News and Events

Conferences and workshops

Is Urban Sustainability Going Out of Fashion?

        Simon Joss took part in a roundtable discussion at the AESOP Annual Congress in Gothenburg last week, exploring the rise of new urban development concepts and practices (smart cities, resilient cities, low carbon cities, etc), and where these leave the idea of sustainability.  The interesting questions posed by convenor Jonathan Metzger included …

Publications

New Report: Smart-Eco Cities in France

Our report on smart-eco urban development in France, compiled by Eric Jolivet and Anna Bond, is now available to download. It includes profiles of Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Nice, and Toulouse with detailed descriptions of selected relevant activities taking place in each city. Please visit our publications page to find other project outputs, including reports on other countries.

Publications

Two New Project Publications

    We have a new journal article and a book to announce. The article, on the ‘Smart City as Anti-Planning in the UK’, was co-authored by Rob Cowley and Federico Caprotti, and was published online today in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. The book, on Eco-Development in China, was written by Ali Cheshmehzangi and his …

Publications

Future Cities: Three New Comment Pieces

Three of our team have contributed interrelated thought pieces on the future of our cities to the ‘Politics of an Urban Age’ collection in Palgrave Communications. Federico Caprotti proposes that human needs should be brought back to the centre of thinking and planning for the urban future.  You can read it here. Simon Joss argues for …

Publications

Low-carbon promises and realities: Lessons from three socio-technical experiments in Shanghai

A new journal article, drawing partly on our fieldwork in China last year, has just been published. It explores what has become of three planned low-carbon developments in the Shanghai region (Anting New Town, Dongtan Eco-City, and Hongqiao CBD’s low-carbon transportation hub). The authors of the article include our smart-eco project colleagues Frans Sengers, Linjun …

Conferences and workshops, Publications

What Can Urban Sustainability Experiments Do? (Our Side Event at the World Urban Forum)

  Many thanks to everybody who came to our session at the UN-Habitat World Urban Forum (WUF9) last week in Kuala Lumpur. WUF has become a major biennial event – this year attracting 22,000 participants from around the world. In its own words, it is “recognised as the foremost global arena for interaction among policymakers, …

Conferences and workshops, Press releases and media engagement

Bordeaux Métropole Event

Our colleagues Eric Jolivet and Rob Cowley presented at a workshop on ‘Smart Cities: studies, rankings and perspectives’ organised by Bordeaux Métropole, as part of the city’s ongoing Semaine Digitale activities, on 1 February 2018. The panel also included Rushi Rama (Future Cities Catapult, UK), Rudolf Giffinger (Professor in the Dept. of Urban and Regional Research at …

Conferences and workshops

Project Event at the World Urban Forum in Kuala Lumpur

If you are attending the World Urban Forum in Kuala Lumpur (7-13 Feb 2018), come and find us!  We are organising a side event on ‘What Can Urban Sustainability Experiments Do?’ This will be an interactive session, beginning with a series of short presentations on ‘experimental’ urban activities in China, South Africa, and the UK.  …

Conferences and workshops

Smarter and/or Greener Workshop

We rounded off the year with an international workshop organised with the help of the Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo. Participants included our own team members from Holland, China and the UK, Chinese policy-makers and academics, and presenters from several other countries.  You can see the full programme here, which …

Publications

New Report: Smart-Eco Cities in Germany

Our report on smart-eco urban development in Germany, edited by Philipp Späth, is now available to download. It includes profiles of Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, with detailed descriptions of selected relevant activities taking place in each city. Please visit our publications page to find other project outputs, including reports on other countries.   中文请微信搜索smartecocities公众平台