Urban Futures
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Recent papers in Urban Futures
The last two decades have been an exciting and richly productive period for debate and academic research on the city. The SAGE Handbook of New Urban Studies offers comprehensive coverage of this modern re-thinking of urban theory, both... more
2011 - 2014 urban futures research program
The writing which this volume brings together is as multifaceted as are its objects of investigation. Ranging from theoretical or design-based perspectives to historical and politically charged foci, the chapters reflect an amalgam... more
This is a working paper from the exploratory phase of Visions and Pathways 2040 project. The paper presents a scan of futures inquiry trends, an outline of recent advances in relevant theory, and critically reviews similar... more
Drawing on examples from various cities, the chapter traces the convergence between eco-urbanism and smart urbanism in the past two decades. The chapter begins by tracing the eco-city and smart city's conceptual trajectories, before... more
This first deliverable for WP4: Infrastructure and services for sustainable urbanization: trends and policy support mechanisms, has allowed us to review the state of the art for the WP core themes, drawing on a combination of scholarly... more
Pre-print proof version, from edited collection: Defining the Urban: Interdisciplinary and Professional Perspectives. Ed. Deljana Iossifova, Christopher N.H Doll, Alexandros Gasparatos (London and New York: Routledge, 2017). The... more
According to Richard Florida, the world is in the grip of a 'New Urban Crisis'. In his most recent book Florida recounts a visit to Medellín that provoked an epiphany in which he realized that the New Urban Crisis is global in scope.... more
Exhibition catalog for "Dread & Desire: Urban Futures at the Scale of the Human Body," Oct–Dec, 2017, Reed Gallery, University of Cincinnati. In conjunction with IASDR 2017, the biannual conference of the International Association for... more
Platform urbanism has emerged in recent years as an area of research into the ways in which digital platforms are increasingly central to the governance, economy, experience, and understanding of the city. In the paper, we argue that... more
Competing historical trajectories of radical urban innovation and debilitating racial oppression can be vividly seen in the racial and economic disparity of contemporary American cities. As America's third largest and most segregated... more
SDG11 – ‘making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’ – draws attention to the criticality of urban governance in the quest for sustainable development. Reflecting this, diverse city labels, such as... more
Because of rapid urban concentration in large cities in developing countries, especially in Egypt where about half of the country's urban population is concentrated in two cities, and because of the mounting problems associated with this... more
AI developments on smart cities, if not critical, risk making a flawed urban model more efficient. Instead, we suggest that AI should challenge the mainstream techno-optimistic approach to solving urban problems by dialoguing with other... more
La possibile commercializzazione, in un futuro più o meno prossimo, di auto-mobili a guida autonoma ha dato vita ad un acceso dibattito circa gli effetti trasformativi dell'automazione dei trasporti sulle realtà urbane. Proponendo un... more
Smart urbanism is a currently popular and widespread way of conceptualising the future city. At the same time, the smart city is critiqued by several scholars as difficult to define, and as being almost invisible to the naked eye. The... more
The last years, the island of Lesvos has become the main entrance to Europe for many refugees and migrants from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and African countries. This ongoing humanitarian crisis has changed the socio-spatial landscape of... more
Reflections on the COVID-19 pandemic suggest that this crisis can be interpreted as an opportunity to rethink the capitalist system and avoid a return to the “old normal”. In this line of thought, this article approaches the critical... more
Smart urbanism is a currently popular and widespread way of conceptualising the future city. At the same time, the smart city is critiqued by several scholars as difficult to define, and as being almost invisible to the naked eye. The... more
Neste texto utilizarei o tema da segurança urbana e a minha experiência de investigação nessa área para levantar algumas questões fulcrais para o futuro das cidades, do seu governo e da sua democracia. Com esse objetivo, recorrerei a uma... more
Abstract SDG 11 – ‘making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’ – draws attention to the criticality of urban governance in the quest for sustainable development. Reflecting this, diverse city labels,... more
The smart city is often marketed and described as being predicated on flows of data and networks of information that make individual urban citizens ‘visible’ and ‘transparent’ through technological interfaces like the smartphone. This... more
This is a contribution to: “Orientations to the Future,” Rebecca Bryant and Daniel M. Knight, eds., American Ethnologist website, March 8.
[This is a written version of a presentation I gave at the University of Calgary in 2005 that was prepared for publication but never published. The section on Peak Oil turned out to be quite wrong about scarcity, though the arguments for... more
The policy pointers presented in this report are the result of a three-year (2015-18) research project led by Federico Caprotti at the University of Exeter. The project, Smart Eco-Cities for a Green Economy: A Comparative Analysis of... more