08 May, 2023
It’s showtime—talking about development, planning and housing, and Royal issues as well
13 April, 2023
INURA 2023 in Zurich upcoming in June. Registration Open
Since 2010, when the 20th INURA Conference was organized in Zurich with the topic “New Metropolitan Mainstream”, the planetary crises have deepened. There are many reactions to these crises that crosscut old habits for urban living and ineffective spatial practices such as commodification, gentrification, exclusion, evictions, extended urbanization, and many more. In some cases their associated challenges are overcome, however, through collective civic practices that are capable of reversing the course of destruction.
Guests from India, China, Australia, African, Latin and North American countries, and from various European countries will be joined by local activists and scholars, to explore critical topics related to housing and the social question, to developments beyond the inner city, and to current crises and urban actions. From the city of Zurich, past the cantonal borders, and all the way to the Alpine region of Maloja, the conference participants will immerse themselves in present Swiss realities. These intense exchanges and synergies created during the conference will expand in future visions, projects, conferences and publications, a practice of the INURA network proved throughout its last three decades of existence (see inura.org).
Find the program here: https://inura23.wordpress.com/city/
Press Release here: https://inura23.wordpress.com/press-release/
06 March, 2023
INURA Bulletin No. 33 is out
Our post-conference reflections from the 30th Anniversary Conference of the International Network for Urban Research and Action (INURA) in Luxembourg is out. Download the INURA Bulletin No. 33, edited by Carr and Madron, here:
24 January, 2023
Call for Applications for our next ARL Summer School 2023 in Luxembourg!
The ARL in co-operation with the Department of Geography and Spatial Planning invite applicants for the ARL International Summer School 2023, entitled,
A CONTESTED RELATIONSHIP? Urbanisation & the Digital vs. Digitalisation & the Urban
in Luxembourg, 6 to 8 July, 2023.
We invite advanced doctoral students from all disciplines to apply and we are looking forward to having an inspiring event!
For more information, check out the Summer School website or have a look at the call for application.
18 January, 2023
Fundraising for the Faculty of Geography, Taras Shevchenko National University, damaged by missles
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Missile attack on the Taras Shevchenko National University (open source photo also published at zn.ua, 2023) |
We are sad to report that as a result of missile attacks on the City of Kyiv on December 31, 2022, the building of the Geography Faculty of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (TSNUK) was damaged, destroying windows, stained glass windows, and wrecking furniture.
Employees of the Faculty of Geography, students and graduates gathered on New Year's Day to clean it up – repair work carried out by everyday people, donating their time, their labour, and material and financial resources.
Professor Serhii Zapotoskyi, Dean of the Faculty of Geography (TSNUK) launched a fundraiser to assist in repairs and reconstruction.
IBAN: UA353052990000026203750212012
SWIFT CODE/BIC: PBANUA2X
Bank Name: JSC CB Privatbank (Bank of beneficiary, 1D Hrushevskyi Street, 01001 Kyiv) // JP Morgan AG (Intermediary Bank, Germany, swiftcode CHASDEFX)
Country of bank: Ukraine
Name of beneficiary: Serhii Zapototskyi
Address of beneficiary: Lomonosova, Building 71v, flat 12, 03022 Kyiv, Ukraine
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Photo by Sergii Zapototskyi, 2023 |
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Photo by Sergii Zapototskyi, 2023 |
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Photo by Sergii Zapototskyi, 2023 |
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Photo by Sergii Zapototskyi, 2023 |
13 January, 2023
Lasst uns doch mal die alten Artikel (wieder-)lesen. or: Let's re-visit the old stuff.
Im Herbst waren Kollege Florian Hertweck und ich zu Gast bei einer zivilgesellschaftlichen Initiative, die sich für mehr Denkmalschutz, einen besseren Umgang mit dem Baubestand sowie weniger Abriss im wachstumsgetriebenen Luxemburg einsetzen. Über einen dort anwesenden Redakteur des 'Luxemburger Wort' und sein Interesse an einem Interview wurde mein Kontakt zur Zeitung wieder aufgefrischt. Das Ergebnis wurde am 13. Januar 2023 veröffentlicht. Ein längeres Gespräch über das Planen, Bauen sowie die Politik, mit einem teaser auf der Titelseite.
Ist alles dazu gesagt? Im Prinzip ja. Es gibt auch - unwissenschaftlich formuliert - haufenweise Publikationen und Berichte zu diesem Thema, wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen (mit und ohne peer review), solche die ans Allgemeinpublikum gerichtet sind u.v.a.m. Sage niemand, dass sich die Uni nicht mit dem Land auseinander setzen würde.
Gelegentlich ist auch der Blick zurück instruktiv. Das letzte Mal wurden Inhalte aus unserer Forschung auf der Titelseite des Wort am 8. Juli 2017 präsentiert. Damals hatte ich eine Einladung als Chefredakteur für einen Tag -- ein wirklich interessantes Unterfangen, gemeinsam mit der Redaktion über eine Auswahl von Beiträgen zu i.w.S. urbanen Themen zu beraten. Außerdem war mit dieser Rolle das Privileg verbunden, den Leitartikel des Tages zu verfassen. Der steht hier rechts, und aus Gründen der besseren Lesbarkeit kommt der Text hier unten im Original nochmal. (Der Text wurde übrigens 1:1 von der Redaktion übernommen, mit Ausnahme des an den Beginn des Titels gerückte "Und". Das klang dann vielleicht doch zu sehr nach Johannes R. Becher).
Damit verbunden ist die Preisfrage des Tages: stimmt die Diagnose noch? Sind die Bewertungen korrekt, oder hat sich seither Substanzielles geändert? Gelegentlich, so finde ich, ist es erhellend, die alten Texte zu konsultieren...
Der Zukunft zugewandt
07 January, 2023
Project Announcement - Digital urban futures: The role of emerging tech-ecosystems in Kyiv reconstruction (KYIV-DIGIURB)
06 January, 2023
New Master Student Assistant for DIGI-GOV
14 October, 2022
Publication for general public: Reflecting on research and activism in times of uncertainty and crisis: The 30th Anniversary conference of INURA in Luxembourg
23 September, 2022
New Article - Technocratic Urban Development: Large Digital Corporations as Power Brokers of the Digital Age
20 September, 2022
Project announcement and welcome Dr. Olga Kryvets

31 July, 2022
Media: Nitin Bathla (ETH) interviews participants of INURA 2022 for the Urban Political Podcast

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28 July, 2022
New from Carr, C., Bast, D., Madron, K., Syrus, M. (2022) Mapping the clouds: The matter of data centers Journal of Maps. Available, Open Access
As a preview, here is the abstract:
Keywords: Amsterdam, cyberplace, data centers, hyperscale, Luxembourg, Seattle
See also other similar work from earlier this year: Bast et al. (2022) Four reasons why data centers matter, five implications of their social spatial distribution, one graphic to visualize them, at Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space:
08 July, 2022
Media - Carr interviewed by Feargus O'Sullivan at Bloomberg CityLab
05 July, 2022
INURA Conference in Luxembourg - Lots to report! Among other things, Carr elected to the Board
A big thank you to the Department of Geography and Spatial Planning, the Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE), the Ministry of Energy and Spatial Planning, the Luxembourg National Research Fund and the Department of Architecture, ETH, and the INURA Common Office in Zurich. Also thank you to all the organizing help (https://inuraluxembourg.blogspot.com/p/abo.html)
On Day 1, Markus led guests around Kirchberg, while Connie and Karinne introduced the group to Eis Stad and planning contradictions at Stärplatz and Stade Josy Barthel. Both tours aimed at introducing INURA — a membership of urban scholars and activists— to contradictions in Luxembourg urban planning and governance.
Media - Carr interviewed by Julian Dörr at Der Tagesspiegel
23 June, 2022
Final countdown to the 30th conference of the International Network of Urban Research and Action in Luxembourg
10 June, 2022
Geographers apply: New post at Trier University
Colleagues at the Department VI, Spatial and Environmental Sciences of Trier University are seeking for candidates to fill the post of a full professorship (W3) in Cultural and Political Geography.
More information on what is offered and expected can be found at the website of the University. Contact person for topical inquiries is Professor Antje Bruns (brunsa@uni-trier.de).
08 June, 2022
„Nichts haben sie getan“
06 June, 2022
Job Advertisement circulated through the IGU Urban commission
Hi all,
I would be grateful if you could share details of the following:
1. Post-Doctoral Fellow, Te Taiwhenua o te Hauora | Geohealth Laboratory, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury, Ōtautahi | Christchurch, Aotearoa | New Zealand.
- Full-time (37.5 hours per week)
- Fixed-term position to June 2026
We are seeking a Postdoctoral Fellow to work on a range of policy-relevant research projects being undertaken by the Geohealth Laboratory in collaboration with the health sector e.g. Canterbury District Health Board and the Ministry of Health. The position will preferably start before the end of 2022.
More details at https://jobs.canterbury.ac.nz/jobdetails/ajid/F1b58/Post-Doctoral-Fellow-Geohealth-Laboratory,10047
2. Fully funded PhD scholarship available at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury, Ōtautahi | Christchurch, Aotearoa | New Zealand.
The impacts of a low-emissions transport future on urban amenity access, equity, and wellbeingThis project will add to the knowledge base on achieving equitable amenity access while developing sustainable, inclusive and healthy cities. To achieve this we will employ Geographic and Health Science perspectives and methodologies to:
- Consult and engage with local communities, including iwi, to develop working definitions of places and activities that are valued as amenities.
- Work from these newly defined- and conventional amenities (e.g., food outlets and community gardens; green- and blue-space; gathering, arts and cultural spaces) to quantify the current state of equity in amenity access, beginning locally in Ōtautahi Christchurch.
- Assess the impact of a low carbon transport future on equity of accessibility to key amenities associated with wellbeing.
- Identify and evaluate barriers to and opportunities for interventions, exploring the co-benefits and role of improved access in supporting the SDGs of building sustainable, inclusive cities and transport systems that enhance health and wellbeing.
Applications will be assessed as they are received with a closing date of July 15th 2022.
To apply, send a copy of your academic transcript and application letter to Dr Lindsey Conrow (contact details below).
For more information contact:
· Dr Lindsey Conrow lindsey.conrow@canterbury.ac.nz
· or Prof Simon Kingham simon.kingham@canterbury.ac.nz
· or Dr Matt Hobbs matthew.hobbs@canterbury.ac.nz
Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury
Ōtautahi | Christchurch, Aotearoa | New Zealand
02 June, 2022
New Publication forthcoming: "Mapping the clouds: The matter of data centers" in Journal of Maps
Carr, C., Bast, D., Madron, K., Syrus, M. (in press) Mapping the clouds: The matter of data centers
Journal of Maps.
As a preview, here is the abstract:
The social spatial geographies of telecommunications and their infrastructures have long interested scholars in the social sciences, and in urban geography specifically. This paper focuses on data centers. Much effort has been placed in preserving the notion that data centers are ‘clouds’, a terminology that obfuscates the real human geographies of cyberplaces. In this map-making exercise, we visualize the sociopolitical human geographies of data centers, and provoke the reader to consider the impacts that data centers have on residents and their environments. The maps shown in this paper suggest four trends. First, hyperscale data center owners are building near large waterways, signifying a shift in location preferences. Second, data centers stress local administrations, financing, and availability of upstream resources, as hyperscale data centers step up their input needs. Third, data center development is state-led. Fourth the competition for data center industries unfolds across a multi-level governance context.
Keywords: Amsterdam, cyberplace, data centers, hyperscale, Luxembourg, Seattle
12 May, 2022
Welcome Elide Nicotra
08 April, 2022
Welcome Chris Reiter!

19 March, 2022
Call for Papers: Special Issue "Urban Science and the Future of Sustainable Urban Systems"
Summary of issue:
Humanity’s success in addressing the related challenges of climate change, sustainability, poverty alleviation and shared prosperity will be largely determined by what happens in cities. “Urban science” is now a well-defined field that is examining a shared set of phenomena across many disciplines, developing common theoretical ideas and analytical methods, treating cities and urbanization in a unified way across the globe and history. Urban areas are multifaceted entities, involving biological, social, economic, infrastructural, and cultural aspects. Individual cities, furthermore, are part of regional, national and international cities’ and regions’ systems comprising interdependent urban and rural areas and every community category between urban and rural.
This special issue aims at advancing the integration of insights long accumulated from research on cities and urban phenomena by various academic fields, and those being generated by the new field of urban science, in order to highlight current explanatory strengths and identify needed new research to better understand urbanization and sustainable urban development.
“Urban science” seeks to understand the fundamental processes that drive, shape and sustain cities and urbanization. It is a multi/transdisciplinary approach involving concepts, methods and research from the social, natural, engineering and computational sciences, along with the humanities.[1] Urban science goes further than simply stating that cities are “complex", explaining in what they are complex, by questioning the interactions between different levels of factors and why in some places they interact differently than in others. The complexity approach enlightens the different levels of forces that can explain the uneven diffusion speeds, reactions and consequences in different cities. These interactions are “universal” but take forms that are fitting to the local conditions affecting spatial and temporal scales and levels.
[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3526940
If “Urban science” aims at a fundamental understanding of the processes that shape and sustain cities, the ultimate applied objective of this body of knowledge must be to help create global urban sustainable systems. The website of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America describes sustainability science as “. . .an emerging field of research dealing with the interactions between natural and social systems, and with how those interactions affect the challenge of sustainability: meeting the needs of present and future generations while substantially reducing poverty and conserving the planet’s life support systems.” Nowhere are these interactions more intense, stark, concentrated and consequential than in urban areas. “Urban sustainability” at the moment remains more a collection of methods and aspirations than a science (Waldrop, 2019). The ecological, energetic, physical, biological and social aspects of cities need to be integrated into a consistent theory, but one that grounds the treatment of cities as social systems embedded in physical and biological networks. We echo the call made in 2018 by the National Science Foundation of the USA for the development of a field of urban sustainability science that seeks to study the various opportunities and challenges that cities, urbanization and urban systems pose for the transition to sustainable and equitable socioeconomic development.[2]
[2] https://www.nsf.gov/ere/ereweb/ac-ere/sustainable-urban-systems.pdf
Technological and social developments have combined (intentionally but also as unintended consequences) to generate unprecedented amounts of data concerning what people (individuals and organizations) do when they agglomerate in cities. To some, this “big data” revolution, seemed to hold the promise of more effective urban management. But experience has reminded us, once again, that data — even enormous amounts — without associated theory to interrogate and make sense of it, does not generate predictive insights. At the same time that “urban big data” was capturing the imagination of urbanists and city managers, another intellectual movement that we refer to as “Urban science” was taking shape. A number of streams came together in this new approach to a long-standing area of inquiry: the increasing availability of diverse urban data; the realization that the city should be treated as its own unit of study (Romer); a revival of Jacobs’ view of the city as a “complex system”; the flowering of work on network science; and the growing importance of multi-disciplinarity.
By this special issue, we seek to advance the capacity of “Urban Science” to contribute to the development of urban sustainability science, and even ask whether the two emerging fields of research are in effect the same. We propose to examine a shared set of phenomena across many disciplines, developing common theoretical ideas and analytical methods, addressing cities urbanization in unified ways (but adapted on local situations) across the globe, across history, and working towards a common set of goals. A common starting point for the varied efforts that are now bundled up as “Urban Science” is the recognition, well-articulated by Paul Romer, that the city deserves, and can be treated, as its own unit of analysis. As cities and urban communities will bear the brunt of the effects of climate change and adapting to climate change, how can urban science and urban sustainability science help cities adapt to climate change?
We welcome submissions exemplifying interdisciplinary frameworks and utilizing a variety of methods such as the spatial statistics, network models, comparative historical analyses, information theory, dynamical systems, multi-agent models and econometric analyses. Authors are encouraged to address questions about the drivers and consequences of urbanization throughout history, the role of technology in urbanization, the diminished importance of transportation costs and the effect on urban occupations of the rise of digital communications, the relationship between urban development and inequality, and the relationship between urban sustainability, adaptivity and resilience. The papers are expected to formulate hypotheses and pose ambitious questions — but also to engage with why many of the questions posed by “Urban Science” are difficult to answer. Contributions to the special issue should also address the potential and urgency in researchers collaborating with varied stakeholders (including organizations representing the urban poor) in order to co-produce knowledge which is both scientifically rigorous and capable of informing decisions and policymaking.
Keywords: Urban science, Urban Sustainability Science, Cities, Systems of cities, Urbanization, Complex systems, Resilience
CONTACT: celine.rozenblat@unil.ch and/or jose.lobo@asu.edu