I am pleased to announce a new special issue of Local Environment on ‘Smart and Sustainable Cities: Pipedreams, Practicalities and Possibilities’ with co-editors James Evans, Andres Luque-Ayala, Chris Martin, Kes McCormick, Rob Raven and Yuliya Voytenko Palgan. The special issue includes the following articles:

• Smart and sustainable cities? Pipedreams, practicalities and possibilities by James Evans , Andrew Karvonen, Andres Luque-Ayala, Chris Martin, Kes McCormick, Rob Raven and Yuliya Voytenko Palgan
• Thinking critically about smart city experimentation: entrepreneurialism and responsibilization in urban living labs by Anthony M. Levenda
• The promise of smart grids by Heather Lovell
• Smart meter data and equitable energy transitions – can cities play a role? by Jess Britton
• Stretching “smart”: advancing health and well-being through the smart city agenda by Gregory Trencher and Andrew Karvonen
• Urban sharing in smart cities: the cases of Berlin and London by Lucie Zvolska, Matthias Lehner, Yuliya Voytenko Palgan, Oksana Mont & Andrius Plepys
• Smart and eco-cities in India and China by Johanna I. Höffken & Agnes Limmer

Todor Stojanovski passed his PhD viva in Planning and Decision Analysis on 14 June 2019. The title of his thesis is Urban Form and Mobility – Analysis and Information to Catalyse Sustainable Development. A big thank you to the opponent, Robert Cervero (UC Berkeley), and the distinguished grading panel that included Carey Curtis (Curtin University), Malgorzata Hanzl (Lodz University of Technology), Teresa Marat-Mendez (University Institute of Lisbon), Elsa Arcaute (UCL), and Yusak Susilo (KTH). I was honoured to serve as lead supervisor on Todor’s thesis with the assistance of Tigran Haas. Congratulations to Dr Stojanovski on a job well done!

The Master’s students in my Urban Infrastructure course submitted proposals to the Urban ICT Arena in Kista that combine technological innovation and urban development. The groups drew on global precedents to develop customised ideas for Kista involving drones, apps, virtual reality, and other technologies. Great stuff! The proposals are posted here.

Themed issue of Urban Planning edited by Andrew Karvonen, Matthew Cook and Håvard Haarstad

Deadline for Abstracts: 30 June 2019
Deadline for Full Papers: 30 September 2019
Issue Release: February/March 2020

The contemporary smart cities agenda has been dominated by ICT actors with ambitious and far-reaching visions to digitalise collective urban services. Meanwhile, the role of planners (both public and private) as key actors of urban development has been marginalised. This is gradually changing as iconic and unique smart projects are giving way to the ‘actually existing smart city’ where digitalisation is emerging as a common activity of urban development processes.

The aim of this thematic issue is to present empirical findings on how urban planners are emerging as influential actors in smart urbanisation as well as how smart cities are influencing urban planning practices. The synergies between planning and digitalisation have significant implications in how cities will be governed in the future. Contributors to this thematic issue are encouraged to submit papers on topics that include but are not limited to:

• Integration of smart agendas with existing urban visions and masterplans;
• Synergies and tensions of smart cities as they relate to sustainability, resilience, democratic participation and representation, well-being, sharing, equity and related issues;
• Experiences of participating in triple and quadruple helix collaborations;
• Knowledge politics of urban innovation and digitalisation, including scaling and transfer, exchange through international networks, policy mobilities, etc.
• Empirical contributions are encouraged from scholars and practitioners in urban planning and geography, policy studies and political science, anthropology and sociology, science and technology studies, etc., who currently examine how smart cities are influencing urban planning projects, practices and politics.

Instructions for Authors: Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal’s editorial policies and to send their abstracts (about 200-250 words, with a tentative title) by email to the journal’s editorial office (up@cogitatiopress.com) by 30 June 2019.

More information here

I am very pleased to announce a new research project, ‘PERICENE: Peri-Urbanization & Climate-Environment Change’, with colleagues from India and the UK. We will develop the first ever comprehensive assessment of global peri-urbanisation, with its climate impacts, risks and vulnerabilities and also create an interactive Peri-urban Analysis Tool. At the heart of the project is two detailed case studies of Chennai and Greater Manchester.

The project is funded through the ‘Towards a Sustainable Earth’ program, from NERC (UK), DBT (India) and Formas (Sweden). Research organizations include: University of Manchester (Centre for Urban Resilience & Energy): Indian Institute of Technology Madras (Indo-German Centre for Sustainability): KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

More details on the project are here: https://peri-cene.net

New article in Sustainable Cities and Society on the ‘Smart-Sustainability Fix’ with Chris Martin, James Evans, Krassimira Paskaleva, Dujuan Yang and Trond Linjordet. Free download here: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1YKnh7sfVYuJVl

How do social housing providers contribute to the decarbonisation of the built environment? Jenny Cauvain and I just published a new article in Energy & Buildings that demonstrates how social housing providers serve as ‘middle actors’ between the national government, local authorities, building professionals, and residents. The article is open access until 21 October 2018 from this link.

At the Royal Geographical Society with IBG Annual International Meeting in Cardiff, James Evans and I co-organised two paper sessions on ‘Projects, Platforms and the Emergence of Modular Urban Development’. Thanks to the presenters for a rich discussion of how projects, experiments, laboratories, testbeds and meanwhile uses are becoming a new mode of urbanisation.

I just returned from Gothenburg where I attended the AESOP Annual Congress 2018. Stefano Cozzolino and I were co-chairs of the Complexities track and organised five sessions with 21 presentations on fuzzy planning approaches, co-evolutionary strategies, and cascading effects and pattern formations. Thanks to all of the session co-chairs and presenters! Also, I presented a paper in the Futures track on ‘Experimentation as the Future Mode of Urban Planning?’.

I spent two days visiting with Bas van Vliet and colleagues in the Environmental Policy Group at Wageningen University. We had some very productive and enjoyable discussions about smart cities, sustainable practices, platforms of innovation and related topics. Check out their useful webpage (and see diagram above) that summarises the social theories employed by their researchers. Thanks to Bas for the invitation!