I was honoured to present some of my research on smart sustainable cities at the 2017 International Symposium on Sustainable Smart Eco-City Planning and Development at Cardiff University on 12 and 13 October. Special thanks to Li Yu and the Cardiff Confucius Institute for organising the event.
It was great to participate in the Exploring Experimental Cities workshop 21-23 September in Copenhagen. Aalborg University in Copenhagen and City Link hosted three days of talks and events that were inspiring and challenging. Special thanks to Peter Munthe-Kaas for pulling it all together. Let’s do it again!
Local Environment just published a new article by Greg Trencher and me on ‘ Stretching “smart”: advancing health and well-being through the smart city agenda.’ We provide empirical evidence from the Japanese city of Kashiwanoha where a coalition of actors are addressing social issues through smart urban development. You can download a free copy of the article here.
The LSE Review of Books just published a new review of Justin Parkhurst’s The Politics of Evidence: From Evidence-Based Policy to the Good Governance of Evidence (Routledge, 2017). Parkhurst provides a very useful summary of the pros and cons of evidence-based policy and provides a framework for using evidence effectively. This is essential reading for those who are interested in the connections between research and policy. Read more here.
I was invited to a workshop in Stuttgart on Real World Labs hosted by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of the German state of Baden-Würtemberg. Six project teams presented their current work on situated innovation and I delivered a keynote presentation on ‘Impacts and Implications of Real World Labs’. I also convened a workshop with Niko Schäpke and Katleen de Flander on ‘Space, scale and time as key dimensions of configuring urban real world labs’. Thanks to Niko for the invitation!
I am very pleased to announce the release of Key Thinkers on Cities edited by Regan Koch and Alan Latham. Regan and Alan recruited several great scholars to write short pieces about influential urban academics and practitioners. I was honoured to contribute a chapter on Matthew Gandy. Something for the summer reading list!
I attended the Nordic Geographers Meeting in Stockholm and co-organised three sessions on ‘Smart for Whom?’ with Federico Cugurullo. Thanks to following contributors for their insightful presentations:
