Researchers at the and , funded by , have released a report titled Innovation Districts as Drivers of Sustainable Urban Development: An impacts and monitoring framework to drive knowledge economy, urban revitalization, and social inclusion. 

This study was commissioned by the University of Swag直播 on behalf of the Joint Venture Partnership.

Innovation Districts: Beyond Economic Islands

Innovation districts are increasingly viewed as critical mechanisms for economic innovation and investment. However, ensuring these districts benefit the broader community remains a challenge. The new report highlights how innovation districts can foster sustainable urban development by integrating inclusive innovation strategies.
 

Global Insights and Local Applications

The first section of the report includes a comprehensive literature review and a global scan of 165 innovation districts. The study identifies leading examples, such as the Cortex Innovation Community in St. Louis, USA, and Kendall Square in Cambridge, USA, which have successfully implemented strategies for broader community benefits and social inclusion.

The report's authors analysed these cases using a logic model framework (input-activity-output-outcome-impact) to pinpoint specific actions and inputs that have driven significant economic, urban, and social impacts.

ID Swag直播: A Case Study in Sustainable Development

The report's second part focuses on ID Swag直播, a major innovation district under development in central Swag直播. Positioned next to Swag直播 Piccadilly, the busiest railway station in Northwest England, ID Swag直播 aims to be a model for sustainable and inclusive growth in the UK.

Using the logic model framework, the report outlines a series of targeted activities to achieve three primary objectives:

1. Economic Activities: Establish a knowledge-based economy through the digital tech sector, life sciences, creative industries, green industries, and advanced manufacturing. Goals include creating a self-sustaining innovation ecosystem, supporting startups, enhancing local economic assets, and fostering global partnerships.
2. Urban Activities: Promote urban revitalization and sustainable development through local leadership, long-term partnerships, and creating mixed-use public spaces. Strategies involve forming multi-level governance partnerships, enhancing connectivity, and supporting sustainability in infrastructure and businesses.
3. Social Inclusion Activities: Enhance neighbourhood vitality and inclusive development through community engagement and empowerment. This involves fostering equality, diversity, and inclusion, providing career training and skill courses, and transitioning citizen engagement into entrepreneurship.

Innovative Monitoring Strategies

The report proposes a comprehensive monitoring framework that combines traditional metrics with innovative methods, such as qualitative approaches, longitudinal data, real-time data collection, and participatory sampling. This strategy aims to ensure that ID Swag直播 remains a genuinely innovative and inclusive place, generating a wide range of benefits for the community.

The full report is available to read .

Developed by CivED CIC, a community interest company focused on activating disused spaces, The Engine Room will be instrumental in regenerating Wayfarers Arcade and its neighbouring Lord Street area. It forms part of a strategic effort to produce a generative 鈥榗ivic ecology鈥� where creative and digital entrepreneurs can start and scale new industries locally. 鈥榊outh flight鈥� is a concern within the town, and it is hoped that by providing a space for honing skills and working remotely this issue can be minimised. 

The Engine Room is led by Dr Eric Lybeck, a Senior Lecturer at the Swag直播 Institute of Education, Director of CivED CIC, and resident of Southport, in collaboration with Southport BID, Southport College and Wayfarers Arcade. Designed by experts at the Swag直播 Urban Institute, the collection of units to the Arcade鈥檚 first floor will offer co-working desks, creative studios, workshops, meeting spaces and facilities for photography, podcasting, videography and more. Schools, colleges and independent educators will also be invited to use the space for teaching craft and artisan skills. 

The launch event will include open viewing of the facilities, refreshments, and a cash bar, and welcome guest speakers Michelle Brabner, Principal of Southport College and Ian Parry of the Southport Learning Trust.  

Tickets for the launch event at its Wayfarers Arcade studios on Thursday, 21st March 4-7pm are limited. To book your place, please visit the .  

For more information about The Engine Room, please visit  

Henrik Ernstson, Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Geography and co-authors, Ricardo Cardoso (National University of Singapore) and Jia-Ching Chen (University of California) have won the 2023 Best Article prize awarded by the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research for their paper, 鈥�Blocos Urbanism: How oil becomes housing and infrastructure鈥�.

The article reveals interdependencies between oil extraction off the Angolan Coast, city planning, and the concrete blocks used in peripheral developments in the capital city, Luanda, built under the Angolan government鈥檚 鈥楴ew Centralities鈥� scheme. 

Blocos urbanism conceptualises the influence of global economic forces on the economic, spatial and social development impacting the lives of Angolan people.

This article emerged from a study led by Henrik Ernstson at the University of Swag直播, 鈥楪rounding and Worlding Urban Infrastructures: Situated challenges, risks and contradictions of sustainability through African Cities鈥� (GROWL). The project worked at the intersection of political ecology and postcolonial urbanism, focusing on 鈥榩etro-urbanism鈥� in Luanda and comparative infrastructure studies in Kenya and Uganda.

You can read Blocos Urbanism, and watch an accompanying documentary film here on the .

These sandpits are an opportunity for researchers, private, public and third sector, to come together and devise research proposals for projects on a range of data science and AI-related topics. A number of proposals developed at the sandpits will be awarded funding to cover research costs for six-month feasibility studies led by a University of Swag直播 researcher.

If you would like to participate in one of these sandpits, please follow the links below to register:

• | 3-5 November
• | 17-18 November
• | 1-2 December

If you would like further details on these events, please contact Matthew Harrison, IDSAI Manager and Turing University Liaison Manager. 

The report estimates that Swag直播 may be paying nine times more for land in the rapidly gentrifying neighbourhoods of Ancoats and New Islington than it has received in revenue for land in the same neighbourhood. In some cases, prime city-centre land appears to have been leased to developers for hundreds of years for free, or a nominal amount of £1.

The researchers ask additional questions about the use of public land to build luxury apartments that are unaffordable to the majority of Swag直播’s residents. Despite the Council’s own policy that all new developments should include 20% affordable units, the report identifies numerous developments on public land that contain no social or affordable housing.

One striking case identified by the researchers is ‘Oxygen’: an £82 million, 32-storey luxury apartment complex that includes a gym, cinema room, 25-metre swimming pool and 5-star spa. According to data obtained by the researchers through the Freedom of Information Act, the Council leased land that matches the address of the Oxygen site to Store Street Developments (a company registered at the address of the Property Alliance Group) for a total of £1. No affordable or social housing provision is included in this development.

The report also raises concerns about the Council’s ‘Swag直播 Life’ partnership with Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), the private equity company owned by Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. The report estimates that over 4 hectares of public land have been transferred to ADUG in order to build over 1400 housing units, none of which are classed as affordable. On top of this, it has been reported in a that the Council receives none of the rental income from Swag直播 Life’s property portfolio.

The report calls for Andy Burnham to use his strong new mandate to follow the and establish a Greater Swag直播 Land Commission. This would mean that representatives of the public, private and voluntary sectors and academia can develop proposals for how best to use public land in order to address social and environmental needs.

The research was undertaken by (University of Swag直播) and Dr Jon Silver (University of Sheffield) in collaboration with local housing campaign group .

Dr Tom Gillespie, Hallsworth Research Fellow at the University of Swag直播, said:

“Like many cities, Swag直播 is currently facing a housing crisis and a climate emergency, and there is a shortage of both affordable and social housing and public green space in the city centre. In this context, it is worrying that the Council appears to be using public land to enable private developers to build unaffordable luxury apartments. The questions raised by this report indicate the need for greater transparency and accountability around public land disposals in the city”

Isaac Rose, campaigner from Greater Swag直播 Housing Action and Greater Swag直播 Tenants Union, said:

“The findings of this report indicate that the question of how we use our remaining public land assets as a city is of vital importance in the years ahead. We are calling on Andy Burnham — newly re-elected with a huge mandate — to keep to his manifesto commitment and establish a GM Land Commission, along the lines of that being developed in the Liverpool City Region. We are also encouraging councillors to do ward-level audits of disposed land and existing public land assets in their area, to begin a community-led strategy of using these resources for public good. This would mean prioritising council housing and green space on existing public land assets.”

Chloe Jeffries, campaigner from Climate Emergency Swag直播, said:

“Climate Emergency Swag直播 welcomes this important report. We hope it sparks a discussion about what is built, where, by whom and for whom in this city. As we have seen with Swag直播 City Council’s response to the climate emergency and its failure to reduce city-wide emissions, the development of public land is another example where there is a significant lack of transparency and failure to demonstrate taking into account the long-term interests of the city’s residents”.

Dr Jonathan Silver, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield, said:

“Public land is a valuable asset and in this work, we’ve tried to understand how this is disposed of and under what terms. We’d really welcome the Council responding to this research and explaining to the public the way they value land and whether in their opinion they are capturing the true value for the Swag直播 public. Land disposals are shaping our future city and we think this should be a key issue to be discussed and debated by the public who are ultimately the owners of such land.”

.

For more information:

Tom Gillespie, Hallsworth Research Fellow, University of Swag直播: thomas.gillespie@manchester.ac.uk.

Isaac Rose, campaigner, Greater Swag直播 Housing Action and Greater Swag直播 Tenants Union: isaac@tenantsunion.org.uk.

Chloe Jeffries, campaigner, Climate Emergency Swag直播 chloe@climateemergencymanchester.net.

from the Department of Geography has been appointed to the Grant Assessment Panel A – covering human geography, statistics, psychology, demography and environmental planning.

Stefan’s research lies at the intersection of energy geographies, urban socio-spatial inequality and sustainability science. At the Swag直播 Urban Institute, he directs the research theme. 

The cluster offers an exciting opportunity to strengthen the relationship between Swag直播 and the University of Toronto, helping to increase research capacity, produce graduates ready to face the global challenges of the future and, through international recruitment, offer both institutions an opportunity to reach new markets.

Professor Kevin Ward, Director of the Swag直播 Urban Institute (MUI) and Professor of Human Geography, who will be leading Swag直播’s academic team, said “we’re delighted to be collaborating with the University of Toronto on this International Doctoral Cluster. It will create a step-change in the productive links between our two institutions, building upon our successful series of joint research initiatives.”

The successful PhD applicants will be co-supervised by academics from both universities, enabling students to benefit from the research capacity at two world-class institutions. Alongside their work, a wider network of researchers and students at both institutions will be brought together to share insights from on-going projects into urban infrastructure, creating a larger interdisciplinary cluster.

More information

• Interested colleagues and students are invited to attend an online open meeting with the Professor Kevin Ward, Director of the Swag直播 Urban Institute, and Matti Siemiatycki, Interim-Director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto on Thursday, 10 November, 3pm using the video and audio conference call platform, Zoom.
• Further details of the programme can be found on the .

The article highlights the issues faced by local governments as US cities are fast running out of cash. Likewise, state revenues are also declining meaning many will need help from the federal government. This comes as a result of less sales tax revenue due to lower spending during the pandemic.

For poorer cities, the pandemic could mean bankruptcy. Historically, city bankruptcy has not been uniform with bigger cities facing a more complicated and expensive process.

Jamie was an undergraduate and postgraduate in the Department of Geography during the 1980s and, after a brief spell in Australia, returned to Swag直播 for as a Lecturer in 1990. He left Swag直播 as a full Professor in 2000 for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before moving to the University of British Columbia ten years later.

Jamie has been a past Hallsworth Visitor Professor at Swag直播 and continues to be involved in our urban research through his position on the MUI's International Academic Advisory Board.

For full details see the .

We remember him in this  and Noel Castree’s obituary appears in . We plan to hold an event to commemorate Brian once it is safe to do so after the current lockdown.

The unique design of the National Graphene Institute in Swag直播, UK sheds light on the new generation of 21st-century science buildings.

The release addresses questions such as: How does the architecture of scientific building matter for science? and How does the design of spaces such as labs, workshops and more affect how scientists think, experiment and collaborate?

Over the past three decades, the research on science buildings has focused either purely on the technical side of lab design or on the human interface and communication aspects. Weaving together two tales of the National Graphene Institute, Novoselov and Yaneva combine an analysis of its distinctive design features and complex technical infrastructure with an ethnographic observation of the practices of scientists, facility managers, technicians, administrators and house service staff. 

is a Langworthy Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy, the Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Swag直播 and the Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professor at the National University of Singapore. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 (together with Andre Geim) for their pioneering work on graphene. He was the leading scientist behind the design and development of the National Graphene Institute, working closely with the architects.

 is Professor of Architectural Theory at the University of Swag直播 and Lise Meitner Visiting Chair at the University of Lund. She is the author of: The Making of a Building (2009), Made by the OMA: An Ethnography of Design (2009), Mapping Controversies in Architecture (2012) Five Ways to Make Architecture Political. An Introduction to the Politics of Design Practice (2017), Crafting History: Archiving and the Quest for Architectural Legacy (2020). She is the recipient of the Royal Institute of British Architects President's award for outstanding university research (2010).

Read the for further details.

by Kostya S. Novoselov and Albena Yaneva is published by World Scientific Publishing, Singapore - New Jersey - London (2020). 

Principal investigator , a Senior Research Fellow at the SCI, has been looking at this research area for a number of years as the number of digital platforms have proliferated and developed in different ways.

“Whether it’s on ride-hailing of taxis, journey planning platforms, on-demand bus services, mobile ticketing and fare management, carpooling or bicycle sharing, there are now a vast array of services which are rapidly changing the very nature of urban transport systems. But while there is much debate about digital platforms in general as a macro phenomenon, much of this is 'place-blind' and consequently misses much of what is happening on the ground in different urban areas.”

Objectives

Dr Hodson said the project firstly aimed to understand what the platforms were and whether they can be categorised, in so doing helping to develop a global database of the urban mobility platform landscape. The aim is then to understand how these various platforms are differently configured in different locations, and also how they work alongside existing publicly-run transport systems.

As he adds: “If there are a whole range of private providers doing different things how do they then interact with public bodies? How do they help create an integrated transport offer for a city, or is there a danger that they work against that? There is a whole question here around ownership and control of services.”

The project will specifically analyse these digital platforms in three UK city regions – Greater Swag直播, West Midlands and North East Combined Authority. Dr Hodson said the study had deliberately picked city-regions outside London because the emergence of such digital platforms was not as well understood as in the capital.

COVID impact

Since the initial bid submission was made to the ESRC transport provision across our cities has been transformed by the COVID-19 outbreak, with many transport services either mothballed or running on very reduced timetables. City streets across the world have also been opened up more to pedestrians and cyclists.

Co-investigator said the study would now also look at the extent to which the pandemic could be a real game-changer in terms of transport provision across city regions and how these digital services now evolve.

“Collaborating with the cities taking part in our study will provide really useful insights into how officials are already thinking in terms of the future infrastructure of their cities post-COVID. Clearly, at this stage we do not yet know the long term economic and social consequences of the pandemic, but one big question is do we really want our transport systems to return to how they were in the past? Do we still want too many people in cars, too much pollution, or crowded, unreliable train networks? Is this a unique opportunity to frame a more desirable transport network?”

Window of opportunity

Added Dr Hodson: “UK cities have actually been putting together a whole series of transport strategy plans over recent years so we are not coming at this from a standing start. A lot of work on sustainability issues has already been undertaken.

“But now the dial has shifted and there is a window of opportunity to see if the plans can be implemented. This project will really contribute to city regional transport strategy and to a wider public debate on urban transport policy.”

Stefan Bouzarovski was appointed to the Scientific Advisory Board of the ‘UiO:Energy’ strategic priority area at the University of Oslo. 

Jo Deakin has been appointed Special Advisor to a new Horizon 2020 project, UPLIFT: Urban Policy Innovation to address inequality with and for future generations, running from 1st Jan 2020 for three years.

Seth Schindler has secured Newton funding for a two-year project titled 'Socio-technical solutions to water security challenges in urban areas and post-disaster scenarios' and will collaborate with Anandrya Nastiti, Assistant professor at the Institut Technologi Bandung.

Publications and articles

Williams J, Robinson C, Bouzarovski S (2019) China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the emerging geographies of global urbanisation. The Geographical Journal doi: 10.1111/GEOJ.12332

Cristina Temenos co-wrote (with Marit Rosol, University of Calgary) a chapter titled 'The Greenest City Experience: Exploring Social Sustainability in Vancouver, Canada' for 'Adventures in Sustainable Urbanism', edited by Robert Krueger, Tim Freytag and Samuel Mössner, published by SUNY Press.

'Nature Rebounding in the Peri-Urban Landscapes that the Industrial Revolution Left Behind: North West England’s Carbon Landscape' by Janice Astbury and Joanne Tippett was named as one of the Highlights from The Nature of Cities in 2019.

More recent publications  

Talks, visits and engagement 

Stefan Bouzarovski was a keynote speaker at the ‘Community solutions to energy poverty’ conference that took place at the University of Zagreb on the 15th of January 2020. 

Jamie Doucette Zoning Epistemologies: Neoreaction, Blockchain, and Emergent Socio鈥怲echnical Fantasies of Special Economic Zones. The 4th workshop on the geopolitical economy of East Asian developmentalism 2019, Osaka, Japan, 26-28 November 2019. 

Jamie Doucette Social Justice in the Developmentalist City? Contesting the Nexus between Urbanism and Developmentalism in East Asia. Asian Studies Seminar, University of Edinburgh, 15 January 2020.

Saskia Warren Pluralising mobile methods: researching (im)mobilities with Muslim women in Birmingham, UK. Transport Studies Seminar at University of Oxford, 27 February 2020.

More information on MUI talks and activities

The international community has come a long way in coordinating its response to new infectious disease outbreaks since SARS and MeRS, but as the current outbreak of coronavirus 2019n-CoV dominates the media, how is our preparedness for mitigating outbreaks affecting citizens?

Dr Elisa Pieri, Lecturer in Sociology at Swag直播’s School of Social Sciences, has  on the impact our response to public health emergencies of this kind has on the welfare of civilians.

While progress in responding to outbreaks has undeniably been made, all too often the social effect on citizens is overlooked when response measures are implemented, and these measures vary from country to country.

“…These measures have had very differential effects on citizens and on different demographics amongst the population targeted,” said Dr Pieri. “They have often created inequalities, as well as exacerbating existing social inequalities that were already experienced in pre-pandemic times.”

Dr Pieri commended China’s rapid response to the current Coronavirus outbreak and for sharing information with the international community, but too little is understood of the social impact this response is having on the 56 million people of Wuhan, who have been held in a state of lockdown since 23 January 2020.

“There is no time like the present,” she said, “[to] learn of the impacts that the measures implemented by China are having on its citizens.” Calling on the collaborative efforts that help contain and manage outbreaks medically, to include social scientists in the discussion.

“While enormous progress has been made in responding to public health emergencies of communicable disease and coordinating action internationally, much more needs to be done to better understand the repercussions of the measures taken on citizens and ensure their welfare.”

To read ‘Cities in lockdown over the 2019n-CoV outbreak: the social impacts of pandemic preparedness on citizens’ in full, .

Image credit: Unsplash

Jamie was an undergraduate and postgraduate in the Department of Geography during the 1980s and, after a brief spell in Australia, returned to Swag直播 as a Lecturer in 1990.

He left Swag直播 as a full Professor in 2000 for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before moving to the University of British Columbia ten years later.

Jamie has been a past Hallsworth Visitor Professor at Swag直播 and continues to be involved in our urban research through his position on the MUI's International Academic Advisory Board.

For some , this basic service is not provided. In rapidly growing cities in low and middle income countries, expensive serviced residential areas  makeshift settlements, whose poorer residents lack access to sanitation and suffer from preventable diseases and infections. In India, for instance,  resulting from lack of sanitation.

To address this, some governments have announced national drives to clean up their cities. But many cities are resorting to quick fixes that are polluting water sources and leaving countless urban communities by the wayside.

Take India. In 2014, its government announced a highly publicised . Under this mission, the government surveys and ranks cities according to their cleanliness, and hands . The mission’s main aim was to rid the country of open defecation, makeshift toilets and open sewers by October 2019.

This was music to the ears of residents of Siddharth Nagar, an informal settlement in Mumbai. Its 650 migrant families live in self-built shelters without access to functioning toilets.

For many years, they had to resort to  – that is, going to the “toilet” outside in the open environment rather than using dedicated and safely managed facilities. Open defecation is not considered safe because it exposes people to contact with faeces and, in the case of more vulnerable populations, .

Eventually, residents were able to pool their resources and construct six makeshift toilets for the community. The waste from the toilets was directed straight into an adjacent stream, which took it to the sea. In many cases, water from streams and rivers is used for washing, cooking and drinking, so flushing untreated sludge – potentially containing dangerous viruses, bacteria and parasite cysts – can cause serious problems downstream.

Self-constructed toilets in Siddharth Nagar, Mumbai. Purva Dewoolkar, Author provided

In May 2016, Siddharth Nagar residents requested proper toilets for their community. Two years later, following a long bureaucratic battle and committed campaigning, the municipality approved the construction of a managed community toilet block in the settlement.

However, what they actually got was a “moving” toilet – a trailer carrying several toilets and a bio-digester. Shortly after the trailer’s arrival, officials visited the area to assess its sanitary status. Following the visit, the moving toilet disappeared. The municipal government had achieved its aim of being declared open defecation free but the community was no better off.

In an attempt to pacify angry residents, the municipality eventually delivered four portable toilets later in 2018. But these were positioned out of reach of desludging vehicles, which were vital to the toilets’ proper functioning.

Consequently, sludge was not collected in septic tanks as intended but directed straight into the stream-sewer, polluting water and ecosystems that depended on it. Today, three out of the four portable toilets are defunct. Residents are once again resorting to open defecation and their self-built toilets.

Similar stories from  abound. Temporary fixes and cosmetic solutions offered by municipal governments are leaving countless communities empty handed in the long term. The particularly high risk of disease outbreak from  in densely populated urban environments not only threatens lives but also reduces the time people can work, making it harder to escape poverty.

Moving toilets brought to Siddarth Nagar. Purva Dewoolkar, Author provided

China’s ‘Toilet Revolution’

Further east, Chinese president Xi Jinping announced the country’s  in 2015, targeting primarily the countryside and promising access to hygienic toilets for all. But this bold rhetoric is deepening existing stigma surrounding traditional sanitation practices, widening the rift between the urban rich and poor.

Prior to Xi’s announcement, sanitation infrastructure had not been considered a priority for several decades. Despite the country’s rapid economic development, the proportion of people relying on  had actually doubled between 1990 and 2008.

Although the Toilet Revolution has helped to greatly expand public sewer systems in recent years, in , not everyone has access to proper sanitation. While entire swaths of land have been swiftly redeveloped, pockets of older neighbourhoods remain untouched.

Many of these dilapidated neighbourhoods are inhabited by China’s , who rely on traditional night pots and communal waste collection stations. Younger generations feel disdain and disgust for this way of life. For them, this is reason enough to stay away, .

 are another marginalised group. Unable to afford the , most are forced to live in sub-standard conditions without access to sanitation facilities. Already looked down upon by more affluent urban residents, they are often accused of dirtying the urban environment.

Self-installed flush toilets like this one in Shanghai often just empty into rainwater drains. Deljana Iossifova, Author provided

The desire to adopt modern conveniences – or live up to others’ expectations – has led countless urban migrant households to install flush toilets themselves. In most cases, these are not connected to municipal sewers. Rather, human waste is flushed directly into the street.

The municipal government is now slowly taking steps to . But even where toilets are formally connected to the sewer – including in newly built residential compounds – not all waste ends up at a treatment plant. As in India, much of it eventually pollutes surrounding bodies of water and linked ecosystems.

It’s great that countries are backing the . But at the heart of these aims must be a desire to protect the environment and improve the health and wellbeing of the people – not recognition and awards. Otherwise, those most in need get left behind.

, , and , . This article is republished from  under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

The Group is an international research training group, comprised of researchers and jointly awarded/dual PhD candidates between the , Australia, and The University of Swag直播.

This initiative is funding a number of joint PhDs and the Swag直播 Urban Institute (MUI) has two such projects.

Abigail Gilmore is supervising a project titled ‘, while Leandro Minuchin is supervising a project titled ‘’.

Abigail, Leandro and the Melbourne supervisors are currently recruiting for these projects and invite registrations of interest .

In the coming weeks, Swag直播 will be announcing further projects as part of this joint initiative.

Drawn from Asia, Africa and Latin America, the cases investigate the impact of new digital datasets and dataflows in cities. Together, they build the evidence base on “data justice” – who wins and who loses, the relationship to power and inequality from this datafication – particularly for those already marginalised in the physical city.

Conclusions are drawn from datafications including community mapping, social media, CCTV, 360-degree imaging and ID schemes. Alongside increasing resistance to datafication and constraining impacts of wider social structure, we also find new hopes, imaginaries and relations brought into being.

We thank Swag直播’s and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada, for their financial support for the project.

Series Editors:  and  (University of Swag直播), (University of Oxford), (Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society)

Under the banner ‘Energising Cities: Innovations, Challenges and Solutions’, the European Union Smart Cities and Communities Lighthouse Projects-funded project began in 2015 and is approaching completion. The results of the project are demonstrating how innovation can facilitate sustainable mobility, energy, ICT and business opportunities, with Stavanger, Swag直播 and Eindhoven in the Netherlands being used as testbeds for smart city technology.

“Within our project consortium, we combine the interdisciplinary experience and the expertise of 22 partners from industry, research and municipalities that all share the same objective and commitment to develop and implement smart solutions and have them replicated in our three Fellow Cities Leipzig (D), Prague (CZ) and Sabadell (ES)”, said Trinidad Fernandez, Project Coordinator of Triangulum.

The event featured presentations from Jens Bartholmes from the European Commission and Martin Brynskov from Aarhus University, as well as exchanges of success stories and best practice between partners, and previews of new innovations such as Clicks&Links’ VR bike ride.

CEO of Clicks&Links Vin Sumner said: “With our Virtual Reality Bike, you can experience Swag直播 – or any other city – by cycling on a physical bike without actually leaving your home. The bike uses real-world scan data from cities and gives the user freedom to ride a virtual bicycle through these environments.”

For more information about Triangulum, .

These opportunities provide promising early-career urban researchers with high-profile funded positions at Swag直播, with our large cohort of urban scholars working on a wide range of urban research provides an excellent base to connect not only with other researchers but also local, national and international stakeholders.

The deadline for applications to USF is 21 October 2019.

Please send expressions of interest to MUI Director Kevin Ward by Friday 6 September.

Find out more

These include the use of a mural and banners showcasing community photography and local images from the neighbourhood (see photo), as well as the greening of front gardens and pavements.

The road is also be made a 20mph zone with new signage and welcome signs at either end.

Residents and road users are being surveyed before and after, complemented by sensors to monitor traffic volumes and speeds.

By understanding what works and what residents like the project will inform other schemes across the neighbourhood and city.

LOOPER will evaluate this process across the other two European partner cities Brussels and Verona to develop a new model for collaborative, evidence-based urban development.

The project has been made possible with financial assistance from the ESRC, the University of Swag直播 School for Environment, Education and Development and Office for Social Responsibility, and support from Swag直播 City Council and S4B.

Find out more

Helen Zheng, Constance Smith and Tom Gillespie have all been awarded fellowships to conduct urban-related research here in Swag直播, while Alexia Yates will take up a 12-month residency in the US in September 2019.

Helen Zheng

Helen Zheng has been awarded a Leverhulme early career fellowship to work with the Swag直播 Urban Institute on a project titled 'Can spatial decentralisation achieve sustainable urbanisation?'

The fellowship is for three years, starting in November 2019. 

Summary

With rapid urbanisation in China, the separation of home-work locations in megacities has become evident and triggered numerous challenges.

By adopting innovative research methods from multi-disciplines, this proposal will examine changing spatial interactions of residence and employment and the underlying factors especially the institutional ones relating to land, housing, and labour market.

The research will use the Tongzhou Sub-centre of the Beijing Metropolitan Region as a revealing case to assess whether spatial decentralisation led by the government can promote the integration of jobs and housing, and achieve sustainable urbanisation, which will create academic and policy impacts in China and beyond. 

Helen is currently a research associate at the Swag直播 Urban Institute working with Professor Cecilia Wong on the project ‘UK 2070 Commission – An Inquiry into Regional Inequalities towards a Framework for Action’, in which the team are mapping different indicators to understand spatial inequalities to shed light on relevant strategies and policies’.

Before that, Helen was one of the Post-doc researchers working on the ESRC-NSFC Newton Fund project ‘Eco-urbanisation in China’, in which the underlying dynamics of urbanisation and spatial variations of commuting patterns, green infrastructure, neighbourhood environment, and community well-being were examined.

Among these issues, Helen's interest is in commuting and has been engaged in investigating how different socio-demographic variables and neighbourhood characteristics influence commuting patterns by bringing together research methods from multiple disciplines including spatial analysis in GIS, social statistics and qualitative approaches.

Constance Smith

Connie, of MUI and the Global Development Institute, has secured a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Future Leaders fellowship.

Her project, titled 'Tower block failures: high-rise living and global urbanism' examines how urban success and failure are imagined and materialized in relation to the tower block.

Engaging communities, built environment professionals, artists and buildings themselves, and combining social anthropology with methods from urban design and material culture studies, the project critically explores how urban worlds are transformed by tower block failure and what the afterlives of failure might mean for our cities.

It will examine the politics of the material as well as the human, investigating how material stuff such as cladding and concrete are also implicated in the unmaking and remaking of urban landscapes.

For more details on Connie's award, please visit the .

Tom Gillespie

Tom Gillespie, also of MUI and the Global Development Institute, has secured a Hallsworth fellowship to build on his British Academy-funded pilot research on transnational real estate investment in Accra (2017-2018).

Fieldwork will be conducted in Lagos and Nairobi to inform comparative analysis of the urban political economy of transnational real estate investment in Africa.

This research will explore the socio-spatial impacts of transnational investment flows and develop an original theorisation of Africa’s real estate frontier.

Alexia Yates

Alexia, whose expertise covers urban history, is one of just 37 academics who have been named Fellows of the US-based National Humanities Center (NHC).

As an NHC Fellow, Alexia will have the opportunity to share her research in seminars, lectures, and conferences at the Center when she takes up her 12-month residency in North Carolina in September 2019.

Her current research explores how the stock market came to be understood as a key daily element of French economic life in the nineteenth century and how this understanding changed throughout the twentieth century.

Commenting on the award, she said: “The Fellowship is an invaluable opportunity to share ideas and network with academics from around the world at the prestigious National Humanities Center - and of course to continue to develop my current research.

"I’m very much looking forward to taking up my residency next year.”

Awards

Stefan Bouzarovski has been appointed to the European selection jury of the social innovation partnership to tackle energy poverty. The partnership is run by Ashoka and the Schneider Electric Foundation.

Stefan Bouzarovski joined the editorial board of the journal ‘Energies’ and took up an editorial assignment for SAGE Open.

Stefan Bouzarovski and Saska Petrova have been successful in obtaining funding for the ‘Renewable energies for vulnerable groups’ (POWER-TY) project, led by the Andalusian Energy Agency, and funded by the Interreg Europe programme, via the European Regional Development Fund. The total FEC value for the project at Swag直播 is £197,000.

Deljana Iossifova has been awarded funding (£323,768) for ‘A Systems Approach to Sustainable Sanitation in Urbanising China’ (SASSI) under the NERC 3 Towards a Sustainable Earth scheme. This is in collaboration with partners at the University of Tokyo (Japan), Tongji University (China), Swag直播 Metropolitan and University of Aberdeen (UK). The project will run for 24 months, 2019-2021.

Deljana Iossifova has been awarded funding (£440,582) for ‘Towards Sustainable Sanitation in India and Brazil’ (TOSSIB) under the Royal Society Challenge-led Grants scheme. This is in collaboration with partners at the TATA Institute of Social Sciences (India) and Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and Universidade de Viçosa (Brazil) as well as Swag直播 Metropolitan and University of Aberdeen (UK). The project will run for 30 months, 2019-2021.

Publications and articles

All recent papers from MUI researchers can be found via the .

Talks, visits and engagement

Stefan Bouzarovski chaired a session on ‘Disruptive solutions’ at the ‘Disruptive energy for communities’ conference, University of Plymouth (14 March 2019). He also led a discussion on fuel poverty within the public sector space on energy and buildings at the Swag直播 Green Summit (25 March).

Jamie Doucette:

• Roh 2.0? The Moon Jae-in Administration and the Integral State. Academy of Korean Studies Europe Conference. Rome April 11-15
• Revolution Economics? Korea’s Candlelight Revolution and the Postdevelopmental State. Academy of Korean Studies Europe Conference ASKE Rome April 11-15
• Revolution Economics? Korea’s Candlelight Revolution and the Postdevelopmental State. New Perspectives on Korean Geography Symposium. EHESS, Paris, March 20-21.

Nuno Pinto has organised a workshop in Mexico City on Metropolitan Governance Institutions in Megacities, funded by the GCRF Pump Priming fund, in collaboration with the Programme for City Studies of UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and with the support of the Senate of Mexico. The workshop brought together SEED academics, experts from Canada, Spain, Brazil and Mexico and representatives of GMCA and Mexico City metropolitan stakeholders. The workshop aimed at discussing the role of methodological approaches in designing and operating metropolitan governance institutions and collect data to support the design of the research objectives of a grant in this field.

Nuno also organized a similar workshop at the Colegio de Jalisco in Guadalajara, a city-region where the topic of metropolitan governance is well advanced. Nuno visited Guadalajara Institute of Metropolitan Planning and discussed current methodologies for decision-making in use to establish strategies and approve investments in Guadalajara. These workshops are part of a larger research agenda on methodological approaches to decision-making in metropolitan governance institutions that include the cases of Swag直播, Barcelona, Mexico City, Guadalajara and Brasília. The workshops also generated side projects including visiting professorships across the network of academics and a proposal for an edited book project.

Alfredo Stein was invited to lecture on urban development planning at the PhD programme in Human Development at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) 8-12 April 2019.

Albena Yaneva delivered a keynote lecture at the symposium celebrating the 100th anniversary of Bauhaus: Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, Conference School FUNDAMENTAL, entitled “The Secret Life of Architectural Archives”. The other keynote speaker was Professor Tim Ingold.

Albena also delivered a keynote lecture at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany, 4 April, at the Annual Conference of the German Association of Sociology of Art, (German Sociological Association, DGS).

Henrik Ernstson invited speaker at University of Sheffield. Invited by Gabriele Silvestre and Aidan Mosselson to screen and discuss the film One Table Two Elephants (von Heland and Ernstson, 2018, 87 min) as part of their MA in Cities and Global Development, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, University of Sheffield, 5 March 2019. (40 people, students and scholars.)

The partnership is also led by the University of Bristol, with the Universities of Bath, West of England, Reading and Cardiff and Bristol City Council and Greater Swag直播 Combined Authority. Joining Cecilia in the project is Professor Arpana Verma from the School of Health Sciences.

The project will tackle the root causes of unhealthy urban development by conducting research into urban planning and development systems with a view to embedding the prevention of risk factors associated with NCDs and health inequalities in decision-making on planning early in the decision process.

Cecilia said: “This five year consortia project will offer a wonderful research opportunity for us to reconnect with the origin of town planning – to address public health issues and poor urban living conditions in Victorian times.

“By collaborating with colleagues in the consortium and across disciplines with Professor Arpana Verma at the School of Health Sciences in University of Swag直播, we aim to tackle the environmental root-cause of non-communicable diseases to develop a robust evidence-base to inform better planning practice and governance. This project will adopt a co-production model, and we will have researchers embedded with the Greater Swag直播 Combined Authority to ensure that our research is linked to policy practice to engender real impact on our city.”

The project, the first of its kind, will see Greater Swag直播 Combined Authority (GMCA), supported by 11 other key partners, including the Environment Agency, come together to develop the new innovative financing and delivery mechanisms that cities and urban areas need to respond to the risks posed by increasingly rapidly changing climate.

Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Swag直播, said: “We are serious about our green ambitions in Greater Swag直播 – to become carbon neutral by 2038 and one of the world’s leading green city-regions.

"However, we also need to prepare for the climate change impacts which are now unavoidable and we must do it soon; we can’t keep doing things the old way.

“This project will help us encourage widespread use of innovative, nature-based solutions such as green roofs and walls to cool our city-region down, manage water and reduce flooding, while also reducing our carbon output, and improving our air quality.

"The funding will also help us to find ways to accelerate and finance their deployment.”

Swag直播 team is Jeremy Carter (PI), Angela Connelly, James Rothwell, Adam Barker and Vasileios Vlastaras.

Find out more on the .

Awards

Tanja Bastia has taken up a Leverhulme Fellowship as of 1 February 2019 for 16 months to research in Bolivia.

Dr Henrik Ernstson has been made Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town's African Centre for Cities, appointed by UCT's Council and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng.

The appointment is in recognition of his long contribution to the institution and towards strengthening further international collaborations. It lasts for five years to 2023.

Joe Ravetz has received a grant award under the 'Towards A Sustainable Earth' scheme (£700,000).

The PERI-CENE (Peri-Urbanization & Climate-Environment Change) project is a comprehensive assessment of global peri-urbanisation and its climate impacts, risks and vulnerabilities.

With an interactive Peri-urban Analysis Tool, the project explores synergistic pathways in a Policy Lab with 24 city-regions from around the world, with in-depth case studies in India and UK, and knowledge transfer via ICLEI, UN Habitat and UN Global Compact for Cities.

Stefan Bouzarovski and Saska Petrova have been successful in obtaining funding for the ‘Renewable energies for vulnerable groups’ (POWER-TY) project, led by the Andalusian Energy Agency, and funded by the Interreg Europe programme, via the European Regional Development Fund. The total FEC value for the project at Swag直播 is £197,000.

Stefan Bouzarovski, Kevin Ward, Cecilia Wong and Seth Schindler have successfully obtained funding for an UMRI pump-priming bid on ‘The age of infrastructure: China as a global urban agent’. Other participants in the project include Nuno Gil (MBS), Penny Harvey (SOSS), Peter Gries (Swag直播 China Institute) and Mathaios Panteli (Electrical Engineering).

Publications and articles

Philip Black and Ian Mell have both contributed articles to the .

Diana Mitlin argued that slum dwells may have lived in their communities for 40 years, so they shouldn't be treated as transient places, in .

Mark Usher has published an article entitled Desali-nation: techno-diplomacy and hydraulic state restructuring through reverse osmosis membranes in Singapore in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 44 (1): 110-124.

Saskia Warren and Paul Long published An Area Lacking Cultural Activity? Researching Cultural Lives in Urban Space in edited by Phil Jones, Beth Perry and Paul Long and published by Policy Press, Bristol.

Stefan Bouzarovski joined the editorial board of the journal ‘Energies’ and took up an editorial assignment for SAGE Open.

All recent papers from MUI researchers can be found via the .

Talks, visits and engagement

Stefan Bouzarovski:

• Gave invited talks at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (University of Cambridge, February 2019) and a conference on 'Designing Future Energy Policies' organised by the SHAPE Energy consortium led by Anglia Ruskin University (Brussels, January 2019).
• Represented the Swag直播 Urban Institute's new 'People and Energy' signature programme at an Energy Systems Workshop organised by Swag直播 and Greater Swag直播 Combined Authority in January 2019.
• Opened, via video link, the 'Energy poverty, clean energy, and the European energy divide' conference, organised by Babes-Bolyai University in partnership with Enel Romania and the Romanian Energy Regulatory Authority (Bucharest, January 2019).
• Chaired a session on ‘Disruptive solutions’ at the ‘Disruptive energy for communities’ conference, University of Plymouth (14 March 2019).
• Led a discussion on fuel poverty within the public sector space on energy and buildings at the Swag直播 Green Summit (25 March). 

Martin Dodge:

• Appeared on BBC Radio 4 talking about what the Hulme estate adjacent to the University was like to live in before it was regenerated in the 1990s.
• With Victoria Jolley, Alison Ronan, and Lois Smith, curated 'Celebrating Burnage Garden Village: Building Swag直播's Pioneering Edwardian model for better housing' at the Swag直播 Central Reference Library throughout March.

Elisa Pieri:

• Delivered an invited talk, 'Pandemic preparedness: a sociological approach to radical uncertainty and crisis governance', on March 7 at the Swag直播 Global Health Society event 'Epidemic to Pandemic: preparing for the worst and lessons learnt', University of Swag直播. Other speakers were Dr S Mardel OBE and D Wightwick.

Joe Ravetz:

• Keynote at the EU Joint Research Centre Workshop 'Regional Innovation Strategy 3 in Greece: Consolidating Governance and Raising Ambition', Thessaloniki.
• Led the 'Integrated Envisions' workshop at the 'Beyond Technical' meeting, Helsinki, for Finland Academy of Science.
• Invited as Associate Member of the Swag直播 Institute of Innovation Research.

Saskia Warren:

• Presented at the UKRI-AHRC Leadership Fellows Conference, Millennium Point, Birmingham.

Albena Yaneva:

• Gave a keynote lecture at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, , 21 March 2019, entitled 'The Secret Life of Architectural Archives', Dessau, Germany.

The purpose of this conference is to advance feminist thinking on urban research across the global south.

With social reproduction in crisis and people increasingly making a living outside the wage, the urban is being reshaped in ways that are no longer captured in 20th century conceptualisations of urbanisation.

In those countries labelled the 'global south', urbanisation, driven both by natural increase and rural to urban migration, is where over 90% of urban growth (between 2000 and 2050) is expected to occur.

The aim of this conference is to explore how feminist scholars, activists and policymakers understand the gendered nature of urbanisation, and women's place-making strategies, and to rethink the urban from the perspective of 'the global south', not least comparatively and relationally.

Through a series of roundtable, panels, workshop, and research paper sessions, the Feminist Explorations of Urban Futures Conference will create a global dialogue on the following themes:

• comparative feminist research
• critical policy dialogues on gender and the urban
• feminist activism and the city
• social reproduction and women's place-making in cities.

The conference will bring together leading feminist urban scholars, students, shapers of urban policy, activists working on gender and the urban at various scales, and new and emerging scholars working on feminist approaches to the urban.

This call for papers invites researchers, policy makers, artists, and practitioners to submit proposals for research papers on topics including, but not limited to, the following themes:

• social reproduction/production/financialisation
• everyday life: housing and habitus
• mobility, migration, debt, networks
• infrastructure
• violence
• grassroots mobilisation and advocacy
• global urban policy frameworks and local contexts.

Abstracts of no more than 250 words are should be submitted via the by 1 May 2019.

Applicants will be notified of our decision by May 15 2019.

You can find out more on the .

by Graham Haughton, Iain Deas, Stephen Hincks and Kevin Ward features among the list of five papers.

OUP has granted free access all five articles for a limited time to mark the rise in Impact Factor to 3.968.

The Impact Factor is the average number of times articles published in the journal in the last two years have been cited in the year of the most recent Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics).

More information can be found on the journal's page.

Work has started on the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)/ (UKRIC) Swag直播 Urban Observatory following a workshop in September 2018.

Urban observatories enable the gathering of robust data to better understand cities and their relationship with decision-making across a range of scales and sectors.

The Swag直播 Urban Observatory, a collaboration between the three Faculties at Swag直播, will focus on deploying air quality sensors within the Oxford Road Corridor, an existing infrastructure testbed and urban living lab.

An important element of the observatory's activities will involve researching and optimising sensor locations with key stakeholders. It will adopt the operating principles of an urban living lab that enable partners to co-produce research problems and associated projects to address them.

The chosen infrastructure will allow us to study environmental and human health factors from the street level with high temporal resolution [seconds] to regional trends over months and years.

This sectoral focus was chosen specifically as a result of mapping onto key strategic priorities of the University and gaps in existing UKRIC observatories on quantifying behavioural change to urban conditions.

A series of workshops hosted across the three Faculties at Swag直播 between June and October identified the following key areas for interdisciplinary research collaborations:

• health and air quality
• health mitigation
• modelling exposure and response
• pollen
• active transport
• citizen sensing
• green infrastructure
• living lab methodologies to capture co-benefits/upscale
• urban health and wellbeing.

Our overarching research question involves asking how the Internet of Things can help address urban prosperity, health and wellbeing issues related to environmental and infrastructural factors.

The group will begin to purchase and install the equipment from April 2019.

The data hub, which is being designed to meet the needs of researchers and external users, is currently under production. It will take part in UKRIC events to engage with other urban observatory programmes.

Two colleagues from the Swag直播 Urban Institute (MUI) have each been awarded over £320,000 funding for two-year research projects placing human-environment interactions at the heart of achieving the United Nations (UN) Global Goals.

The funding is part of a multilateral call between the UK, India, China, Japan and Sweden, which resulted in a collective £4.3 million funding for eight two-year research projects, with MUI being awarded two of these projects.

Dr Joe Ravetz, Research Fellow, is leading on ‘Pericene (Peri-urbanisation and climate-environment change)’. Along with fellow SEED colleagues Nuno Pinto, Jeremy Carter and Angela Connelly, Joe will also be working with researchers in Sweden and India.Dr Deljana Iossafiva, Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies, is working with colleagues from the UK, China and Japan on ‘SASSI (A Systems Approach to Sustainable Sanitation Challenges in Urbanising China)’.

The funding is part of the Natural Environment Research Council’s (NERC) Towards a Sustainable Earth (TaSE) research programme.

NERC Executive Chair, Professor Duncan Wingham, said: “Realising the ambitions of the UN Sustainable Development Goals to end poverty, hunger and inequality across the globe, while preserving and maintaining our environmental resources, is key to ensuring future wellbeing and prosperity in both developed and developing countries.

“These multi-disciplinary projects will bring together researchers from five countries to help us understand the complex relationships between people and the environment, leading the global effort on finding comprehensive solutions to global challenges.”

We are also anticipating a third announcement in the next few days. Watch this space!

More information

• See the 

Digital platforms like Amazon, Facebook, and Google are transforming how we shop, connect, and organise information. But we are also witnessing a profusion of platforms that directly reshape broad dimensions of urban life, from built environments and infrastructure systems to environmental monitoring and civic engagement.

This workshop, organised and hosted by MUI and the Sustainable Consumption Institute, brings together leading scholars from across the globe for a focused set of paper sessions organised around four core themes: infrastructure, governance, knowledge, and everyday life. At the centre of our attention is the role of urban platforms in the production of new ways of understanding and shaping urban futures, and how more democratic configurations of platform urbanism might be possible.

This two-day event takes place from 28 February - 1 March in the Council Chambers, Whitworth Building, University of Swag直播.

Swag直播 and the University of Toronto are contributing matching funds to support collaborative research initiatives through a joint call for proposals. Following the first call, Kevin Ward and Ian Mell are among the successful applicants.

Ian Mell and Tenley Conway (Toronto)'s project 'Co-producing sustainable cities through Green Infrastructure best practice’ will use the funding to facilitiate reflections in both locations, and at a number of scales, and provide opportunities for research exchange and teaching between staff, students and local practitioners. The outcomes of this exchange will include opportunities to engage with innovative thinking about urban greening from international experts and how we can apply this knowledge in rapidly changing urban environments.Students, research staff and local environmental practitioners and policy-makers will engage in a conversation focusing on how investment in green infrastructure is being delivered in the UK and Canada. Drawing on extensive experience at the research/practice interface Ian and Tenley will use workshops in both Toronto and Swag直播, teaching sessions with UG and PGT sessions, and research seminars to test new ideas about the socio-cultural equity of green space and how local government are applying the developing knowledge of urban ecology in local and strategic planning to ask whether 'urban greening’ could be the most appropriate way of ensuring our cities remain liveable, functional and attractive.

Kevin Ward and Theresa Enright (Toronto)'s project 'Governing urban infrastructures' will look at how infrastructure is governed and how it supports sustainable spatial development has preoccupied those working at the interface of infrastructure and urban studies. The use of infrastructure to project cities into the world economy and to position them to capture global capital flows has accompanied a number of experiments in territorial governance. At the same time, city-regions have sought out new multi-scalar infrastructure arrangements to provide the necessary welfare support and services for their citizens. Often, the contest between these economic, environmental and social aims causes conflicts between different urban stakeholders. Infrastructure is thus increasingly at the centre of debates over the making of urban futures.

The project will establish an institutional vehicle for work on urban infrastructure among academics/faculty, graduate students, and practitioners and policymakers. Activities will include a visit to Swag直播 in September by Theresa Enright and two researchers from Toronto, participating in a seminar event on 'Infrastructural futures across cities of the global north' as art of the Urban Studies Foundation Seminar Series award for 2019 and 2020 held by Enright and Ward (together with colleagues at UMAA-Boston, University of Pittsburgh and the University of Sheffield)

How infrastructure is governed and how it supports sustainable spatial development has preoccupied those working at the interface of infrastructure and urban studies. The use of infrastructure to project cities into the world economy and to position them to capture global capital flows has accompanied a number of experiments in territorial governance. At the same time, city-regions have sought out new multi-scalar infrastructure arrangements to provide the necessary welfare support and services for their citizens. Often, the contest between these economic, environmental and social aims causes conflicts between different urban stakeholders. Infrastructure is thus increasingly at the centre of debates over the making of urban futures.

You’ve recently joined the Geography Department as a lecturer. What’s been a key highlight for you in your first months at the University?

The support I’ve received from the Department as a new member of staff has been great. Senior and younger colleagues have showed a lot of understanding in what it means to move to a new country, especially with kids of high school age and the work required to find schools and so on. There is a very sensitive and helpful supportive collegiality from staff and administration here at the department and the wider University.

Not long after you joined the University, your documentary film, part of a longer research project dealing with race, nature and knowledge politics in Cape Town, premiered in Copenhagen. Please can you tell us a little about your research, and how the film has been received?

The film, ‘One Table Two Elephants’, is an 84 minute long documentary film, or what I call with my co-director Dr Jacob von Heland at KTH in Stockholm, a ‘cinematic ethnography’. This means that it is not simply about research communication, or a normal documentary film, but it is part of an effort to use the camera as part of a wider research practice to understand environments and cities. We have a three-year research grant to make films and explore what it means to organise practical research around a camera and, so to speak, complement but also move beyond ‘pen and paper’ in producing academic knowledge. For Jacob and I this meant to build further on some of my long-term ethnographic work in Cape Town around environmental politics and ways of knowing urban nature. We collaborated with various groups, from biologists and ecologists, to hip-hoppers, dancers and local activists, where everyone's experiences and skills are given the same importance.

If you watch the film, you enter this postcolonial city through very mundane objects—plants and a wetland—and by following these different groups, and using cinematic techniques of editing, you will receive a very rich and sometimes troubling understanding of what it means to live in the post-colony depending on class, race and location. The plants and the wetland are our ‘rabbit hole’ into a textured understanding of the many stories and histories that are silenced in rendering Cape Town legible in particular ways. In the many test-screenings we did of the film, from Windhoek, Durban to Munich and New York, we received a lot of feedback that went into the final editing of the film.

Since the World Premiere in Copenhagen, the film has had its African premiere in Cape Town in October where it competed as Best Documentary Feature. It was also nominated as Best International Documentary at Tirana International Film Festival (TIFF), screened at InScience International Science Film Festival in Nijmegen and had its Swedish premiere just recently at CrossCuts Film Festival for the Environmental Humanities in Stockholm. 

What are you most looking forward to in your role over the next few months?

Teaching! I have been a self-funded Principal Investigator and researcher for about ten years with all the joy and freedom that provides. I have done some teaching during these years of course, but this has mainly been in PhD courses, for instance my Winter School in Cape Town with Dr Andrés Henao Castro that combines postcolonial urbanism with radical democratic theory. But for a long time I have not had the opportunity to organise a whole semester of teaching and I am looking forward to the sweat and sweetness of teaching two courses on environmental politics here at the Department of Geography, both with Professor Erik Swyngedouw.

I am also looking forward to the reception of my new edited book with Erik that comes out on the 18 December from Routledge, like a Christmas present! The book is called Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-Obscene: Interruptions and Possibilities. With chapters written by some of the most exciting thinkers from anthropology, geography and political theory, the book focuses on how the environment is always political. We hope it can invite many to think of our present environmental crisis in political terms. 

What’s the most recent book you read – did you enjoy it and would you recommend it?

The last book I read was Ondjaki’s ‘Transparent City’ from 2012. I have just started a research project with co-workers that focuses on Luanda’s people and environments and its connections to oil, Brazil, and China. When I start new projects, I try to read the fiction writers, because as somebody said, the fiction writers are the best social theorists we have. And they theorise through the thick-of-things, through richness and detail. Ondjaki is an Angolan author with a remarkable language and way of telling a story. He also presents the kind of book I like, a book that lets the city itself become one of the main characters in the narrative. Here you get to know Luanda in all its glory and through its shadows.

Awards

• Ian Mell has been awarded funding from the University of Swag直播 and University of Toronto research fund on 'Co-producing sustainable cities through Green Infrastructure best practice’, working with Tenley Conway in Toronto
• Erik Swyngedouw has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from Roskilde University in Denmark and from the University of Malmö in Sweden
• Kevin Ward:
  • Awarded funding from the University of Swag直播 and University of Toronto research fund on 'Governing urban infrastructures' with Teresa Enright in Toronto
  • Appointed as an International Advisory board member of Brussels Centre for Urban Studies
  • Appointed to the expert panel at the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO)

Publications

• Jamie Doucette and Bae-Gyoon Park 2019 Developmentalist Cities? Interrogating Urban Developmentalism in East Asia. Leiden: Brill
• Krassi Paskaleva:
  • The EU Smart City Triangulum project on smartners, sustainability and cities is available already online at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2018.11.028 Martin, Ch., Evans, J. Karvonen, A., Paskaleva, K. (Corresponding author), Yang, J., and Linjordet, T. (2018).
  • Smart-sustainability: A new urban fix? Sustainable Cities and Society (inprint).
  • Paskaleva, K. and Cooper, I. (2018). Open innovation evaluation for Internet-enabled services in smart cities, Technovation. Available online July 28.
  • Paskaleva K., Cooper I., Concilo G. (2018).Co-producing Smart City Services: Does One Size Fit All?. In: Rodríguez Bolívar M. (Ed.) Smart Technologies for Smart Governments: Transparency, Efficiency and Organizational Issues, Public Administration and Information Technology, vol 24. Springer, Cham pp. 115-145.
• Albena Yaneva's work on Graphene Architecture was  in December. The Swag直播 School of Architecture piece on this can be found .
• All recent papers from MUI researchers can be found via the 
• MUI will be celebrating all of 'our' urban book releases from the last 12 months on 7 February. Contact Matthew Harrison for a list of titles.

Recent and upcoming talks, visits and engagement

• Jeremy Carter:
  • Visualising climate risk in Europe with the 'European Climate Risk Typology' at COP24, Katowice, December
• Jamie Doucette:
  • Jamie Doucette and Bae-Gyoon Park. Soft book launch for Developmentalist Cities? @ East Asian Regional Conference on Alternative Geography. Taegu, Korea Dec 10-13.
  • Closing Plenary Discussion: Spatial Justice in East Asia @ East Asian Regional Conference on Alternative Geography. Taegu, Korea Dec 10-13 2018.
• Albena Yaneva:
  • Keynote Lecture at the Nordic Research Network for Architectural Anthropology (together with Professor Tim Ingold), Danish Building Research Institute, Aalborg University, November 2018.
  • Invited Lecture, University of Edinburgh, 21 November
  • Invited lecture, University of Barcelona, 18 December
  • President of the Theory of Architecture Jury, University of Barcelona
• Razieh Zandieh:
  • Presented on 'Healthy Urban Planning' and on 'The Influence of Macro Built Environment Attributes on Older Adults' Outdoor Walking Levels' at an Elsevier Conference: Urban Transition 2018, 25-27 November 2018.

The decarbonisation of the energy system remains a national priority. While much progress has been made to decarbonise electricity, significant challenges still remain in heat and transport and UKRI are increasingly prioritising this area for investment. Decarbonising the energy system is not just an engineering challenge. The technical solutions to decarbonise arguably exist – influencing policy and removing the barriers to wide-scale adoption are more important.

We are fortunate to work in Greater Swag直播 where a recent announcement committed us to be carbon neutral by 2040. There is a huge opportunity for the University of Swag直播 to play its part in delivering this agenda and to use the whole region as a test case for research. On the 25th of January, a lunchtime event on campus will seek to identify links between the challenges of decarbonisation in Greater Swag直播 and the work being carried out at the university. Lunch will be provided.

Before that, we would also like to invite any early-mid career researchers who have interests in the agenda to a lunchtime networking event on the 14th of January at 12noon in Sackville Building. Lunch will be provided and we will ask you to give a 1-2 minute description of your work to the other colleagues who attend. We hope this will identify opportunities for new collaboration and develop ideas that can be discussed with GMCA on the 25th of January.

Internal networking Mon 14th Jan in F37 Sackville Street Building

UoM & GMCAFri 25th Jan in Council Chamber, Sackville Street Building

If you would like to join us on Monday 14th or Friday 25th January, or for more details, please contact Jen Clayton.

The decarbonisation of the energy system remains a national priority. While much progress has been made to decarbonise electricity, significant challenges still remain in heat and transport and UKRI are increasingly prioritising this area for investment. Decarbonising the energy system is not just an engineering challenge. The technical solutions to decarbonise arguably exist – influencing policy and removing the barriers to wide-scale adoption are more important.

We are fortunate to work in Greater Swag直播 where a recent announcement committed us to being carbon neutral by 2040. There is a huge opportunity for the University of Swag直播 to play its part in delivering this agenda and to use the whole region as a test case for research. On the 25th of January, a lunchtime event on campus will seek to identify links between the challenges of decarbonisation in Greater Swag直播 and the work being carried out at the university. Lunch will be provided.

Before that, we would also like to invite any early-mid career researchers who have interests in the agenda to a lunchtime networking event on the 14th of January at 12pm in Sackville Building. Lunch will be provided and we will ask you to give a 1-2 minute description of your work to the other colleagues who attend. We hope this will identify opportunities for new collaboration and develop ideas that can be discussed with GMCA on the 25th of January.

• Please can you tell us a little about the Swag直播 Urban Institute, and your role?

MUI was formally launched two years ago to combine the strengths of all urban researchers across different disciplines and research centres across the university. We have a strong vision of making MUI the leading international hub to engender urban debates with leading academics, policymakers as well as early career researchers across different parts of the world.

I am currently leading the Spatial Policy and Analysis Lab, which is a research group of MUI. The SPA-Lab, formerly the Centre for Urban Policy Studies, was established in 1983 by Professor Brian Robson. The Lab has a chequered history of conducting applied policy research for government and public and private agencies. We are proud of our unique strengths in developing innovative methods of analysing and visualising large datasets to address challenging urban and regional development issues.

• MUI recently organised a major international conference around China’s new urban agenda. How will the event help the MUI to achieve its vision for more inclusive, just and sustainable cities?

The conference was part of the output of a major collaborative project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under the Newton Fund to examine ways to develop a more sustainable and human-centred approach to urbanisation. The integration of community-level living style data to model spatial variations in the sustainability performance of the Beijing metropolitan region helps to shed light on policy outcomes under the rampant urbanisation process.

This 3-year collaborative project between the University of Swag直播 and the Chinese Academy of Sciences is coming to an end. This conference had a strong focus on China, but we also wanted to have an international dialogue by bringing together experts from China, Asia, Europe, Northern and Latin America and Africa who share a common interest in striving for a more inclusive and sustainable urban future globally. Despite the fact that cities are operating under different socio-cultural, political and economic contexts, they all face similar challenges in the process of urbanisation and there was a strong sense of conviction and resonance of the critical issues during the discussion. The debate throughout the two-day conference helped us all learn from each other about how to adopt more innovative methodological approaches in research and more nuanced solutions to complex policy issues. The papers presented in the conference were of a very high quality from established researchers, senior policy officials, and many new faces from the doctoral and postdoctoral community. This type of cross-sectional exchange was very productive and enjoyable at the same time, which is what MUI hopes to achieve.

• Over 100 papers were delivered at the conference. Of the ones you saw, what most stood out for you and why?

Of the many excellent papers I heard, it was unusual to have a paper on action research by Professor Wen Chen, Director of Regional Development and Planning Research Centre at the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She has been working on a rural development project in Jurong city of Jiangsu province (the nearest city is Nanjing). She and her team have tried to establish innovative approaches of helping a traditional village located in the ecological protection zone transform into a sustainable modern village by carefully balancing between economic development and environmental protection. The demonstration village is known as Chen Zhuang and rather than focusing on the superficial upgrading of the façade of buildings, her work is about bringing interdisciplinary team to resolve the drainage, waste treatment and water quality issues to improve villages quality of life in an ecologically sustainable pathway. She has spent the last five years initiating various nature-based programmes to promote sustainable rural development by providing villager education and training, water environment protection, organic farming and online trading of farm produce.

• If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you most like to visit and why?

As a planner and with an interest in urban research, it is always a delight to visit places. However, I increasingly love to do repeat visits as cities and places do evolve and change over time (just like a person). There is always too little time but too many places that I would love to visit.

You can read more about the conference in the news story on .

At the conference, delegates heard about Swag直播’s recent transformation, its pioneering approaches to regional governance, and the need to balance economic growth with ensuring improvements in the quality of life of its residents. Attendees also heard how the city has benefitted from an influx of younger residents into the city centre, and how the region continues to benefit from the allocation of powers from central government.

Field trips to places including Salford Quays and Swag直播 United’s stadium ensured delegates were able to explore Greater Swag直播’s cultural diversity and the effects of its ongoing urban renaissance and reinvigoration. With over 100 individual papers being delivered, the major international conference brought together experts from around the world who share a common interest in striving for a more sustainable urban future.

• You can read the full story on the University website, and read Professor Cecilia Wong's about the event in this week's eNews and on Humanities StaffNet.
• You can also see a selection of  on MUI's Flickr feed.

Every other month, MUI publishes a newsletter featuring the latest urban research-related news and details of upcoming urban activities from across the University, and with associates around the world. You can sign up  and read an online version of the latest newsletter 

The purpose of the workshop is to evaluate proposed improvements to the public realm in Brunswick. These proposals will be the product of a co-design process involving local residents and other stakeholders. They address concerns about air quality, traffic safety and community/green spaces. This workshop is part of a European project called LOOPER (Learning Loops in the Public Realm) led by the University of Swag直播 in partnership with S4B and Swag直播 City Council. Similar processes are underway in Brussels and Verona. The local LOOPER team is engaged in a participatory research and co-creation process with residents of Brunswick to identify and understand problems in the public realm and to propose interventions, some of which will be piloted in early 2019. We would like to ask you to be part of the process of evaluating the desirability and feasibility of the proposed solutions from your perspective as a stakeholder at the neighbourhood or city level. We need your input to decide which solutions should be implemented. We will be using a workshop process and software called Multi-Actor Multi-Criteria Analysis (MAMCA), which was developed by LOOPER partner Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels). MAMCA () provides a robust method to capture multiple views and select optimal solutions based on them. We hope that you will find this process interesting and that it may be useful to you in other contexts. We also hope that your input will shape the kinds of evidence that are collected and enhance the possibility that beneficial interventions can be scaled up across the city.

The workshop will be two hours long with lunch provided at the end and time for informal exchange. It will be held 10.00-13.00, 19 November 2018 in Room 1.69/1.70, Humanities Bridgeford Street Building, University of Swag直播.

Hosts:

UoM (Janice Astbury, James Evans, Joe Ravetz)

MCC (Ruth Billingham, Patrick Hanfling, Katrina Keane)

S4B (Ross Hemming, Sharon Thomas)

Confirmed participants to date:

Val Bayliss-Brideaux, Senior Engagement Manager, Swag直播 CCGs, NHS

Neil Bayliss-Rowe, Highways Development Control Manager, MCC

Andy Connell, Traffic Engineer, MCC

Sheena Cruickshank, Professor of Immunology and Public Engagement, UofM

Barbara Drummond, Public Health, MCC

Peter Griffiths, S4B Construction manager

Tanique McIntosh, Mosscare

Matthew O’Neill, Lead Air Quality Officer, TfGM (tentative)

Jeni Regan, Senior Planner, MCC

Ryan Sciacca, Greater Swag直播 Police

Pete Stringer, City of Trees

Gary Sullivan, Programme Manager (PFI), MCC

Brunswick residents tbc 

Papers

• All recent papers from MUI researchers can be found via the 

Recent and upcoming talks, visits and engagement

• Stefan Bouzarovski: 
  • Discussant at the Regional Geographies of Electricity session, RGS-IBG, 30 August
  • Rapporteur and panellist, Citizens’ Energy Forum, Dublin, 20 September
  • Invited speaker, Workshop on socio-ecological justice, University of Erfurt, 20 September
• Tom Gillespie: invited to give a talk on urban dispossession in the Department of Geography and International Development at the University of Chester on 16 October
• Elisa Pieri: 
  • 'Sociological knowledge, pandemic preparedness and the potential for participatory crisis governance' Talk delivered to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Stockholm, 3 October 2018
  • Extended research visit to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Stockholm, from 20 September to 4 October. I was hosted by Country Preparedness Support, and I met and interviewed a range of experts, primarily in public health emergency preparedness, epidemic intelligence, respiratory infectious disease outbreaks and pandemic influenza. I attended a range of events including an annual 48h meeting of the National (EU members states plus EU accession countries) Focal Points for preparedness, response and threat detection. I also gave the talk mentioned above.
• Alfredo Stein: visited Honduras from 9-14 September to follow up on the Asset Planning for Climate Change Adaptation Project funded by the Nordic Development Fund through the Inter-American Development Bank and implemented in collaboration with local counterparts. During his stay, he also met with authorities of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH), in preparations for a visit from UNAH to the University of Swag直播 on the 8-9 October 2018. UNAH’s delegation will be headed by the Chancellor Dr Francisco Herrera. Publications: Stein, A. (2018) Cambio Climático y Conflictividad Socio Ambiental en America Latina y el Caribe (Climate change and socio-environmental conflicts in Latin America and the Caribbean) in America Latina Hoy Vol 79 pgs. 9-39. 
• Joanne Tippett: Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown Children & Young People’s Services Committee in Ireland has been using Ketso to foster inter-agency collaboration in improving services for young people and children in the county in Ireland. On 21st September 2018, 14 people from organisations across the county attended a training session at Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council with Joanne Tippett, the founder of Ketso, in order to explore how to use Ketso in engaging with young people and children. The workshop was sponsored by Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown Children & Young People’s Services Committee to build service capacity to consult with children, young people and service stakeholders. 21 Sept.
• Mark Usher presented a paper at this year’s RGS Annual Conference in Cardiff, titled ‘Cultivating civil society: urban commoning and the new politics of landscape’. This was part of the ‘Landscapes of civil society’ sessions, 30 August
• Albena Yaneva: invited to give a talk on urban dispossession in the Department of Geography and International Development at the University of Chester on 16 October.

The UK2070 Commission has been established with the aim of developing a spatial economic framework that will allow the UK to become a more geographically balanced nation, reducing the current large disparities in economic and social outcomes across the country.

The work of the Commission is supported by staff from the University of Swag直播, led by Professor Cecilia Wong, along with colleagues from the University of Sheffield and University College London. UK2070 is chaired by former head of the Civil Service Lord Kerslake, who gave a keynote speech at the launch event setting out the aims and objectives of the Commission, which he said would take a “longer view” on the interventions needed to realise the strengths of all parts of the UK. The call for evidence is now open and responses are encouraged from community groups, industry, the academic community and other interested parties.

More information:

The idea for the event was to help Mayors to understand how they can approach challenges like artificial intelligence and an ageing society in ways that decrease, rather than increase, inequalities.

Four presentations were given by experts at the University of Swag直播 on topics relating to the four ‘grand challenges’ set out by the National Industrial Strategy: AI and the Data Economy, the Future of Mobility, Ageing Society, and Clean Growth. Speakers were asked to communicate how knowledge within their field links to possibilities for inclusive growth. An overview was then given on IPPR’s Commission for Economic Justice followed by a discussion of local industrial strategies and how they can respond to the grand challenges, in ways which also promote inclusive growth/economic justice.

Professor of Technology and Organisation Debra Howcroft spoke on AI and the Data Economy, and the ways in which technology can promote or hinder economic justice. Dr Michael Hodson, a Senior Research Fellow at the Sustainable Consumption Institute, spoke on the future of mobility, and suggested that although promoting connectivity will help improve productivity, critical challenges remain that will need to be addressed, such as reducing the number of journeys made via private transport, and organising transport in ways that deal with air pollution. Professor Christopher Philipson presented on the future challenges posed by an ageing population. He questioned whether cities as key drivers of economic success will be able to integrate their ageing populations and whether the resources in cities can be used to support the quality of life of those in old age. Finally, Joe Ravetz, Co-Director of the Centre for Urban Resilience and Energy, spoke on how the clean growth agenda could operate alongside the development agenda with social justice at its heart. He outlined a ‘synergistic approach’ in which knowledge and intelligence from different sectors and disciplines may be used collaboratively to shift towards both clean and inclusive growth goals.

Subsequent discussion acknowledged the clear linkages between the grand challenges, and the possibility for integration when thinking of solutions. As well as this, however, was the understanding of the difficulties in thinking about and discussing solutions in this manner, which requires effective cross-disciplinary communication, cooperation and understanding. There was a discussion about our capacity for pooling knowledge across academic disciplines and with the policy world more broadly.

The final part of the discussion focused on how industrial strategies can respond to these challenges in ways that promote inclusive growth and economic justice. A key point emphasised throughout was how to combine and understand all the necessary information in order to make effective decisions that respond to the grand challenges and inclusive growth in Greater Swag直播. One delegate spoke about working with local universities to develop a ‘matrix’ view – so that commonalities between domains can be realised, and all opportunities understood.

More information:

What is your career highlight so far?

My career highlight has to be becoming a Professor of Geography last year. It was also a great honour to be one of only two UK-based contributors to the IPBES African regional assessment. I was part of a group of more than 100 scholars and practitioners tasked with assessing knowledge on biodiversity and ‘nature’s contributions to people’ across the whole of the African continent. Each member brought a different perspective – geographically, thematically and in terms of disciplinary specialism. The work was challenging, enjoyable and inspiring in equal measure.

Tell us about your current research and what you see as your key academic challenges over the next five years.

I’ve got a few urban environmental research projects at the moment. The two that I’m most involved with right now are: GHIA about urban green infrastructure and its value for older people; and UDARA which is about urban air pollution exposure and heath in Indonesia. Although they seem very different, they are both about human-environment interactions and each has a core spatial focus. I confess to being a map-loving geographer – there are always plenty of maps in my research work! Indeed, mapping is also key to my other work too, such as the climatejust.org.uk resource. In the next 5 years I’ll be working hard with the research teams on all of my current projects – each project has ambitious goals, but also a fantastic and extremely committed team of co-investigators and researchers.

What is the dream scenario for you in terms of the impact of your work?

Even influencing one decision to prevent the loss of an area of urban greenspace would be fantastic. My research agenda has always put me at the science-policy-practice interface and my aspiration has always been for my projects to have a positive impact on both environment and society. My dream scenario would be to have the time to do all of the extra leg work that I know is needed in order to make things happen in the real world.

What do you see as the benefits to working in a broad research institute like MUI?

I’m no stranger to working across disciplines – it’s been a hallmark of my research since I joined the university as a Postdoc back in 1999. However, it’s great that the University is now setting up structures to facilitate cross-disciplinary endeavour. Working with MUI, and also MERI and MICRA too, helps to make connections which just wouldn’t otherwise occur. It’s also useful to have a ‘window’ on research activities which can help to reach a wider audience, including policy-makers and practitioners.

If you could take one book to a desert island what would it be?

When I was growing up, I loved reading my Dad’s Pears' Cyclopaedia. I’ve just discovered that the last very last volume was the 2017-18 edition so I’d better take that.

More Information:

Cecilia Wong and Vincent Goodstadt are members of the UK2070 Commission. Chaired by Lord Kerslake, it has been set up to conduct a review of the policy and spatial issues related to the UK’s long-term city and regional development and will run in three phases, until November 2019.

Other project partners include the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the University of Sheffield, University College London, the Sir Hugh Sykes Charitable Trust (SHSCT) and the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce).

The  is now live and the official launch event takes place at the House of Lords on the 9 October. 

More information

Papers

• Since our last round-up, MUI researchers have published papers on topics including brownfield regeneration, urban villages in Beijing and urban climate adaptation. All recent papers from MUI researchers can be found via the .
• Prof Matthew Gandy from the University of Cambridge and member of our International Academic Advisory Board, has also shared with us a number of recent papers:
  • Gandy, M. 2017 ‘Negative luminescence,’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 107 (5) pp. 1090–1107. 
  • Gandy, M. 2017 ‘Urban atmospheres,’ Cultural Geographies 24 (3) pp.353–374.
  • Gandy, M. 2018 ‘Cities in deep time: bio-diversity, metabolic rift, and the urban question,’ City 22 (1) 96–105. 

Recent and upcoming talks, visits and engagement

• Mark Baker: gave a talk on ‘Planning for Sustainable Urbanisation in China: A Community Perspective’ to the Research Institute for Future Cities, Department of Urban Planning & Design, Xi’an Jiaotong – Liverpool University (XJTLU) in Suzhou, China, Tuesday 10^th July 2018 as part of a visit to XJTLU which also included acting as External Examiner for their Urban Planning and Design degrees at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The talk reported on some of the findings from the ESRC/Newton Fund ‘EcoUrbanisation in China’ research project led by Cecilia Wong.
• Angela Connelly, Jeremy Carter: Presented at the Association of European Schools of Planning (Aesop), Gothenburg, July 11th - 14th
• Tom Gillespie: invited to participate in a workshop on "speculative infrastructures and cities-in-the-making" in Sheffield in September and will be speaking on a panel about "displacements."
• Ian Mell: participated in a Newton Funded workshop in Xi’an in China last month - details can be found here
• Elisa Pieri: 
  • ‘Participatory crisis governance and emergency planning for pandemic preparedness’ Stream on Disasters and participation: inventive/disruptive encounters, European Association for the Study of Science and Technology 2018 Conference, Lancaster, July 2018
  • ‘Emergency planning for pandemic preparedness’ Royal Geographical Society International Conference, Cardiff, Aug 2018.
  • A research visit/placement for two weeks at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm in Sept and Oct 2018.
• Fadi Shayya: Following on from a series of presentations and panels, discussing topics including aesthetics of weapons and violence in urban environments, to modern architecture in Kuwait, Fadi is part of the organizing team for the “New Forms of Data (emerging forms and codification)” stream of the  taking place at Lancaster University on 19 September 2018.
• Kelly Watson has recently been involved in the , presenting alongside others from MHCLG and NEF at a workshop in June and will be involved in the development of a toolkit.

Awards

Sarah Marie Hall has been awarded a Political Economy Research Fellowship from the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF). The project is: "Lived Experiences of Childbearing in Contemporary Austerity: Advancing Feminist, Geographical and Political Economy Approaches" and begins in February 2019 for 12 months.

Erik Swyngedouw will receive two Honorary Degrees this autumn just a month apart.

• Erik will be conferred the degree of Doctor honoris causa at an annual celebration at Roskilde University in Denmark on 21 September 2018.
• He will then receive an honorary doctorate during a celebration at the University of Malmö in Sweden on 19 October 2018.

The recently-completed  project (‘Calculating and Operationalising the Multiple Benefits of Energy Efficiency in Europe’, funded by Horizon 2020) has shown that energy efficiency improvements in homes in the EU could avoid up to 27500 premature deaths from indoor cold between now and 2030. The economic value of these changes could be up to €2.5 billion due to premature mortality from indoor cold, and up to €2.9 billion due to asthma morbidity from indoor dampness.

The complementary  project (‘Energy Vulnerability and Urban Transitions in Europe’, funded by the European Research Council) found that energy efficiency is a key factor in determining levels of thermal comfort. The project identified warm weather space cooling as a significant challenge across the Global North, in light of climate change pressures. The project recommended the establishment of a minimum standard for housing across Europe, and the banning of disconnections for consumers - such measures are clear win-win solutions in the case of fuel poverty. Given the major social and geographical differences in the incidence of fuel poverty across Europe, the project argued that many policies are best delivered at the regional level.

The researchers are now embarking on several new projects in the area. One of these is STEP-IN (‘Using Living Labs to roll out Sustainable Strategies for Energy Poor Individuals’, also supported by Horizon 2020), where Swag直播 will work with Greater Swag直播 Combined Authority to improve the circumstances of vulnerable households in several areas. These results will inform the design of information technology solutions to address pressing social challenges in the energy domain.

Another new initiative is  (‘European Energy Poverty: Agenda Co-Creation and Knowledge Innovation’), a research network funded via the European Co-operation in Science and Technology (COST) scheme. This brings together over 100 experts from more than 30 countries to find innovative ways of connecting energy efficiency delivery with urban planning, among other things.

"Through this array of activities, we are showing that investing in the energy efficiency of residential dwellings can address the pressing challenge of climate change in many unexpected ways, beyond reducing energy demand and CO2 emissions. We have also identified the policy channels through which energy efficiency measures can reach vulnerable households – many of these involve working with local authorities and transnational bodies at the same time." Professor Stefan Bouzarovski 

More information