn to learn better.

I was honoured to attend the doctoral defense for Devika Prakash at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Devika’s thesis is titled From Chaos to Control (Rooms): Smart city governance and the re-wiring of technologies, expertise and organizations. Thanks to the opponent Govind Gopkumar and the grading committee members Ola Söderström, Sophie Schramm, and Jennifer Mack for the stimulating discussion. And thanks to my fellow supervisors Jonathan Metzger and Henrik Ernstson. Big congratulations to Devika!  

I co-authored a new article in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research with Devika Prakash and Jonathan Metzger on the governance implications of smart city control rooms in India. We developed new insights on how these facilities are reinventing the relationship between local, state, and national governments based on Devika’s extensive fieldwork in Kochi. Control rooms are having a wide range of long-term impacts on how cities function and they will become more prominent and powerful in the coming decades.

I contributed to a new article in Urban Geography on the role of citizens in smart cities. My co-authors and I studied the institutional logics of seven cities around the world to compare and contrast the dynamic interplay of citizens, local governments, and technological innovation. The article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2025.2551135. Thanks to my co-authors for the productive collaboration: Tim Bunnell, Zachary Spicer, Byron Miller, Teresa Abbruzzese, Paolo Cardullo, Sangwon Chaee, Catherine Chang, Greig Charnock, Ming-Kuang Chung, Kwon Heoi, Sue-Ching Jouj, Olga Kordas, Lily Kongl, Ramon Ribera-Fumaz, HaeRan Shinm and Orlando Woods.

I attended the 16th International Sustainability Transitions Conference in Lisbon and delivered a presentation titled ‘Achieving experimental governance through process learning’ with findings from the EmbedterLabs project. And Lena Neij and I delivered a speed talk on ‘Shaping a research agenda on Innovation-Sustainability research in the EU’ with reported on some of the key outcomes from the CIRCLE Innovation Research Day on 23 April.

Today, I had the pleasure of attending the Responsive Cities Session at the World Cities Summit Mayors Forum in Vienna. We learned about experiences in participation and governance in six cities around the world and then participated in roundtable sessions where we discussed opportunities and challenges.Thanks to the Centre for Liveable Cities Singapore for hosting the dialogue. I am looking forward to the next World Cities Summit in Singapore 14-16 June 2026. Image credit: Mayors Forum of the World Cities Summit 2025

This week, I attended the 7th Nordic STS Conference in Stockholm at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University. On Thursday, the EmbedterLabs project team co-hosted two paper sessions on ‘Laboratories as Agents of Urban Transformation’ and I shared some findings on our study of the City of Stockholm’s summer streets programme. And on Friday, I participated in a roundtable discussion titled ‘Revisiting the Urban Question in STS’ organised by Devika Prakash, Elise Perrault, and Jonas Bylund. It was fun to meet up with friends old and new.

Today, I participated in a webinar with Nina Vogel to explore the synergies and tensions among data, landscapes, and the built environment. Thanks to Lina Berglund-Snodgrass and Sara Ringvall Sundkvist at Movium for hosting the webinar and moderating the discussion. This was the first in a series of webinars on the various ways that digitalisation and landscape are coming together. I look forward to future engagements.

I served on the grading committee for the PhD defense of Anna-Riikka Kojonsaari‘s doctoral thesis on Wiring Power: Empowering Energy Democracy and New Actor Roles in the Smart Electric Grid at Lund University. The opponent was Tomas Moe Skjølsvold and I was joined on the grading committee by Senja Laakso, Carina Listerborn, and Barry Ness. Congratulations to Anna and her supervisors (Jenny Palm and Daniela Lazoroska) for a successful thesis and defense!

I co-authored a new journal article titled ‘Heterogeneous energy infrastructures in Europe: layering and orchestrating Positive Energy Districts‘ with Dieter Bruggeman, Dick Magnusson, Michael Ornetzeder, and Harald Rohracher. We summarise some of the findings from our TRANS-PED project on how energy innovation and urban planning are coming together in Stockholm, Brussels, and Graz. The article is part of a special issue in Sustainability Science on ‘Urban Sustainability and the Governance of Heterogeneous Energy Systems‘ edited by Jochen Monstadt, Kei Otsuki, and Shaun Smith.