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!

I am very pleased to announce a new Formas project led by Jonathan Metzger and including Sara Brorström, Amanda Winter and me. The project, titled ‘TRANS-LEARN – Ecosystems of learning for urban sustainability transformations,’ will focus on learning intermediaries and how they facilitate urban sustainability transformations in Sweden. More information soon!

Alan Wiig and I hosted two paper sessions today at the AAG Annual Meeting on ‘Materialising Urban Infrastructures.’ Many thanks to the contributions from the following speakers:

1. Si Jie Ivin Yeo, National University Of Singapore, ‘Engaging with infrastructures of the future: convenience, cashlessness and connection’
2. Ignacio Perez, University of Oxford, ‘Assembling oligoptic visions of the Smart City: following the transport data dispositif in Santiago de Chile’
3. Paolo Cardullo and Ramon Ribera Fumaz, UOC, ‘Digital democracy in the making: the Decidim platform ecosystem
4. Mohammed Rafi Arefin, University of British Columbia, ‘Political ecologies of surveillance: the history and contemporary politics of wastewater epidemiology’
5. Discussant: Alan Wiig, University of Massachussets – Boston
6. Pauline McGuirk and Chantel Carr, University of Wollongong, ‘Orchestrating energy transitions: from ‘eco-bling’ to tuning the building’ 
7. Philip Ashton, University of Illinois-Chicago, ‘How many bankers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Chicago’s public building retrofits and the political geographies of assetization’
8. Charlotte Johnson, UCL, ‘Rainwater tanks & the material politics of community-led greening’
9. Demetra Kourri, University of Manchester, ‘A city of many worlds: tunneling between nature and technology’
10. Discussant: Dillon Mahmoudi, University of Maryland – Baltimore County

We had a lively discussion today at the AAG annual meeting on ‘Splintering Urbanism @ 20’. Big thanks to the stellar group of panellists for their insights: Richard Hanley, I-Chun Catherine Chang, AbdouMaliq Simone, Kathryn Furlong, Mimi Sheller, Jean-Paul Addie, Theresa Enright, and Donald McNeill. Stay tuned for a special issue of the Journal of Urban Technology edited by Alan Wiig, Colin McFarlane, Jon Rutherford, and me.

My colleague, Erica Eneqvist, and I published an article in a special issue of Urban Planning on the theme of Urban Planning by Experiment. Thanks to the editors, Christian Scholl and Joop de Kraker, for curating a compelling group of papers. The table of contents is as follows:

Urban Planning by Experiment: Practices, Outcomes, and Impacts
www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/4248
By Christian Scholl and Joop de Kraker

The Practice of Urban Experimentation in Dutch City Labs
www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/3626
By Christian Scholl and Joop de Kraker

How Cities Learn: From Experimentation to Transformation
www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/3545
By James Evans, Tomáš Vácha, Henk Kok and Kelly Watson

Experimental Governance and Urban Planning Futures: Five Strategic Functions for Municipalities in Local Innovation
www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/3396
By Erica Eneqvist and Andrew Karvonen

Urban Planning by Experiment at Precinct Scale: Embracing Complexity, Ambiguity, and Multiplicity
www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/3525
By Darren Sharp and Rob Raven

Social Encounter by Experiment? Potentials and Pitfalls of Real-World Labs for Urban Planning
www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/3475
By Charlotte Räuchle

Planning from Failure: Transforming a Waterfront through Experimentation in a Placemaking Living Lab
www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/3586
By Ramon Marrades, Philippa Collin, Michelle Catanzaro and Eveline Mussi

Contextualising Urban Experimentation: Analysing the Utopiastadt Campus Case with the Theory of Strategic Action Fields
www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/3629
By Matthias Wanner, Boris Bachmann and Timo von Wirth

Planning for 1000 Years: The Råängen Experiment
www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/3534
By Peter Pelzer, Roger Hildingsson, Alice Herrström and Johannes Stripple