tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16340617674756618942024-03-18T04:47:14.954-07:00URBANIZATION UNBOUNDUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger323125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-48288328984883937632024-02-12T23:17:00.000-08:002024-02-12T23:17:43.177-08:00IGU Urban Commission 2024 Annual Meeting in Cork, Ireland (20-23 August 2024)The IGU Urban Geography Commission in collaboration with the Department of Geography, University College Cork (Ireland) are pleased to invite you to its 2024 Annual Conference: <b>Crises, what crisis? Urban development and policy in search of the "new normal"</b>, taking place in the University College Cork, from 20th to 23rd August 2024. The venue is chosen in association with the IGU's main congress IGC taking place in Dublin Ireland (starting on Saturday, 24 August).<div><span> </span>The <b>deadline for the submission of abstracts</b> for the 2024 IGU-Urban has been extended until <b>29th February, 2024</b>. Anyone interested in submitting an abstract should do it on the template available on https://www.igu-urban.org/2024-cork</div><div><span> This is the short conference description:</span> "It is widely accepted that societies are currently confronted with multiple crises. This applies to city regions as well, where recent challenges such as the pandemic or rising energy prices add to ongoing problems caused by the scarcity of housing, social inequality, or longer-term issues such as climate change. Governments and city-leaders are increasingly asked to resolve acute problems, while simultaneously trying to deal with such long-term challenges. This leaves the institutions in charge with a profound dilemma: first, policies considered to be sufficiently ‘integrated’ (spatially, cross-sectoral) suffer from their inherent complexities; second, established practice hardly fits with the very temporalities of these challenges. While it seems common sense that a simple return to pre-pandemic conditions (the ‘old normal’) might be unlikely, it remains open what the ‘new normal’ in this respect could be, and how cities and regions could get there."</div><div> We call upon both established and early-career researchers working in geography and related (inter-)disciplinary contexts to send in their abstracts. These are invited to relate to the five key domains of the current Mandate of the IGU-Urban Commission mentioned below, but do not necessarily have to be confined to them.
Cities as driver of, and driven by, transformational change
Cities, urban systems and nation states
Urban areas under pressure of transformation
Climate change, resilience, urban health and well-being
Governance, institutions, urban policy.</div><div><span> FURTHER </span>INFORMATION</div><div>All the information about the congress and about our commission is available on the IGU Urban Geography Commission website: https://<b>www.igu-urban.org</b>/</div><div><span> </span>EARLY CAREER AWARD 2024</div><div>As part of its 2024 Annual Meeting the IGU Urban Commission once again offers a paper competition for Early Career Researchers in urban geography. For more information https://www.igu-urban.org/emerging-scholars-committe/ </div><div><span> </span>CONTACT</div><div>For information concerning the fees and the abstracts submission:</div><div><b>Therese Kenna</b>: t.kenna@ucc.ie</div><div><b>María Jose Piñeira Mantiñán</b>: mariajose.pineira@usc.es</div><div>We look forward to seeing you in Cork! </div><div>María José Piñeira</div><div>Chair IGU Urban Geography Commission</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmkFUVsuh0k4qYMkZRzWXhp8EQEcx_p0RYUFnSwmn4quw6A2H-of-P0UNMqmSu3QpHbzxgdiXnv5O4G2YUmFek30AqcKQHHsf4wBKhvsBOaElm8i4G7z60sGzEz5Y-GKZPK6WBj4M8ETjmcJkxhWAfeM22G_XZArGgYf7GXVsqtPSnk0Flw4xmkI40i7K7/s1280/Logo%20final%20Urban%20commission%2020-24.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="1280" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmkFUVsuh0k4qYMkZRzWXhp8EQEcx_p0RYUFnSwmn4quw6A2H-of-P0UNMqmSu3QpHbzxgdiXnv5O4G2YUmFek30AqcKQHHsf4wBKhvsBOaElm8i4G7z60sGzEz5Y-GKZPK6WBj4M8ETjmcJkxhWAfeM22G_XZArGgYf7GXVsqtPSnk0Flw4xmkI40i7K7/s320/Logo%20final%20Urban%20commission%2020-24.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>MHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11118631591346523026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-6379963989635065722024-02-06T05:52:00.000-08:002024-02-08T06:22:38.773-08:00Professor Michael Wegener R.I.P.<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf7CmdQ4yTkQEE1doLB6tTO_24AH6SHmViwvyIUu8z1vOS0IB7LOSTJEDdY591Uyetd1AshXIrXwcfJtKv85dBIPVvwXF_xh0DMsX-6FNto-hVTlNuP8TVluzTV5TZTV4pCLDBRqNOeKHvoPd_ch2oc6X8a50sJ3rfPjSkIvqZlX07dA6JFibaqG9owCJj/s333/csm_wegener_4a2621703a.jpg.webp" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="333" data-original-width="250" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf7CmdQ4yTkQEE1doLB6tTO_24AH6SHmViwvyIUu8z1vOS0IB7LOSTJEDdY591Uyetd1AshXIrXwcfJtKv85dBIPVvwXF_xh0DMsX-6FNto-hVTlNuP8TVluzTV5TZTV4pCLDBRqNOeKHvoPd_ch2oc6X8a50sJ3rfPjSkIvqZlX07dA6JFibaqG9owCJj/w158-h211/csm_wegener_4a2621703a.jpg.webp" width="158" /></a></div>Michael Wegener died on 2 February 2024. An architect by training, he joined the Faculty of Spatial Planning at the (Technical) University of Dortmund already in 1977 and became Professor of Spatial Planning in 1996. He served as deputy head and head of IRPUD, the faculty's body for the preparation and coordination of externally funded research projects. He pursued a highly regarded research portfolio (even after his retirement in 2003) with both general interests in spatial development and planning and the introduction of time and the temporal dimension of spatial development. The simulation modelling of space-time relationships that he has developed has been the basis of his excellent reputation in the international communities concerned with land use and transport (see the illustration below, courtesy of <a href="https://www.spiekermann-wegener.de/de/zeitkarten" target="_blank"><b>S&W</b></a>). In this respect he definitely set a standard.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvXs3SbPFHwcWEqZUAnJ9xZm1x7KBldNPfz3RosjQkpDcv4EWpNvFr9eBiTsENXNyeDiAEhkw4cSp0nzCEELeMjtC4cc7FUez0GnIQud0gvfL1bS7SOIMQzgSlFvkyBW-1wFuxa7vO_rqCYsViw3jAsLt59QJfYyafj_4moH1AAMr2egfJ_j_lgKMDDnl-/s1248/Screenshot%202024-02-06%20at%2014.43.15.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1006" data-original-width="1248" height="325" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvXs3SbPFHwcWEqZUAnJ9xZm1x7KBldNPfz3RosjQkpDcv4EWpNvFr9eBiTsENXNyeDiAEhkw4cSp0nzCEELeMjtC4cc7FUez0GnIQud0gvfL1bS7SOIMQzgSlFvkyBW-1wFuxa7vO_rqCYsViw3jAsLt59QJfYyafj_4moH1AAMr2egfJ_j_lgKMDDnl-/w405-h325/Screenshot%202024-02-06%20at%2014.43.15.png" width="405" /></a></div><div><div><span> </span>My personal memory of Michael Wegener is also very positive, as he was the chairman (“Prüfer”) of my doctoral dissertation-committee in spatial planning at the University of Dortmund in October 1997. Thanks to his careful moderation, we had an extremely inspiring debate on how to properly approach logistics as a research topic in urban contexts. Given the latent unsustainability of logistics operations at the time – which still seems to be an issue and a challenge today – we moved on to discussing more fundamental aspects of the system of flows, the spaces it affects in positive and critical ways, and where the limits to growth, circulation and resource consumption could be (set).</div><div><span> </span>His kind personality was made up of a rather rare combination of scientific rigor and ethos on the one hand, and a strong normative orientation towards equitable, sustainable development on the other. There is much to learn from him in this respect too. </div><div><br /></div><div>Markus Hesse</div></div>MHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11118631591346523026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-54247208933439124062024-01-07T12:25:00.000-08:002024-01-07T12:29:16.391-08:00Recalling December keynote invitations and a looking forward to a happy new year<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjAocNHDuiXbJJEI-bEpvNb73sd7yvBJqhRfQfFvhDu8UhgrlwRv8wdAIxS7nww3HgfYVZHZBY5orYe-w1rM1D_cfgC3yQ5E2tZgTItm8PAlkI_CToAKy6UZq86OorWMhMjpDL59KCdSgoaAWp0jHSv3ZYEdcH75z77dBm-HWHdbjJKkNi1s0vSP6nrus-/s4032/IMG_0589.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="492" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjAocNHDuiXbJJEI-bEpvNb73sd7yvBJqhRfQfFvhDu8UhgrlwRv8wdAIxS7nww3HgfYVZHZBY5orYe-w1rM1D_cfgC3yQ5E2tZgTItm8PAlkI_CToAKy6UZq86OorWMhMjpDL59KCdSgoaAWp0jHSv3ZYEdcH75z77dBm-HWHdbjJKkNi1s0vSP6nrus-/w655-h492/IMG_0589.jpeg" width="655" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: right;">Face-to-face meetings allow people to run into the unexpected: Luneburg University's Libeskind Building (photo: Markus Hesse 2023).</div></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Happy New Year Everyone, I hope you all had a relaxing, fun, or productive holiday (whatever suits you). My--Carr writing here--December was rather full, and then followed by 10 days of staycation.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Two highlights from December stand out in particular. The first was a trip to the </span><b style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">University of Stavanger</span></b><span style="font-family: arial;">, where </span><b style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Anders Riel Müller</span></b><span style="font-family: arial;"> invited me give a keynote at his final event of the </span><b style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Research Network for Smart Sustainable Cities</span></b><span style="font-family: arial;">. It was a treat to present alongside </span><b style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jens Fisker, Ramon Ribera Fumaz, Maja de Neergaard, Casey Lynch, and Ugo Rossi</span></b><span style="font-family: arial;">. A big thank you to Anders for the fabulous conference and several days of extended dialogues on issues of digitalization, urbanity and (the likely death of) smart cities.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The second highlight was at the </span><b style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Center for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University Lüneburg </span></b><span style="font-family: arial;">where </span><b style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Armin Beverungen</span></b><span style="font-family: arial;"> and </span><b style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Maja-lee Voigt</span></b><span style="font-family: arial;"> invited Markus and me to talk about our work on large digital corporations. I had to attend online as the Virus that is unfortunately still among us. A perk of double authored papers, however is that one can go-thank you Markus(!) Another big thank you to Armin and Maja-lee and for the pleasure of thoughtful discussion with your colloquium. We look forward to more exchange.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Both talks discussed how powerful tech companies such as Amazon or Google drive urban development, and what the wider implications are that sit at the nexus of the relationship between territory, information technology and governance. Drawing inspiration from Richard Walker’s work on corporate geographies and Rosen & Alvarez León (2022) “digital growth machine” we discussed the role of big tech produce hegemonic relational geographies as “urban makers” (Sidewalk Labs); Tech as “urban users” (HQs), and Tech as an urban “power system” (Amazon.com).</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-6631412193258348282023-12-05T01:20:00.000-08:002024-01-05T02:41:38.559-08:00New Publication on urban development in the Glatt Valley in The Elgar Companion to Valleys – Social Science Perspectives<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Was lange währt, wird endlich gut </b></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">A new publication is out in Aguiar, Senese, & French's (Eds) Elgar Companion to Valleys – Social Science Perspectives, that draws on work from nine years ago as part of a project "Governance for sustainable spatial development – a comparative study of Luxembourg and Switzerland" (SUSTAIN_GOV, FNR-funded) and on Evan McDonough's (Urban Studies PhD graduate) work on vertical cities. It is a chapter on urban governance and sustainability policy in the Glatt Valley (seen by some as an urban extension of Zurich). For a preview to this eye-catching book, look <b><a href="https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/the-elgar-companion-to-valleys-9781789906950.html"><span style="font-size: medium;">here</span></a></b>. </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><i><span style="font-family: arial;">Thank you Luis, Donna and Diana; it was lovely collaborating with you and congratulations!</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></i><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">The full citation of our chapter is: Carr, C., McDonough, E. 2023. “Vertical (sub)urbanization in Zurich’s northeast: The Valley along the Glatt as both a metaphor and mediating structural element.” In Aguiar, L, Senese, D., and French, D. The Elgar Companion to Valleys – Social Science Perspectives, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 79-91.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Other works on sustainability in the Glatt Valley </b></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Using this opportunity to shine light again on this work, another publication from Evan and me on the Glatt Valley was published in a special issue on suburbanization edited by Hesse and Siedentop, and is available here: Carr, C. and McDonough, E. (2018) “<b><a href="https://rur.oekom.de/index.php/rur/article/view/396"><span style="font-size: medium;">Integrative Planning of Post-suburban Growth in the Glatt Valley (Switzerland)</span></a></b>” Raumforschung und Raumordnung | Spatial Research and Planning. DE, 76(2), pp. 109–122. doi: 10.1007/s13147-016-0403-x.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">I can also take this opportunity to bring your attention to another article based on SUSTAIN_GOV work, that is one of those papers that I never managed to get published-- this is obstensively, if you will humour me, celebrating a failure. The paper was desk rejected by two journals (i.e. submitted and rejected 20 minutes later), and then rejected after several rounds of peer-review in a special issue on environmental policy that I had been invited to. And while this publishing path of permo-reject doesn't suggest that the paper will be very good, it remains a fact that many hours went into this paper, and...well....actually I like it! Here it is made available on an open access platform: Carr, C. 2020. "<b><a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/jvbue "><span style="font-size: medium;">Just because they say it is sustainable development, it does not mean that it is: Sustainable development as a master-signifier in Swiss urban and regional planning</span></a></b>" SocArXiv Papers, DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/jvbue</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /></div> <br /> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-90818841472191788722023-11-29T03:46:00.000-08:002023-11-30T05:42:43.664-08:00'This country is punching ...' Lecture documentation<p>As already mentioned in the previous blog-post, I was invited to give a lecture on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the University of Luxembourg. It was held on Thursday, 23rd November 2023, at Campus Belval in the Black Box of the MSH. This was a nice event visited by about 50 people, among them colleagues, students, and also a number of guests from outside the University.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0C9qHsa5dhd8SfmZcEaCOBxI0AlAGMf72WBR3ttwFCrFn1QWpMNwGa6jltfHyZCqT3OH1BE8zQhdYrKrUqbgAfnsnAB6gRpGJdNzeuHWPZE2I8nUwsfNE4zAUHP9_VvDDw6PjDYJT5WCv4AExtSX95DjYjE4fs4w_t-DbLdeHXwWJmOMccG3EcQDZhFdd/s4624/The%20threee%20Luxembourgs_@20.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2084" data-original-width="4624" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0C9qHsa5dhd8SfmZcEaCOBxI0AlAGMf72WBR3ttwFCrFn1QWpMNwGa6jltfHyZCqT3OH1BE8zQhdYrKrUqbgAfnsnAB6gRpGJdNzeuHWPZE2I8nUwsfNE4zAUHP9_VvDDw6PjDYJT5WCv4AExtSX95DjYjE4fs4w_t-DbLdeHXwWJmOMccG3EcQDZhFdd/w667-h299/The%20threee%20Luxembourgs_@20.jpg" width="667" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div style="text-align: right;">(c) Olga Kryvets</div><p></p><p>I have documented the talk in a script that, for technical reasons, is stored for download on the University's repository orbilu.uni.lu (<a href="https://orbilu.uni.lu/handle/10993/58186"><b>HERE</b></a>). The text has largely remained in the form of its oral presentation, aiming to provide an overview of some key development dynamics and conflicts of the country. While sticking to the scientific method of providing a solid question, making empirical cases and also deriving robust conclusions, I tried my best to speak to the interested reader and the general public as well.</p><p>For further reading and sense-making, there is a number of sources mentioned at the end of the paper, which are all available on the repository. As a publicly funded institution, we are committed to inform the public, so feel free to consult our writings. (In my case, this includes both academic journal papers and book chapters, but also a range of shorter articles deliberately written for the interested public and the readers of magazines and media outlets such as 'forum', 'Letzëbuerger Land', 'ons stad', or 'Luxemburger Wort'.)</p><p>And for sure, we certainly speak to institutions outside of academia, to politics and practice about these and other issues as well, if this is desired.</p>MHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11118631591346523026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-18438571741752459972023-11-12T04:02:00.000-08:002023-11-12T06:17:00.331-08:00'This country is punching far beyond its weight'-- Lecture on the occasion of uni.lu@20<b></b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJoXBOgf5wyHfQ4PEE6hnEx9CMl_krXy42_d2R7xbuhxGDyiK9efslGQggMhEgVongRSVGUXmEoh4Tu38ySxBRv3OHhWbfWDplRHO4YceuSKBYtPaScVhKHAS5t-K_hgp3Z-buNKlTmZqU9vdgGkdGCJ1eC2JaWev1fh6PkJ79fTgDIq9-a_OPyH-1f_k-/s1382/Screenshot%202023-11-12%20at%2012.45.46.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1042" data-original-width="1382" height="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJoXBOgf5wyHfQ4PEE6hnEx9CMl_krXy42_d2R7xbuhxGDyiK9efslGQggMhEgVongRSVGUXmEoh4Tu38ySxBRv3OHhWbfWDplRHO4YceuSKBYtPaScVhKHAS5t-K_hgp3Z-buNKlTmZqU9vdgGkdGCJ1eC2JaWev1fh6PkJ79fTgDIq9-a_OPyH-1f_k-/w558-h420/Screenshot%202023-11-12%20at%2012.45.46.png" width="558" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>Colleagues, students and the interested public are invited to this talk on behalf of the UL celebrating its 20th anniversary. It is one of the contributions selected from the Faculty of Humanities, and we are happy that this proposal coming from the Dept. of Geography & Spatial Planning was selected as well. <div><span> </span>The quote in the title comes from an expert interview in recent research. It illustrates the foundational fact that Luxembourg has considerably more economic power and dynamism that its size and institutional set-up would allow to accommodate to. This is the basic problem that runs through all development and planning conflicts, reinforced by institutional and procedural complexity and inertia. Appropriate strategies need to be structural. However, current practice is constrained by three different sorts of illusion: a growth illusion; a steering illusion; and a sustainability illusion. The lecture will close by reflecting upon some thoughts on how to address structural challenges.</div><div><span> </span>The talk could be assumed as a menu composed of four courses. The ‘amuse geul’ (S1) includes a short note on where I obtained the knowledge that allows for to make today’s argument (aka my lenses). The 'entrée' (S2) refers to the work others have been doing on related subject matters in most general terms (aka theory). S3 may comprise the main course: the specificities of Luxembourg’s development trajectory, the dark side of being small-but-global, and the governance illusions that seem pertinent when it comes to policy & planning discourses. As to the dessert (S4), I know that I cannot finish this exercise without addressing what could, or should, be done in order to improve the real-world situation. I remain pretty cautious and won’t present solutions. Instead, I will name a few important requirements that need to be set in place, before one may think about anything that promises to resolve the underlying issues.</div><div> Entrance is free (of course), but the organisers would like to see participants register in advance. This can be done <a href="https://www.uni.lu/en/news/this-country-is-punching-far-beyond-its-weight-what-it-means-to-be-small-but-global-a-view-from-geography/">HERE</a>.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Markus Hesse</div>MHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11118631591346523026noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-42093548782452838912023-11-10T05:50:00.000-08:002023-11-13T06:00:49.691-08:00A podcast about Luxembourg for our swedish readers<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQjZ-utLAatfmwic7pdAp9BT1IJjEe93lu-7XOlvVsY205YPv-D2uq5bMjKHipJVuvdPZMA7yzyAs9JlXq2n3gzLA7S5RaaaxdDa0MM4-onJ7EtN6jcCChn13asMDYiUJt1cXGbQ7zeqHtk4YVqmzImijyXuzaGViPY4QYA37YLrw4nrK-H9Qqcguv-PXO/s1290/Screenshot%202023-11-13%20at%2014.51.15.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="674" data-original-width="1290" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQjZ-utLAatfmwic7pdAp9BT1IJjEe93lu-7XOlvVsY205YPv-D2uq5bMjKHipJVuvdPZMA7yzyAs9JlXq2n3gzLA7S5RaaaxdDa0MM4-onJ7EtN6jcCChn13asMDYiUJt1cXGbQ7zeqHtk4YVqmzImijyXuzaGViPY4QYA37YLrw4nrK-H9Qqcguv-PXO/w606-h317/Screenshot%202023-11-13%20at%2014.51.15.png" width="606" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Last October, Carr had the pleasure of greeting Håkan Forsell and Dan Hallemar in Luxembourg as they expand their catalogue of cities under exploration for their podcast, Staden Podcast. Swedish listeners can tune in here: <a href="https://www.stadenpodcast.se/avsnitt/luxemburg">https://www.stadenpodcast.se/avsnitt/luxemburg</a></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-70536771049419301522023-10-05T23:43:00.002-07:002023-10-05T23:43:36.462-07:00Is Belval so cool that it needs redevelopment?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKnI2CZWlnilrlhI-9SEYIS_31AebAWKIBLcBV5tqVR3r173ouSdI7jjZB3WaCxq8aRPpFoS_9M3PbBmlPvsnE5kle7WwmJ_lA7iV7frurRqjoznV8k2srQRiF0d7jLzToQVBMa-Q4YhqwkXVE_gAfvJUkA4Vs8GBPXm1sEVW35g4ZmwCrTTc7vkj1RyF5/s2808/Screenshot%202023-09-30%20at%2010.09.13.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1216" data-original-width="2808" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKnI2CZWlnilrlhI-9SEYIS_31AebAWKIBLcBV5tqVR3r173ouSdI7jjZB3WaCxq8aRPpFoS_9M3PbBmlPvsnE5kle7WwmJ_lA7iV7frurRqjoznV8k2srQRiF0d7jLzToQVBMa-Q4YhqwkXVE_gAfvJUkA4Vs8GBPXm1sEVW35g4ZmwCrTTc7vkj1RyF5/w623-h270/Screenshot%202023-09-30%20at%2010.09.13.png" width="623" /></a></div><br />Surprise, surprise: we are slowly but surely moving towards a greener, safer, more human #Belval in Luxembourg’s old-industrial south. This pre-Christmas gift was presented to the public on the 29th September 2023, shortly before the national elections, by three ministers (Mobility & Public Works; Energy & Spatial Planning; Environment) jointly with the development agency #Agora and the two municipalities of Esch-sur-Alzette and Sanem. Their proposal for a new mobility design of the district was already called “an extensive redevelopment” of Belval by Delano-Magazine. The place is well known for some iconic buildings such as the red Dexia-tower or the old high furnace, which was refurbished as industrial heritage; last but not least, Belval hosts the University’s premises, among them the Maison du Savoir (House of Knowledge) and also the library with its impressive mélange of modern and industrial construction features.<div><br /><h3 style="text-align: left;">The ‘redevelopment’ of development</h3><div>Belval has emerged on the grounds of a steel-production plant about 20 years ago, after one of the two high furnaces had been decommissioned in 1997. Cleaning-up the site and initial development took place in the early 2000s, while most recent data from the developing agency Agora indicate that the site is meanwhile developed by about 60% of its floorspace and facilities and sold out to investors or users by about 80%, as of 2023. A true success story, as the government has put it.
However, one may wonder why a new site that is even not yet completed already needs redevelopment, after a relatively short period of existence. Could it indeed be the case that the area is not yet the vibrant urban neighbourhood that was once promised by its founders and financiers? Did the government eventually recognize that its car-oriented layout and street design has fallen out of time, from the very beginning? Less than a year ago only, when our colleagues from Architecture @uni.lu had organised a set of roundtables on Belval, the community of developers (public, private) demonstrably claimed that if they would have to do it again, they would do it exactly in the same way (“by 100 percent”, quote). That must have been a different theatre.</div><div><span> </span>As members of the UL and thus one of the main public users of the Cité des Sciences, we just went through our rentrée number nine since we were moved to Belval in fall 2015. That gives sufficient evidence to discuss the pros and cons of the area and its environment, and to assess the most recent promises of the government. Our answers to both questions may add some ‘varieties of interpretation’, particularly when looking at the non-built environment, that is, people, community, politics and organization. (I leave aside the ways of how the University’s affairs, buildings and infrastructures are managed—a separate story).</div><div><span> </span>As to the first point, a lot has been written about Belval also on this platform, which does not need to be repeated. In a nutshell: one concern is about the overall development that has rendered the site a rather dense and sealed surface. There seems to be a significant lack of green space that has made Belval becoming a windy heat-island. The urban fabric obviously inhibits environmental problems that result from a narrow-minded reading of sustainability as density. Moreover, little to no space is offered for non-market based use, for example the self-organization of students. It looks as if every square-metre will have to find its ultimate market value, being subject to development, management, and control. Newly built large-scale projects often need decades to develop their urban patina, while the benefits of truly public spaces with social mix, accidental interaction across social classes, and adaptation to change are yet missing. Such properties are admittedly difficult to plan for, but one wonders whether this point has been part of the planning at all.</div><div><span> </span>Another source of long-standing commentary is its car-oriented approach to accessibility, which only recently started to become improved. This brings us to the second question: What to expect from the new plans presented by the government? Is it good to see that politics has actually acknowledged the poor shape of both mobility infrastructure and street-urban design with respect to the site? Yes, it is, improvements are as welcome as needed. However, it is hard to accept that a seamless, comfortable connection of the district to other nodes in the country, notably its capital – provided by the tram – will not be ready before 2035 or 2038. That would be more than two decades after the Cité des Sciences was inaugurated. In the light of this timing: Is it serious to install displays on Belval streetscape that announce the coming of the tram—as if it would be tomorrow, not in 15 years …? Also, it remains to be seen whether hastily painted ‘pop-up bike lanes’ will improve the real situation, or just indicate bad conscience of the authorities.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh64go5J3X_8lESHoXf3dm_hjie-j-3l1P0JzxCDgSLgyu12f-ZMrgz1yxOHgVg-e-6Yuj7O6609pLD0zxI61QGjywfYVlsy9UyBj-wQ6Ba-LXVrZIGmRvvOtM0ja4N10rA9d8HSqLRUj0chNbytiWqQya8ppuedLLydIlDyKWawsDpw4nG1YIzBwdCO1y3/s4032/IMG_0533.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="383" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh64go5J3X_8lESHoXf3dm_hjie-j-3l1P0JzxCDgSLgyu12f-ZMrgz1yxOHgVg-e-6Yuj7O6609pLD0zxI61QGjywfYVlsy9UyBj-wQ6Ba-LXVrZIGmRvvOtM0ja4N10rA9d8HSqLRUj0chNbytiWqQya8ppuedLLydIlDyKWawsDpw4nG1YIzBwdCO1y3/w511-h383/IMG_0533.jpeg" width="511" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">The politics of infrastructure and planning at large scale</h3><div>Inertia in changing infrastructure systems is well-known, and it is a common question whether large-scale urban projects should precede the provision of infrastructure, or follow it afterwards. Answering that question depends on market conditions, the pace of implementation, state funding etc. In the case of Belval, the proclaimed mobility revolution will be late, if at all, given the persistent flow of the poorly occupied automobile that has already gained supremacy today. This is due to the ‘relational’ setting of Luxembourg that depends on the influx of remote (that is, foreign) workforce, thus linked to the necessarily unbalanced relationship between housing and occupation. How many of those who will work in Belval do live around, or will do so in the foreseeable future? Do we create just another ‘terminal’ that maximizes throughput (in order to generate taxes), without adding a sense of place to the area? These are structural questions that new projects can’t escape from, but that are rarely asked or answered in the phase of conceptualization.</div><div><span> </span>Apart from the technicalities that the concept brochure provides in the very detail over dozens of pages, we see some familiar patterns of development and planning policy, governance and governmentality (that is, the conduct of conduct). These include, first and foremost, the predominant state as the central actor. Municipalities use to play a minor role when it comes to strategic projects. This was already the case when Belval came into being; consequently, the mayors’ part in the presentation of the new project – while indeed being present at all – is limited to one out of 41 pages of the document. The lion’s share is taken over by state and state-led agencies. This principle already applied to the very beginning of Belval, which was localized based on state decision making in concert with the landowner, not following the preference of the municipality of Esch-sur-Alzette.</div><div><span> </span>The new plans for Belval also embody a strong emphasis on technology and infrastructure – a policy that seems typical for Luxembourg: building, building, building. Of course, catching up with growth means providing the required infrastructure, especially for the preferred means of a) land use and b) transport. However, in terms of steering transport demand and supply, infrastructure provision alone is necessary but not sufficient as a framework condition. Organisation comes into play as does the question of aims and objectives in more regulatory terms. We recall from early planning that connecting Belval to the train system (by the new gare Belval-Université) had made the government to predict a modal share between cars and transit of 60 to 40 percent for the future. We don’t know in how far this has been achieved, the new concept might be understood as an attempt to strengthen the policy. The open question is what else is foreseen to be implemented for steering the demand side other than the supply of infrastructure and a new street design. Otherwise, the desired outcomes would lack probability. It looks as if the provision of infrastructure is considered to be the end, not the means of the policy.</div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">The conduct of conduct</h3><div>Finally, the discursive framing of the project follows a common pattern. It includes a handful of steps that we do know too well: First, when a new project is presented to the public, it is sold as a game changer that will resolve the majority of current problems. In a development trajectory that is as complex as contested (such as planning for the small-but-global metropolis), promising “solutions” turns out to be a risky endeavour. As a result, in a second phase the projects earn critical commentaries, either on their outset or after realisation. For a while, this criticism is either rejected or ignored by the authorities. As soon as the deficiencies of real developments can’t be overlooked, officials start to contend critical voices. This criticism is then used in order to escape from the murky reality of today’s development pressure, moving on to praising future projects that would make everything better. This is a narrative cycle that goes on again and again …</div><div><span> </span>The speed of change in the Grand Duchy is enormous, not only compared with other countries. Development, wealth and growth have a massive impact on society and economy. which is by and large perceived as beneficial. Hence, development and growth enjoy political priority in most fields of practice, also revealed by the election campaigns. However, it unfolds at a certain price: The downside of growth is that both infrastructure and institutions can hardly catch up with the ever rising population of residents and employees. Most of the professional elites are aware of this, yet the underlying conflicts and contradictions are not addressed. </div><div><span> </span>Only in rare moments these issues are openly articulated in public discourse.
As a notable exception, the lead-candidate of the socialist LSAP conceded in a press-interview prior to the October 2023 elections: “Wir haben die Bedeutung des enormen Wachstums nicht richtig eingeschätzt” (‘We did not properly estimate the importance of the enormous growth’, Luxemburger Wort, 30th September 2023, p. 2). This concession, related to the pandemic and health policy, can certainly be applied to many fields of policy making, such as education, housing, or mobility. There is no solution in sight. However, a reflective, more cautious attitude to contemporary problems and possible mid- and long-term strategies would also be useful to apply in the ‘wicked’ field of development, movement, and mobility. And better remove the tram promotion for a while?</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Markus Hesse</div>MHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11118631591346523026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-6140173743346995732023-09-06T02:38:00.003-07:002023-09-06T03:32:14.416-07:00Mattiucci interviews Carr in ITEM Bookzine di arte e psicoanalisi<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Earlier this year, Carr was interviewed by Prof. Cristina Mattiucci Dept of Architecture, University of Naples Federico II. The following is an English-language translation of the original conversation that Mattiucci published in ITEM Bookzine di arte e psicoanalisi N.2 - SI Artificiale - edited by Waiting Room Residency - Giusi Campisi, Sara d’Alessandro Manozzo, Luca Bertoldi - July 2023.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b>The urban heaviness of the digital / Politics of urban digital infrastructure</b></span></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">by Christina Mattiucci <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The Premise: I met Connie (Constance) Carr at INURA - the International Network of Urban Research and Action - which is a network we have shared for many years.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Last year, in June 2022, at the close of the Retreat of the Annual INURA conference held in Luxembourg, she presented her research on - Digital Urban Development - How large digital corporations shape the field of urban governance (DIGI-GOV) - of which she is PI, at the Department of Geography and Spatial Planning, University of Luxembourg. The aim of DIGI-GOV is to explore the role of large digital corporations (LDCs) in digital urban development, how the presence of LDCs in urban planning practice challenge urban governance, and how LDC-led urban development constitutes a new relational geography of digital cities.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">I was curious about Carr’s research because it questions dimension of digital urban transformations, and sheds light on 'the weight' of digital dimensions of urban spatial dynamics and in the context of the Urban Question.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Now, almost a year later, I come back to her to try to understand what are the main issues that emerged from that research, beyond the publications resulted from it so far.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><b>Q: It seems to me that your work seeks to understand the on-the-ground politics of urban digital infrastructure. What are the broader questions that have guided your research and what kind of conceptualization of the digital dimension it challenged?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">A: The broad aim of DIGI-GOV to examine and explain how large digital corporations such as Amazon or Google influence the development. This is the overarching goal. This research is funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund. And I say this not only as a logo but also because people often ask me about who funds this research as they are suspicious that it might be Google, or some investor. So, as a small disclaimer, it is important in this context to mention that this is a university research project that is publicly funded and seated at the Department of Geography and Spatial Planning at the University of Luxembourg.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">DIGI-GOV grew out and was inspired by a previous project, which looked at Sidewalk Labs in Toronto and what that one happened back then. (see paper<a href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> about Sidewalk Labs (SL) — a daughter company and urban development arm of Alphabet Inc. and sister to Google LLC— which won the competition to develop 4.9 hectares along Toronto’s shores of Lake Ontario, entering as specific and controversial actor in ordinary urban planning, ndr)</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">What was interesting about this so-called digital city project was that Sidewalk Labs was a new actor on the local field of urban planning and development. It wasn’t just architects and developers: It was a tech company. Of course, digital technology and urbanization have always gone hand in hand, so in one sense this is not new, but in this case we had a major tech company with enormous capital power, and with access to urban government in ways that were kind of new. This was back in 2017, 2018, and it got massive media attention, and dominated Toronto planning in the port lands until the pandemic hit. Sidewalk was claiming that it would build the most amazing digital city that was the world has ever seen and so on, but what was also remarkable was how it had all levels of Canadian government behind it, which were not only giving their public support, but also coordinating their public messages and appearances. So, we saw the CEO of Alphabet Inc. on stage with the Prime Minister of Canada and the Premier of Ontario. This is not easy to do, actually. So, obviously, there was some concentrated cooperation going on, in addition to the new digital gadgets that Sidewalk wax developing and preparing to sell.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">From a research perspective, the next question was: How might this play out in other cities? And so, DIGI-GOV looks at six cities: the Washington Metropolitan Area, Seattle, Toronto, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, and Kiev. It’s a gigantic project -- and there is a fairly large team on it -- and we are currently in various stages of research in all these places.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><b>Q: Let's talk back about DIGI-GOV. Your work also highlights "data matters" through their production/materialization/storage. The graphic you published on data centers in the Washington Metropolitan Area and respective kW needs is very significant in this perspective. It shows an interpretative map, where you show some significant implications. As you wrote, the map provides the visualization of the social spatial distribution of data centers and it points out the five implications you found: data centers are concentrated in metropolitan areas; they have a high demand for energy and water, competing with local residents for these resources; their industry is a state-led niche economy; the uneven distribution of data centers can invoke inter-county competition for tax revenue, in addition to access to the water, power, and land resources they require. In the related paper<a href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> you stated that ‘data centers present an under explored geography of cyberworlds. By means of that large digital corporations such as Amazon or Google are expanding their role in urban infrastructural development’. What are the main challenges of data centers for urban governance? Then, not forgetting that there are issues of visibility and secretness, what kind of data you were able to spatialize?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">A: There are two main vains of research in DIGI-GOV. First, DIGI-GOV looks a symbolic places like Sidewalk Labs or the headquarters of Amazon. Second, the project addresses new kinds of telecommunications infrastructure, data centers in particular. Those are the two key foci. About the maps that we drew: We completed those at the beginning of the project because that was back in 2021 and we were all rather new to the topic of data centers. Actually, no one on the team really knew what a data center even was. Further, it was a rather under-researched infrastructure with most work limited to the domains of engineering and computer science. So, we were pursuing this very basic exploration: What is a data center? What are the varieties of kind of data centers? Where are they? What do they do? We were just exploring some basic facts about what we were dealing with. This is where we discovered, through publicly available sources, where they were, and what the basic characters of these locations were, from which we could extrapolate what this might mean or implicate in spatial terms.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">We learned that it was a booming business, that their input needs (such as land) were expanding rapidly. We also found – and this was surprising at the time – that data centers were concentrating in metropolitan areas. I had gone into this thinking that data centers would be a rural phenomenon, which was not only totally wrong, it was predictable according to the urban studies literature, as telecommunications infrastructure have always concentrated in urban areas. So, if you look at publicly available maps (e.g. Baxtel.com), you'll find that the data centers are usually in big cities like Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Paris, Washington, Seattle. They're concentrating in the metropolitan areas.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">We also noticed a certain set of institutions, carving out their economic positions. The one that really stuck out to us, of course, was the prevalence of Amazon particularly in the Washington Metropolitan Area. Of course, Amazon just does not disclose anything, actually, but they have 50 or so data centers in the WMA. We also know that they have the largest and most modern data centers with huge data input, storage and processing needs, so they must be enormous. But we can't access this in specific terms.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><b>Q: As an exploratory work, I imagine the maps started to speak to your project. If you had to imagine to integrate your maps at the end of the project, do you think that are other elements that should be made visible or just the power of seeing the located data centers works in itself?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">A: I don't know yet. On one hand, this was not supposed to be solely a story about location. But on the other hand, it is definitely interesting to think about how data centers are changing urban and regional landscapes. We did find that they are near waterways, so this is a territorial question. And, they're also in well-to-do neighborhoods (another surprise). Whether this should be ‘mapped’, per se, I don’t know. We can also illustrate with text.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><b>Q: Going back to the challenges of visibility and secretness…</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">A: For us, secrecy was and remains the biggest problem. There is a lot of information out there about the massive amounts of electricity and water that data centers need. There's a lot available on industry websites about where data centers are and what they are willing to reveal about electricity consumption. There is also a lot of discussion about improving efficiencies. This is of course very important. But what we find is that we cannot really access what is behind these processes, which is also an interesting phenomenon. So, for example, there are a lot of engineers working on improving energy efficiencies, but very little about actual input needs. It's one thing to be efficient, but if your absolute input continues to grow then there's still an issue about availability of resources. So, that is an area that is not really clarified. And then of course, the issue of what data is being stored where, by what company etc., and this is all super-secret. There are of course good reasons for secrecy (e.g. security), but this also creates a situation where there is no room for public input and certainly no room for public debate. Further, it is worth mentioning that protests against data centers are becoming commonplace. So, there is a need on one hand for public conversation about these, but there is also a strong need for secrecy, which is driven by security concerns and, we cannot forget, corporate secrecy as is practiced in profit driven enterprises.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><b>Q: It seems to me that it means looking at a kind of materialization of the data in the city. What would you say are the main challenges of this material dimension of data? And, let's think too about some of the political implication of your research questions. That is: What does this work bring out about the neoliberal directions of urban transformations?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">A: There is more to explore in terms of neoliberal urbanism, and what that means when for-profit urbanism is driven by big tech that prioritize their agendas, under the veil of secrecy. This, I think is really interesting.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Q: What do you think are the "exportable" themes of your research, which can be a reference for a critical reading of the digital dimension in other urban contexts as well, where for instance processes related to resource consumption or to financialization are somehow less evident? </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">A: Hard questions! <laugh> Okay, what we can learn from, which we would say as interesting? It's funny because I think maybe, maybe digital urbanization is a better term than smart cities or even digital cities, because for me urbanization implies a set of processes which then expose how cities form, produce and constitute each other. This refers to the urban theoretical concept of relationality: that cities are not atomized, particulate places, but mutually producing one another. This is a very broad field of urban studies research, which talks about urban comparison, how to conceptualize urban spaces as part of international networks of spaces and flows of many kinds. There is a lot there, and there are better urban theorists than me that discuss this. But here I can give you a simple but rather extreme example: I just got back from Washington DC where I observed that there were lots of protests about data centers. The repeating narrative was - and this is incredible if it's true - is that 70% of the internet goes through Virginia. If that is true, that's insane! Ok, because of secrecy we cannot actually verify it, but if true, it is not only extreme, it also shows how places are interconnected and involved in digitalization processes. Our (online, ndr) conversation here, the one between you and me, is going through another place, completely different, far away, in a different jurisdiction, and the spatial manifestation of both places – in this case, data center sprawl in Virginia and office development in Europe – define and shape one another. I think that this is very significant.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> Carr, C, Hesse, M (2020). When Alphabet Inc. Plans Toronto’s Waterfront: New Post-Political Modes of Urban Governance. Urban Planning, Volume 5, Issue 1, p. 69–83. DOI: 10.17645/up.v5i1.2519 </span><br /></span> <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><a href="#_ftnref2">[2]</a> Desmond Bast, D, Carr, C, Madron, K and Syrus, AM (2022). Four reasons why data centers matter, five implications of their social spatial distribution, one graphic to visualize them. EPA: Economy and Space, p. 1–5 . DOI: 10.1177/0308518X211069139 </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span> <span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br /> </p><p style="text-align: left;"><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-11743002806988740612023-07-20T07:43:00.007-07:002023-07-20T07:44:23.968-07:00Tracing Ukrainian tech-ecosystems at ICT Spring in Luxembourg<div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOh86UikP_NCjsPGZkId6B0dlanmmN9numHwqre2DQvrvr0A62b3rjAuHdyerFP7LO4YPXtX3nxvU3_1qxxRpG0YlZurs8k3-V8gt3paJU52AAEewYnPZ_JbRNp3WPEkWtFd_c2H-7kdjLi6zG9vNvFBvYRym_dluiOe3232h1KsTz6IN7InOLCPupC6yI/s4000/20230629_143434.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1800" data-original-width="4000" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOh86UikP_NCjsPGZkId6B0dlanmmN9numHwqre2DQvrvr0A62b3rjAuHdyerFP7LO4YPXtX3nxvU3_1qxxRpG0YlZurs8k3-V8gt3paJU52AAEewYnPZ_JbRNp3WPEkWtFd_c2H-7kdjLi6zG9vNvFBvYRym_dluiOe3232h1KsTz6IN7InOLCPupC6yI/w669-h301/20230629_143434.jpg" width="669" /></a></div></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">ICT Spring is a specialized exhibition held in Luxembourg that serves as a dynamic venue where start-ups can pitch their ideas to prospective investors. This event attracts tech enthusiasts eager to explore the latest trends and meet with influential figures sharing insights on innovative ICT developments.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It is arguably the most important event of the year in the field of ICT in Luxembourg. There, one can discover new start-ups, listen to panel discussions, and attend presentations by leading ICT experts. The exhibition covers diverse areas such as cybersecurity, data protection, digital infrastructure, fintech, cryptocurrencies, and the emerging metaverse, and cityverses as the future of smart cities. In terms of urban development specifically, one software company was developing a tool for monitoring air quality, and another for video surveillance in the garbage collection system. Global giants like Google, IBM, Microsoft, and PwC also showcased some of their newer innovations, while local Luxembourg companies like Luxinnovation and Luxconnect contributed to the ecosystem. </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Among the participants, Kryvets was particularly curious about the Ukrainian presence because these may lend clues to the make-up of the Ukrainian tech ecosystem which is diverse, fragmented, and dispersed all at once. The Ukrainian stand, organized by the Ukrainian-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce and Industry, showcased five start-ups. One presented a blockchain-based agro-marketplace for Ukrainian farmers that could potentially render the market more transparent. Another was a virtual job search platform to stem the brain drain from Ukraine and optimize processes of finding an employer. One developer proposed a tool for easier coding. Another aimed to ease the search and selection of lawyers in various fields in Ukraine and the EU, and still another focussed on tools and solutions to promote e-business, digital marketing and sales.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">-- Kryvets, Carr, Nicotra </span><br /> <span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-40281812436302144842023-07-18T19:02:00.008-07:002023-07-18T19:02:53.573-07:00New Project: "Digital urban futures - Urban reconstruction efforts in the headquarter City of Kyiv and the role of emerging tech-ecosystems (RE-DIGICITY)"<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><span style="font-family: arial;">We are delighted to announce that Dr. Olga Kryvets was awarded a Marie Curie grant from the </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://eua.eu/resources/projects/842-msca4ukraine-fellowship-scheme.html">MSCA4Ukraine Fellowship Scheme</a> under the supervision of Constance Carr.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Project Description </b></span><br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">RE-DIGICITY will examine the tech-ecosystem in the City of Kyiv, an East-European headquarter city subject to multiple urban reconstruction efforts in response to authoritarian aggression. RE-DIGICITY aims to understand and explain how tech enterprises both big and small shape reconstruction efforts and contribute to multiple digital urban futures. </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">RE-DIGICITY is an extension to work (KYIV-DIGIURB) commenced at DGEO, exploring how large digital corporations such as Amazon or Google were involved in reconstruction and resilience in Kyiv. This work built on Carr’s (2021) project, entitled “Digital Urban Development - How large digital corporations shape the field of urban governance (DIGI-GOV).” Funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund, DIGI-GOV examines the role of large digital corporations in digital urban development in Toronto, Seattle, Washington DC, Luxembourg and Amsterdam (Carr/Hesse 2020, 2022; Bast/Carr/Madron/Syrus 2022; Carr/Bast/Madron/Syrus 2022). RE-DIGICITY expands the horizon to include Microsoft and Samsung as well as smaller enterprises, which together constitute an emerging tech-ecosystem in Kyiv. RE-DIGICITY thus offers fresh insight into processes of urban digitalization (Ash/Kitchin/Leszcznski 2016; Karvonen/Cook/Harstaad 2020) looking at how tech-ecosystems affect digital urban futures in an East-European headquarter city (Gnatiuk/Kryvets 2018; Mykhnenko 2020) undergoing post-disaster reconstruction. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">RE-DIGICITY is thus a chance to call attention to the ways that contemporary digital cities are (re)constructed and (re)planned. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br /><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Reconstruction and Digital Futures </span></b><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">The invasion, “caused an avalanche of civilian casualties and a large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure, while Ukraine’s forced displacement and humanitarian needs continue to grow exponentially” (Mykhnenko/Delahaye/Mehdi 2022: 714). </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Despite ongoing destruction, in June 2022, the Ministry of Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine (MTOTU) (2022) approved the ‘Transition Period Policy’ to begin reconstruction. Around this time too, Amazon, Google and Microsoft were awarded for their efforts in reinforcing Ukraine’s digital infrastructures/services (Nolan 2022). From pie-in-the-sky dreams of Eurovision 2023 in Mariupol, to dreams of modernized urban infrastructures/services (Hay et al. 2022), to immediate needs of clean water, medical supplies, and critical infrastructure (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) 2022), reconstruction in Ukraine was operating at various temporal and spatial scales, through a multitude of narratives responding to different imaginaries. Just as Paidakaki/Moulaert (2017) viewed resilience as granular, so too was the character of reconstruction and the multitude of coeval resilience agendas in Ukraine. It was “a highly political, continuously changing, socially transformative process,” (ibid. 2017: 4). RE-DIGIGOV explores these in relation to coeval efforts at urban digitalization. </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><b><span style="font-family: arial;">An Eastern Headquarter City </span></b><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Kyiv, the capital city and most economically prosperous area of Ukraine (Mykhnenko 2020), is recognized as Ukraine’s corporate centre, home to older oil, coal and steel production firms, and since the 1990s, home to more and more firms in finance. Recently, a number of international IT firms have also settled, solidifying new economic sectors and growth in the City and country—which, further, are components of wider processes of neoliberalization in the post-socialist, post-industrial city (Gnatiuk/Kryvets 2018; Gnatiuk/Melnychuk 2022; Havryliuk/Gnatiuk/Mezentsev 2021).</span><span style="font-family: arial;">Today, Kyiv’s IT sector has a broad inventory, and these tech-ecosystems signify the strengthening of new business sectors in a post-socialist, neoliberal economy, and the delivery of a new digital urbanism in Kyiv, a ‘relational’ (Wong/Hesse/Sigler 2022) headquarter city. </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Research Questions </b></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">RE-DIGICITY addresses research questions operationalized across three domains: </span><span style="font-family: arial;">i. reconstruction and digital urban futures; </span><span style="font-family: arial;">ii. relational headquarter cities; iii) t</span><span style="font-family: arial;">ech-ecosystems in conditions of authoritarian aggression.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Methods </b></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">RE-DIGICITY’s methodological approach inspired by the processuality of urbanization (Carr/Hesse 2020), ‘interpretative institutionalism’ (Bevir/Rhodes 2006), and urban relationality (Wong/Hesse/Sigler 2022). </span><span style="font-family: arial;">First, understanding the complexities of urban tech-ecosystems in the context of urban reconstruction requires an examination of the processuality of urbanization. This approach has roots in urban political ecology and focusses on social productive processes because “‘the urban’ is a complex, multiscale and multidimensional process where the general and specific aspects of the human condition meet,” (Keil 2003, 725). Further, a qualitative approach respecting processes uncovers the “thick and rich description of the discourses” (Kenis 2019, 836). </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Second, a qualitative approach can assess how institutions are shaped, emphasizing the rationale, background conditions, and justifications that inform decision-making processes, to explain why people/institutions behave as they do. The interpretive institutionalism approach developed by Bevir and Rhodes (2006) provides such tools to generate insight. </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Third, by examining Kyiv as a headquarter city, RE-DIGICITY draws on the relational approach rooted in scholarly debates about urban comparison that expose how cities are interconnected and constitute one another (Robinson 2011). In this approach, urban spaces are not bounded territories, but conduits of connection and productive processes that reach and extend beyond specific territories (Uitermark et al. 2012). In this vein, RE-DIGICITY is inspired by Wong et al. (2022) who argued that a city’s positionality in international flows, “is derived from mediating between regionally and globally scaled processes” (Wong/Hesse/Siger 2022: 502): Kyiv’s headquarter strategy can also be conceived of as a “niche center of corporate domiciling” (ibid.: 503). </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">The conceptual approach translates into a rigorous survey of secondary sources, including media reports, government documentation, videos documentation, and more. The goal is to obtain an overview of the scope and volume of the discourse. Narratives drawn from follow-up interviews can then be triangulated against the written discourse, to achieve a deeper understanding of discourses, conflicts, and positions. </span></div> <span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><b>References </b><br />Ash, J./Kitchin, R./Leszcznski, M. 2016. Digital turn, digital geographies? Progress in Human Geography, 42:1,25- 43. <br /><br />Bast, D./Carr, C./Madron, K./Syrus, AM. 2022. Four reasons why data centers matter, five implications of their social spatial distribution, one graphic to visualize them. Environment and Planning A, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X211069139">https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X211069139</a> <br /><br />Bevir, M./Rhodes, R. 2006. Governance Stories. London: Routledge. <br /><br />Carr, C. 2021. DIGI-GOV Project Summary. https://orbilu.uni.lu/bitstream/10993/45932/1/DIGI-GOV%20Brochure%20January%202021.pdf <br /><br />Carr, C./Bast, D./Madron, K./Syrus, AM. 2022. Mapping the clouds: The matter of data centers. Journal of Maps <br /><br />Carr, C./Hesse, M. 2020. When Alphabet Inc. Plans Toronto’s Waterfront: New Post-Political Modes of Urban Governance, Urban Planning, 5:1,69-83. <br /><br />---- 2022. Technocratic Urban Development: Large Digital Corporations as Power Brokers of the Digital Age. Planning Theory & Practice, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2022.2043717">https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2022.2043717</a> <br /><br />Gnatiuk, O./Kryvets, O. 2018. Post-Soviet residential neighbourhoods in two second-order Ukrainian cities: Factors and models of spatial transformation. Geographica Pannonica, 22:2,104-120. <br /><br />Gnatiuk, O./Melnychuk, A. 2022. Housing names to suit every taste: neoliberal place-making and toponymic commodification in Kyiv, Ukraine. Eurasian Geography and Economics, DOI: 10.1080/15387216.2022.2112250 <br /><br />Hay, A./Karney, H./Martyn, B.N. 2022. Reconstructing infrastructure for resilient essential services during and following protracted conflict: A conceptual framework. International Review of the Red Cross. <br /><br />Havryliuk, O.,/Gnatiuk, O.,/Mezentsev/K. 2021. Suburbanization, but centralization? Migration patterns in the post-Soviet functional urban region – evidence from Kyiv. Folia Geographica, 63:1,64-84 <br /><br />Hesse, M. 2022. Project Description FINCITY. https://orbilu.uni.lu/bitstream/10993/50569/1/Excerpt%20from%20FINCITY%20Project%20Description.pdf <br /><br />Karvonen, A./Cook, M./Harstaad, H. 2020. Urban Planning and the Smart City: Projects, Practices and Politics. Urban Planning, 5:1,65-68. <br /><br />Keil, R. 2003. Progress report: Urban political ecology. Urban Geography, 24:8,723–738. <br /><br />Kenis, A. 2019. Post-politics contested: Why multiple voices on climate change do not equal politicisation. Environment and Planning C, 37:5,831–848. <br /><br />MTOTU 2022. State policy of the transitional period. https://minre.gov.ua/project/derzhavna-polityka-perehidnogo-periodu <br /><br />Mykhnenko, V. 2020. Causes and consequences of the war in eastern Ukraine: An economic geography perspective. Europe-Asia Studies, 72:3,528-560. <br /><br />Mykhnenko, V./Delahaye, E./Mehdi, N. 2022. Understanding forced internal displacement in Ukraine: insights and lessons for today’s crises. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 38:3,699–716. <br /><br />Nolan, B 2022. Zelenskyy awards Amazon the Ukraine peace prize after AWS helped save its ‘digital infrastructure’. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/zelenskyy-amazon-ukraine-peace-prize-digital-war-support-aws-2022-7?r=US&IR=T <br /><br />Paidakaki A./Moulaert F 2017. Does the post-disaster resilient city really exist? International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment, 8:3,275–291. <br /><br />Robinson, J. 2011. Cities in a world of cities: The comparative gesture. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35:1,1952. <br /><br />Uitermark, J,/Nicholls, W./Loopmans, M. 2012. Cities and social movements: Theorizing beyond the right to the city. Environment and Planning A, 44:11,2546–2554. <br /><br />UNOCHA2022. Situation Report. <a href="https://reports.unocha.org/en/country/ukraine/">https://reports.unocha.org/en/country/ukraine/</a> <br /><br />Wong, C./Hesse, M./Sigler, T. 2022. City-states in relational urbanization: the case of Luxembourg and Singapore, Urban Geography, 43:4,501-522. </span><p><style>@font-face
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{margin-bottom:0cm;}</style></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-16658280544137963722023-07-05T07:32:00.000-07:002023-07-05T07:32:19.464-07:00PhD-Candidate in Geography / Spatial Planning---There are 10 days left to applyThe University of Luxembourg is an international research university with a distinctly multilingual and interdisciplinary character. The University was founded in 2003 and counts more than 6,700 students and more than 2,000 employees from around the world. The University’s faculties and interdisciplinary centres focus on research in the areas of Computer Science and ICT Security, Materials Science, European and International Law, Finance and Financial Innovation, Education, Contemporary and Digital History. In addition, the University focuses on cross-disciplinary research in the areas of Data Modelling and Simulation as well as Health and System Biomedicine. <div>The Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education (FHSE) brings together expertise from the humanities, linguistics, cognitive sciences, social and educational sciences. People from across 20 disciplines are working within the Faculty. Along with the disciplinary approach a very ambitious interdisciplinary research culture has been developed.
The faculty’s research and teaching focuses on social, economic, political and educational issues with the common goal of contributing to an inclusive, open and resourceful society. The FHSE offers six Bachelor and twenty Master degrees and a doctoral school providing students with the necessary knowledge and high-qualified skills to succeed in their future career.</div><div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8R-ldJ_IZRyeEhLCkAgEdub4TgcGRo0oW-juafpp1hW9Qmy5EshB-4jZ-b9ddtzHARI0r7yov5Uw6vW0scJS1SPTRx-eHrnLWoE6XW71X_8KW-5-4RDgEPX-Yr36WE_k9zMhuIe7YWgGntoVc8ZzLdY4s603h-_omjs1DcyO7-VlECP686lihIckL2nRj/s4032/IMG_0312.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="407" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8R-ldJ_IZRyeEhLCkAgEdub4TgcGRo0oW-juafpp1hW9Qmy5EshB-4jZ-b9ddtzHARI0r7yov5Uw6vW0scJS1SPTRx-eHrnLWoE6XW71X_8KW-5-4RDgEPX-Yr36WE_k9zMhuIe7YWgGntoVc8ZzLdY4s603h-_omjs1DcyO7-VlECP686lihIckL2nRj/w542-h407/IMG_0312.jpeg" width="542" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Your role: </h3>Prepare a doctoral thesis in geography and/or planning, within the context of global urban studies, as we explored it through our past research project GLOBAL and the ongoing FINCITY research. In this context, it is our particular interest to find out what being small-but-global means for development and planning. While the above projects were focussing on urban and metropolitan governance more generally (GLOBAL), and commercial real-estate markets in particular (FINCITY), we propose to study further fields of application. These could be, for example, the science-policy interface in geography and planning (aka transfer), or the notion of flows (logistics) and how it collides with the configuration of places. Apart from that, we are also interested in learning about candidates’ own proposals, as far as these are situated in the above broader context.<div>Assist in teaching activities, limited to a range of one to three hours per week.</div><div>Contribute to tutoring Master students.</div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Profile:</h3><div>Master or Diploma in Geography or Spatial Planning/Urban Planning; Master or Diploma in Political Science, History or other Humanities/Social Sciences linked to geographical issues. Strong interest in urban development, policy and planning. Interest in interdisciplinary work and a reflective methodology. Excellent command of written and spoken English. (Knowledge of either French or German is an advantage).</div></div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">In short:</h3>
Contract Type: Fixed Term Contract 36 Months <div>Work Hours: Full Time 40.0 Hours per Week</div><div>Location: Belval</div><div>Internal Title: Doctoral Researcher</div><div>Job Reference: UOL05805</div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">How to apply:</h3>
Applications (in English) should contain the following documents:
A detailed curriculum vitae; Copies of Master Diploma; Motivation Letter; Support letter from at least one recent scientific advisor/professor; A PhD proposal (min 2,000, max 2,500 words excluding bibliography) using the following format:
Introduction and literature review
Research objectives and expected contribution to the field
Innovation/originality
Methodology (including intended dataset to be used if empirical analysis)
Work plan and expected timetable
Bibliography.<div><br /><div>Candidates should apply by <b>15th July 2023</b>. Please apply <a href="https://recruitment.uni.lu/en/details.html?id=QMUFK026203F3VBQB7V7VV4S8&nPostingID=85217&nPostingTargetID=124359&mask=karriereseiten&lg=UK" target="_blank"><b>HERE</b></a> through the HR system. Applications by email will not be considered.
The University of Luxembourg embraces inclusion and diversity as key values. We are fully committed to removing any discriminatory barrier related to gender, and not only, in recruitment and career progression of our staff.</div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Here's what awaits you at the University:</h3><div>Multilingual and international character. Modern institution with a personal atmosphere. Staff coming from 90 countries. Member of the “University of the Greater Region” (UniGR).
A modern and dynamic university. High-quality equipment. Close ties to the business world and to the Luxembourg labour market. Cooperation with European institutions, innovative companies, the Financial Centre and with numerous non-academic partners such as ministries, local governments, associations, NGOs …</div></div>MHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11118631591346523026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-16676150658157947032023-07-03T01:33:00.012-07:002023-07-03T02:11:25.680-07:00We are delighted to welcome Prof. Rob Kitchin to the MSH in Belval, July 6 2023, 10:00-10:45 am<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><b>DGEO in co-operation with the <a href="https://www.arl-net.de/de/blog/arl-international-summer-school-2023" target="_blank">ARL</a> is delighted to welcome <a href="https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/faculty-social-sciences/our-people/rob-kitchin" target="_blank"><span>Prof. Rob Kitchin of Maynooth University</span></a> will deliver a public talk on "<span>Exploring Digital Space-Time</span>" for the opening of the<span> <a href="http://urbanunbound.blogspot.com/2023/06/dgeo-looks-forward-to-hosting-arl.html" target="_blank">ARL International Summer School</a>, July 6, 2023, 10:00-10:45 am</span></b><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Abstract </b>- Digital technologies are having a profound effect on the temporalities and spatialities of individuals, households and organizations. For example, we now expect to be able to source instantly a vast array of information at any time and from anywhere, as well as to buy goods with the click of a button and have them delivered within hours, while time management apps and locative media have altered how everyday scheduling and mobility unfold. The presentation will examine the relationship between time and space in the digital age, examining the production digital timescapes. It will illustrate the argument by charting the timescapes of smart cities</span>. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><b>The Summer School introductory keynote</b> is open for remote attendances via the Webex platform. </span></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;"><span>Listen in at: <a href="https://tinyurl.com/4mjvkxvj " target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/4mjvkxvj </a></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Webex number: 2731 796 4397</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Webex password: ARL2023</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Webex host: Constance Carr (contact: constance.carr@uni.lu)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Link will open at 9:50 am <br /></span></li></ul><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Those in Luxembourg are also invited to join in the <b>Black Box, MSH, Belval
Campus, July 6, 10:00-10:45 am</b>. Because space is limited, <b>please RSVP</b></span><b><span style="font-family: arial;"> to constance.carr@uni.lu</span></b><span style="font-family: arial;"><b> by midnight on Tuesday, July 4th</b> so that we can accommodate appropriately.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8i_UbTSo4kuoHvSkPaeYnHoGXj0EdaSPSTHKG-yxjb1k3Dj8wzHnD2O6YLOS4KdT_y7DNUwXK81hlR385eL8j4EQnqfFZ6H6olmk-MSCahy2Yp6-CYozitDJsYR1X8AVQkh9r5QX5sgoIX59nE89QZU9SYp3ZsIUBAx_sN8Ilx3OCsQAp5xqWa6CYGyu3/s3508/ARL%20Rob%20Kitchin%20Poster.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Digital technologies are having a profound effect on the temporalities and spatialities of individuals, households and organizations. For example, we now expect to be able to source instantly a vast array of information at any time and from anywhere, as well as to buy goods with the click of a button and have them delivered within hours, while time management apps and locative media have altered how everyday scheduling and mobility unfold. The presentation will examine the relationship between time and space in the digital age, examining the production digital timescapes. It will illustrate the argument by charting the timescapes of smart cities." border="0" data-original-height="3508" data-original-width="2489" height="897" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8i_UbTSo4kuoHvSkPaeYnHoGXj0EdaSPSTHKG-yxjb1k3Dj8wzHnD2O6YLOS4KdT_y7DNUwXK81hlR385eL8j4EQnqfFZ6H6olmk-MSCahy2Yp6-CYozitDJsYR1X8AVQkh9r5QX5sgoIX59nE89QZU9SYp3ZsIUBAx_sN8Ilx3OCsQAp5xqWa6CYGyu3/w636-h897/ARL%20Rob%20Kitchin%20Poster.jpg" title="Prof. Rob Kitchin, Public Talk in the MSH" width="636" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-61244250982295108762023-06-25T15:18:00.003-07:002023-06-25T15:18:32.591-07:00New Project - Relational geographies of the urban digital growth machine: Mapping the socio-spatial pathways (DiGiMap)<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><span style="font-family: arial;">We are delighted to announce that the Luxembourg National Research Fund granted the AFR PhD project entitled, "<b>Relational geographies of the urban digital growth machine: Mapping the socio-spatial pathways (DiGiMap)</b>" (Carr, PI). The Urban Studies Group looks forward to being joined by <b><a href="https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4111-8385">Desmond Bast</a></b>, (who formerly worked on DIGI-GOV) to take on this project.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Project Summary</b></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">DiGiMap seeks out new geographies of what Rosen/León (2022) call “the digital growth machine” (DGM), how it emerges at various spatial scales, and changes contemporary urban realities of planetary urbanization (Brenner/Schmid 2015). DiGiMap is a PhD project that will expose spatial relations constituting new digital infrastructures, networked ‘cyberworlds’ (Kitchin/Dodge 2014) and their socioeconomic compositions. Engaging narrated cartographic illustrations and related qualitative analyses, new understandings of planetary urbanization will be platformed, highlighting irregularities of digital spatial development and the impacts on sociospatial disparities. </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Rosen/León (2022) describe the DGM as combining traditional urban growth, spatial commodification patterns with that of digitally mediated accumulation dynamics, revealing increasingly asymmetric logics that shift urban processes to the authority of digital entrepreneurs—affirming work at DGEO that shows how large digital corporations are new ‘power brokers’ in urban development (Carr/Hesse 2022; Bast et al. 2022; Carr et al. 2022). Furthermore, articulating the new geographies of DGMs is urgent against escalating socioeconomic polarization, the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change: The search for “socially just and ecologically sound urbanism” (Graham/Marvin 2022: 6), confronting</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> uneven spatial development (Brenner/Schmid 2015) is urgent.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">At the same time, Rodriguez-Pose (2018) exposed a disparity between places able to propagate</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> contemporary economic dynamics and those ill-adapted as ‘places left behind’.’ Vetting areas with poor development options, Rodriguez-Pose (2018) reveals the increasing disenfranchisement of ‘places that don’t matter’ that confront a “future offer[ing] no opportunities, no jobs, and no hope” (ibid:. 20). DiGiMap links this concept to DGMs and aims to expose the disparities caused when DMGs concentrate in certain cities spatially, (dis)advantaging social milieux, and generating new geographies of relational cities (Wong et al. 2022). Recent urban inquiry has addressed implications of such escalating digital architectures (Ash et al. 2016). DiGiMap will search out the (social)(Infra)structures that constitute DGM geographies, and expose spatializations of socioeconomic disparities, reforming our understanding of the urban in relation to advancing processes of digitalization:</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><i><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">“..complex geographies of selected connectivity […] need to be the focus of renewed research. Such analyses must address how the resulting infrastructural landscapes both enable and delimit new distanciated configurations […] patterns of urbanization, architectural and geo-political</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> formations, geo-economic divisions of labour, and structures of social and political life” (Graham/Marvin 2022:4)</span></i><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">DiGiMap will search out answers to: </span><span style="font-family: arial;">What are the emerging socioinfrastructural components of DGMs shaping urbanity? </span><span style="font-family: arial;">How can DGMs be relationally understood? </span><span style="font-family: arial;">How do advancing geographies of uneven digital development spawn social inequalities?</span><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Conceptually, DiGiMap draws on Brenner/Schmid’s (2015) planetary urbanization—which rests on Lefebvre’s (1991) concept of a mille feuille—to convey geographies of uneven spatial digital development. While </span><span style="font-family: arial;">planetary urbanization</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> has invoked broad debate (Oswin 2018), </span><span style="font-family: arial;">planetary urbanization</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> exposes spatial character/condition of contemporary urbanity, and DiGiMap can articulate the pastry of social spaces that constitute DGMs.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Methodologically, DiGiMap follows Diener et al. (2001) who empirically illustrated the urban mille-feuille by compiling a “thousand leaves” (Brenner 2015)—exposing Swiss (early millennial) infrastructures as relationally and functionally interconnected, with social spatial consequence: All of Switzerland was urban (ibid.) was the exceptional and profoundly influential finding, radically departing from standard knowledges of Swiss urban space, and overcoming the divided and vested interests of urbanists and ruralists. DiGiMap will similarly chart relational and functional interconnections of infrastructure with a reconfigured emphasis on the nuances of contemporary DGMs.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Empirically, DiGiMap will focus on Luxembourg and Zurich, comparable (Carr/Hesse 2022) in terms of economic growth agendas, high degree of internationalisation, patterns of urbanization, and targets of development/maintenance of innovation economies (Luxembourg 2023; Switzerland 2023).</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">DiGiMap will scope emerging digital infrastructures unfolding at multiple scales across Luxembourg and Zurich, crossplotting subtleties and differentiation between social, economic and political specificities related to digitalization at different spatial scales. By combining and interpreting diverse data, the workflow facilitates an understanding of how physical attributes and features can be linked-to and associated with various geographical features, relations and patterns.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Interviews with stakeholders will help to contextualise mapping, examining how participants view policies/knowledge/values and processes associated with DGMs.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>References</b></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Ash, J., Kitchin, R., Leszczynski, A. (2016) “Digital turn, digital geographies?” Progress in</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Human Geography, 42:1, 25-43.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Bast, D., Carr, C., Madron, K., Syrus, AM. (2022) “Four reasons why data centers matter,</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">five implications of their social spatial distribution, one graphic to visualize them”</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Brenner, N., Schmid, C. (2015) “Towards a new epistemology of the urban?” City, 19:2-3,</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">151-182.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Carr, C. et al. (2022) “Mapping the clouds: The matter of data centers” Journal of Maps</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Carr, C. and Hesse, M. (2022) “Technocratic Urban Development: Large Digital</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Corporations as Power Brokers of the Digital Age” Planning Theory & Practice, 23:3,</span><span style="font-family: arial;">476-485.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Diener, R., Herzog, J, Meili, M., de Meuron, P., Schmid, C. (2001) “Switzerland - an Urban</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Portrait.” Birkhäuser, Basel.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Graham, S., Marvin, S. (2022) “Splintering urbanism at 20 and the “Infrastructural Turn”</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Journal of Urban Technology, 29:1, 169-175.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Kitchin, R. and Dodge, M. (2014) “Code/space: Software and everyday life.” MIT Press.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space. Blackwell, London.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Luxembourg, Grand Duchy. (2023) “Digital Luxembourg: Initiatives”</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">https://digital-luxembourg.public.lu/initiatives Accessed Feb. 11, 2023.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Oswin, N. (2018) “Planetary urbanization: A view from outside” Environment and Planning D:</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Society and Space, 36:3, 540-546</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Rodríguez-Pose, A. (2017) “The revenge of the places that don’t matter (and what to do</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">about it).” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 11 (1). pp. 189-209.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Rosen, J. and León, LFA. (2022) “The Digital Growth Machine:</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Urban Change and the Ideology of Technology” Annals of the American Association of</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Geographers, 112:8, 2248-2265.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Switzerland, Confederation of. (2023) “Transforming Switzerland into a Leading Digital</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Nation” https://digitalswitzerland.com/ Accessed Feb 11, 2023.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Wong, C., Hesse, M., Sigler, T. (2022) ‘City-states in relational urbanization: the case of</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Luxembourg and Singapore” Urban Geography, 43:4, 501-52</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-61613009544541362102023-06-15T03:23:00.002-07:002023-06-15T03:26:38.344-07:00DGEO looks forward to hosting the ARL International Summer School<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG6EO3Mo6_hri21Wac79ZatU_V18Z_OByBZ2RsZZcKCY3bGHey3DOx5mY88XEq6zjYNtskA_pPjFKz3FOuN5BSmd-Y4s1i1VwuCwS50f5s7rG4bkVEFhd-Wr2kA7jjiasiRVHB4P2jzTrI9ZOD7czCgoJZ1TwKBchXoSKiO3rPRzFZgjN4nUce6z73yw/s1488/Screenshot%202023-01-24%20at%2021.18.31.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1066" data-original-width="1488" height="468" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG6EO3Mo6_hri21Wac79ZatU_V18Z_OByBZ2RsZZcKCY3bGHey3DOx5mY88XEq6zjYNtskA_pPjFKz3FOuN5BSmd-Y4s1i1VwuCwS50f5s7rG4bkVEFhd-Wr2kA7jjiasiRVHB4P2jzTrI9ZOD7czCgoJZ1TwKBchXoSKiO3rPRzFZgjN4nUce6z73yw/w654-h468/Screenshot%202023-01-24%20at%2021.18.31.png" width="654" /></a></span><span style="font-family: arial;">The<b><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.arl-international.com/group/39#introduction" target="_blank">ARL – Academy for Territorial Development in the Leibniz Association</a></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></b>in cooperation with the <b>Department of Geography and Spatial Planning</b> at the University of Luxembourg are looking forward to the ARL International Summer School 2023. <br /><br />The topic of the summer school is 'A Contested Relationship? Urbanisation & the Digital, vs. Digitalisation & the Urban'. 06-08 July 2023 and University of Luxembourg, Campus Belval. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This year, the Summer School is situated within recent debates and developments about what was initially called ‘smart cities’. Judging from our observations, related urban policy frames have reached another level of sophistication, after having undergone uncritical praise and popular tech-hype by the 2010s (in what could be understood as a Phase 1), and the more recent practice of policy formulation, implementation and aiming for local impact (which could be considered a Phase 2). We are now looking forward to discussing subsequent events and outcomes in the complex, often contested relationship between urbanisation and the digital, and digitalisation and the urban, respectively. These developments include the more subtle forms of how digital means and processes have become entrenched in urban practices, collective and individual. They comprise issues of surveillance and control (for example in urban domains, or at the workplace); components of infrastructure that provide the backbone of related systems (such as data centres); just-city frames that have risen in response to perceived digital divides in societies; or systems of provision in retail and services that tend to become hegemonic, if not totalitarian (such as Amazon.com). Various forms of governance are also involved here, not only at municipal levels, but also fostered by national and metropolitan governments, for example in strategies of smart specialization. <br /><br /><b>The programme </b><br />This year, we are delighted to welcome four distinguished experts who will contribute with keynote lectures, and tutoring to the Summer School programme: </span></p><ul style="text-align: justify;"><li><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Prof Andrew Karvonen, Lund University, Sweden</span></b></span></li><li><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Prof Rob Kitchin, Maynooth University, Ireland</span></b></span></li><li><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Priv.-Doz. Dr Bastian Lange, multiplicities, Berlin/University of Leipzig, Germany</span></b></span></li><li><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Dr Julia Rone, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom </span></b></span></li></ul><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In addition, contributions from 12 doctoral students are foreseen which have been selected through a competitive process internationally and across a range of disciplines, such as geography, planning, urban studies and other social sciences and humanities.</span></p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-30374074309710935902023-06-15T03:15:00.005-07:002023-06-15T03:42:16.481-07:00INURA 2023 - Kryvets and Carr talk about reconstrution in Kyiv - Part II<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">INURA conferences always have two parts: The City part, where local INURA organizers present the city through various tours, and the Retreat part where INURA participants gather to discuss their work and think about common projects and urgent urban issues. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAXHjFvXCFFZceKF9ZyEjjeNeIS_kyUgZfKZjleZQT53AiT7-z-0wKx_f6rlev-XrORfzwNjSKjGz59KEJZKEvW8eMILJeTaXePQdfcuRmuxQYnGn65hoQubJdgwcXHs35SFVnHeVks2bGYfIOp3onOovxolXrlC9QkHyeks217fRzChBSEzkMCGcslA/s4032/E80D1E23-6D5C-4C16-8ADE-80EF8E9F8F93.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="409" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAXHjFvXCFFZceKF9ZyEjjeNeIS_kyUgZfKZjleZQT53AiT7-z-0wKx_f6rlev-XrORfzwNjSKjGz59KEJZKEvW8eMILJeTaXePQdfcuRmuxQYnGn65hoQubJdgwcXHs35SFVnHeVks2bGYfIOp3onOovxolXrlC9QkHyeks217fRzChBSEzkMCGcslA/w307-h409/E80D1E23-6D5C-4C16-8ADE-80EF8E9F8F93.jpeg" width="307" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">During the <a href="https://inura23.wordpress.com/city/">City</a> part, Carr was invited to join a panel at the Zentralwascherei to comment on Zurich development from the perspective of Luxembourg, and drawing on past research in the Glatt Valley. Kryvets was also invited to speak about Kyiv reconstruction at a public panel discussion on “Crises and urban action”. Her statement can be found <a href="http://urbanunbound.blogspot.com/2023/06/inura-2023-kryvets-and-carr-talk-about.html">here</a>. Both panels were chaired by Prof. Dr. Christian Schmid (D-ARCH, ETH Zurich). </span><br /></div><p><span style="font-family: arial;">At the <a href="https://inura23.wordpress.com/retreat-program/">Retreat</a>,
Carr joined a panel with Anastasiia Ponomaryova (NGO Urban Curators,
Ukraine); Mariia Prystupa (Kharkiv National University, Ukraine /
University of Helsinki, Finland); and Dr. Gruia Badescu, (University of
Konstanz, Germany) and reported on challenges articulated by their
interviewees. Of course, the Ukrainian government has set broad reaching
priorities; These include removing land mines, providing housing,
becoming energy independent and working towards European integration.
The challenges articulated in Kryvet & Carr's work is not intended
to undermine these, but to underscore that at the urban level, recurring
themes arose. These include fighting corruption, building systems of
transparency and inclusion, addressing the question of who will come
back to which cities, figuring out which businesses will new cities
need, and determining where to make financial investment. </span></p><div style="margin-left: 40px;"><br /><br /></div><p><br /><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-8372251424591269752023-06-08T04:36:00.013-07:002023-06-08T11:26:39.063-07:00INURA 2023 - Kryvets and Carr talk about reconstrution in Kyiv - Part I<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvrnxryLyuY5lwgnKEaybIZJmfyghKbIJu_OFDIrpOOWIJLJMdMMZTwvseHGbwSjc5eqqZtlaS-L4qh5MpVM8_RapE_0_Pee3ZvVrR0XcdC58VFPCZzzCyH3v4q5x4XdcbI4AFda5htCr2W8_hDba-w249jsayJF1D6dV96jRdDdJ_SnruLGuON240SA/s2048/Rote%20Fab%20Olga.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="411" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvrnxryLyuY5lwgnKEaybIZJmfyghKbIJu_OFDIrpOOWIJLJMdMMZTwvseHGbwSjc5eqqZtlaS-L4qh5MpVM8_RapE_0_Pee3ZvVrR0XcdC58VFPCZzzCyH3v4q5x4XdcbI4AFda5htCr2W8_hDba-w249jsayJF1D6dV96jRdDdJ_SnruLGuON240SA/w669-h411/Rote%20Fab%20Olga.jpg" width="669" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Dr. Olga Kryvets, Dept Geography & Spatial Planning, University of Luxembourg delivering her statement on Kyiv reconstruction at the 31st conference of the International Network of Urban Research and Action, 2023 in Zurich. </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />Last week, Kryvets and Carr attended the <b><a href="https://inura23.wordpress.com/" target="_blank"><span>31st conference of the International Network of Urban Research and Action (INURA), 2023 in Zurich</span></a></b></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span>. During the public panels held at the Rote Fabrik, Kryvets joined Dr. Tammy Wong (Osaka Metropolitan University, Japan); Prof. Dr. Jorge Peña Díaz (CUJAE, Cuba), and Dr. </span>Alokananda Mukherjee (Jadavpur University, India) on a panel entitled, <b>“Crises and urban action”</b> chaired by Prof. Dr. Christian Schmid, (D-ARCH, ETH Zurich).</span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Kryvet's statement, co-written with Carr and entitled, "From Maidan to resilient urban futures" is printed here.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">"Good evening everyone. Hello, my name is Olga Kryvets. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Before the full-scale invasion began, I was the Head of the Patent and License Department at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, where it was my job to promote technology. I was also a researcher for the interdisciplinary think tank for socio-economic well-being and mental health. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">I have a PhD in economic and social geography, and it is also relevant to mention that I was also at Maidan 10 years ago. At that time, I was working with engineers in a scientific laboratory and together my colleagues and I came to support the students refusing the dictatorial policies of Kremlin-friendly Yanukovych, supported by his special police forces, the Berkut and the Titushky. Maidan represented the next generation of Ukrainians absolutely refusing to be subjugated to the criminal networks of corruption, and insisting on nothing less than policies and strategies towards the building of institutions that characterize modern democratic society. Today, many still do not realise that Maidan was a revolution, as afterwards Ukraine was able to orient to the west, and Yanukovych and his friends were overthrown. Of course, now, Kremlin aggression has come back with unspeakable ferocity.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">As many of you know, I fled Kyiv in spring of 2022. In response to the war, the EU created a framework for Temporary Protection of Ukrainians, allowing them to live and work in EU countries. Furthermore, both the Luxembourg National Research Fund and the University of Luxembourg set up a grant system, and I along with 30 other Ukrainians, joined the Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. As someone with a PhD in economic and social geography, with an understanding of innovation ecosystems, I was paired with Connie to work look at how Amazon and Google challenge urban development and governance.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">It’s a gigantic project that looks at Washington DC, Seattle, Toronto, Amsterdam, and Luxembourg. My work formed a sixth pillar of the project that looked at Kyiv, and to understand the narratives around resilience and reconstruction in Kyiv, and how this is shaped by digitalization and innovation. We surveyed hundreds of documents, media reports, public speeches given by Ukrainian mayors, as well as the President of Ukraine. We also interviewed urban planners, architects, representatives from NGOs and </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">international organizations</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"> involved in damage assessment, reconstruction, urban planning and development. <br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Our research topic is unique because we are studying cities not <i>after</i> the war, but <i>during</i> it. The war is happening right now in Ukraine. Right now there are heavy battles for Ukrainian cities and villages. Massive missile attacks from the air, sea, and land on cities, including Kyiv, have resumed. Unfortunately, not only the military, but also civilians are being killed. Currently, these attacks are mostly carried out against residential buildings and less often against infrastructure. The rocket attacks are carried out at 2 am and 4 am to keep the population on their toes. People cannot sleep. They become very nervous.</span></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">The blackout period in Ukraine was also a challenge for us too. It was during this period that we started conducting interviews with experts, and at that time in Ukraine there was only 2 hours of electricity a day. Our experts got in touch from the unbreakable spaces (punkty nezlamnosti), from offices with electricity, or from home, turning on the generator and the starlink. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">So far, our results reveal (1) a snapshot of the scale of reconstruction needed after the first 14 months of the war, (2) an idea of how digitalization has become essential for resilience and (3) the diverse set of imagined futures unfolding at different spatial and temporal scales.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Assessing the scale of damage Ukraine-wide at any one point of time is difficult as there are various sources, that provide assessments at different points in time, and because reconstruction is already in process, moving at different speeds and reflecting a multitude of priorities: By August 2022 damage was recorded including over 300 bridges, 24,000 km of roads, 19 airports, 15,300 high-rise buildings, 116,000 houses, 390 businesses, 43,700 units of agricultural machinery, 2000 shops, over 500 administrative buildings, over 100,000 cars, 764 kindergartens, 934 medical facilities, 634 cultural buildings. At that time, drone photography revealed damage in cites at sites of commerce, gastronomy, education, sports facilities, churches, hotels, recycling, water and heating infrastructure, and housing.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">According to Kyiv School of Economics damage to infrastructure, by December 2022 was valued at 137.8 billion Dollars. By February 2023, estimates reached 700 billion, and this did not include investments that would be needed for business growth.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">While there were over 18,000 reports of damage inside Kyiv, including 6000 buildings, the city of Kyiv itself - which was not overthrown - is still relatively intact inside its perimeters compared to its suburbs and other parts of the country. According to the Kyiv Regional Military Administration, 252 settlements across the Kyiv region were occupied, and many territories have since been liberated back to Ukraine, although they are now full of mines.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Of course, the government has set priorities for reconstruction, and these include energy independence, removing the land mines, providing housing for internally displaced persons, combating corruption, and European integration. We also know that big tech – Microsoft, Google and Amazon – have all won peace prizes for their contributions to resiliency during the war.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">But in terms of the future of Ukrainian cities, we heard a lot of optimism among our interviewees.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">First, the cities should be smart, digital. Interviewees noted that the digitalization of management processes and the creation of digital solutions have already proven necessary for resilience, and they will continue to be important instruments to improve the lives of residents, simplifying the interaction of local governments with local residents, and enhancing transparency. Such digital services include various applications, but also open data, open maps and other sources of open information that can help local governments be more transparent, more open and understandable to local residents. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Second, they should be cities with a vision and concept. Interviewees noted that an important condition for urban development was the availability of master development plans, restoring too the synergy between all actors at the local level, and reflecting local needs, such as housing, which was cited by many interviewees as a primary need because of the mass internal displacement. But it was also often said that the new cities will be cities of a new generation, of a new type: green and democratic. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Third, they should be cities for the communities who live in them. Many said that the future cities should be for the residents. As post-war cities, they need to be safe cities, energy-efficient cities, and energy-independent cities. Of course, these visions reflect immediate needs, such as access to heat, electricity, and the internet. And hence Ukrainian cities are now characterized by personal generators, Starlink receivers and smart phone access to real time information. But it also reflected the need to build long term systems of resilience against further aggression. If we recall the revolution in 2014, we know that this conflict is ongoing. <br /><br />Our interviewees were very aware of the diversity of needs across the different cities of Ukraine. There might be, for example, new cities that are symbolic cities, such as Kherson, Mariupol or Bakhmut. They also recognized that it makes no sense to restore cities to the state they were before. They will need to reflect the new situation: with the closed border, and with the war.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">In this context, many interviewees also saw the new cities as opportunities to, fourth, rebuild with love and solidarity (Yes, we are reminded of Tammy’s work on Hong Kong!). Many dreamed of building comfortable cities; welcoming, inclusive, and sustainable cities in the environmental sense; and cities that reflected of belonging to the European community.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">“<i>They will be better than they have been so far. …built on the motivation that is there now.</i>” <br /><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><style><span style="font-family: arial;">@font-face
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<p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-53964073961548637302023-05-08T04:49:00.001-07:002023-05-08T04:49:45.204-07:00It’s showtime—talking about development, planning and housing, and Royal issues as well<div style="text-align: justify;">I visited the RTL-building on Plateau Kirchberg, Luxembourg, for the very first time on Friday 5th May. I was invited to talk to the “Lisa Burke-Show”, a combined radio-TV-web event which will be posted on the Internet soon (link to follow). Radio Télevision Luxembourg is iconic for the whole ‘relational’ business model of Luxembourg: making the most out of smallness, by building strong economic linkages with actors abroad. Founded by a couple who applied for a private broadcasting license roughly a century ago, this was the starting point of what would become an internationally known trademark, both content wise and by making the tiny country’s name familiar to a wider audience. Effective nation branding long before that term and concept had been invented.
While RTL can be considered a cornerstone of relationality, as were decades later the satellite operations established by the quasi state-led SES, the RTL-building demonstrates the fragility of being relational. This is probably due to the lack of critical mass, given that the country’s home market for radio and TV-services is fairly limited. In recent years, Thomas Rabe as CEO of the mother company Bertelsmann, a native Luxembourger by the way, has decided to move all HQ-functions of RTL to the Media-Park Cologne, Germany. This happened despite the Grand Duchy’s government subsidizing Bertelsmann for keeping HQ-related jobs and functions here for quite a while.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtD4TFS50lD1FqMgbpl7wnrihOQ96Vv2DIMmbkrj8s8PtbX7UDMQQAgTZCwMh3CsNSZXlC8jiEi8lj_aM1IJNgijUVrMjzDUmL0S1dJWOfOY7z2KIrEU4I8rMEW8sbkVTKTK_BYLSgAajTxIi8gJIpR9nEPoOdt1itFAqzqdYT4WbuMjbOhTPlNp6NJQ/s4032/IMG_0283.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtD4TFS50lD1FqMgbpl7wnrihOQ96Vv2DIMmbkrj8s8PtbX7UDMQQAgTZCwMh3CsNSZXlC8jiEi8lj_aM1IJNgijUVrMjzDUmL0S1dJWOfOY7z2KIrEU4I8rMEW8sbkVTKTK_BYLSgAajTxIi8gJIpR9nEPoOdt1itFAqzqdYT4WbuMjbOhTPlNp6NJQ/s320/IMG_0283.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Relational places can make a fortune as cleverly as quickly, but they can also lose their competitive advantage likewise, when markets or framework conditions change.
Now the two massive towers at the north-eastern edge of Plateau Kirchberg, with their emblematic mosaic-like façade, are occupied by fewer staff than before, and the owner has begun subletting office space to third parties. For example, the European Investment Bank (EIB) uses parts of one of the two towers and has a separate entrance. “Green-fuel” shuttle buses connect the site with the EIB’s main premises at the lower end of Kirchberg. (Also surprised to see that these vehicles have diplomatic license plates—something which apparently also applies to the fleet of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, as I learned the same day). </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Lisa-Burke-Show, my actual reason for coming to RTL, was a great endeavour in terms of addressing some key issues of the country’s planning, building and housing mess to a broader public. Eloquently moderated by the chair, we spoke about the historical context and political-economic framework conditions of Luxembourg’s development trajectory (complex), what that means for spatial development and planning (enduring pressure), and whether or not planning can perform as the desired “technology of hope”, a term which I gratefully borrow from Andy Inch, UofSheffield.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The chair conceded that she got almost desperate when trying to get some positive signs from my perspective as to the key question: how to resolve these problems? I declared myself guilty of being unable to do so, given their complexity and ‘wicked’ nature, as well as the many vested interests underlying these conflicts. Moreover, if it is utterly unpopular to speak about conflict (as it is definitely the case in the Grand Duchy), one may never even get close to a strategy. Having open conversations about this peculiar character of the problem would be much better than constantly spreading illusions as to how the mess could be managed: 1) a growth-illusion (in rather functional terms, taking into account current demographic and labour-market predictions), 2) a steering illusion (in terms of providing spatial order in a quite difficult setting), and 3) a sustainability illusion (given that adding thousands of wealthy residents and well-paid workers to the region’s imbalanced territory every year can hardly be brought in line with the Paris and other agreements).</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As a nice coincidence, my participation in the show was preceded by the appearance of her Excellency Fleur Thomas, British Ambassador to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, who talked about the related preparations for the coronation ceremony of His Majesty King Charles III on the following day. In the Studio, the British-Luxembourgish community was also presented by Louise Benjamin, the outgoing president of the British-Luxembourgish Society, and Dr Christian Barkel, the Principal of St. George’s School, the British international school in the Grand Duchy. They have prepared for a major gathering in honour of the King’s coronation, with about 700 people having signed up for the event at the school’s premises in Luxembourg-Hamm (“fish & chips, beans, no parking provided”). The Grand Duchy is officially represented by the Grand Duke’s couple, who attended the ceremony in London. The Society is a key pillar in the strong relationships between the two countries, despite Brexit, or possibly because of it.
In topical terms, there were also some nice overlaps between the two slots in the Show and the preceding weekly news overview—housing, taxation, safety of public space and the like are relevant issues not only for geographers and planners, but for the huge expat community in the country as well. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Special kudos to Lisa for taking me to the second-highest floor of the building (the Gym actually) where I could take pictures of that particular area. The green space that can be seen below, in the western direction, belongs to the last open land reserve on Plateau Kirchberg, certain parts of which are now subject to development. The view from above was a perfect round-up of a rather insightful visit, and the building will hopefully remain in focus of our ongoing FINCITY-research project, which studies global financial centres’ development through the lens of commercial property markets. More on that research coming soon.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Markus Hesse</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidLP8jfYMKw5acQJJ__K7dUBmw9CokGijYXNXqwx0wekSeeQVETNXhEX2dAeU1Ey7mTQLAmUp7-xRr86KTQRKV6mHxSySs225QXZHXEiHJUz9cBCvQdzhzRDy-1DC8-puxUJGwEcFWAEB3afMMxNbbzSC2mW_nHnXBHbZgQhrF2da67Oog1IYhCLPjNw/s4032/IMG_0276.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidLP8jfYMKw5acQJJ__K7dUBmw9CokGijYXNXqwx0wekSeeQVETNXhEX2dAeU1Ey7mTQLAmUp7-xRr86KTQRKV6mHxSySs225QXZHXEiHJUz9cBCvQdzhzRDy-1DC8-puxUJGwEcFWAEB3afMMxNbbzSC2mW_nHnXBHbZgQhrF2da67Oog1IYhCLPjNw/w640-h480/IMG_0276.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>MHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11118631591346523026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-86258043262843414232023-04-13T01:07:00.004-07:002023-04-13T01:07:40.546-07:00INURA 2023 in Zurich upcoming in June. Registration Open<div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkEa-SxrZz0rLp7rG6uZNBvmIfGvcWVyDIZnhrbQe0gWHtbkJH-yo-aWUFnZXNfkB8e9aBwFsi_Gq1-z_lWcb3Qbua0PnEeReqLOdBUtIcATdJaJz-tIrKib68bdv6KpHYgcLeg6n87sY3ynP0u1D_qE3ZjBVMvJXNpzrGgqDFc1dtCq_Bq0bMbxzJbA/s1355/inura31_blau_pos.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="785" data-original-width="1355" height="370" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkEa-SxrZz0rLp7rG6uZNBvmIfGvcWVyDIZnhrbQe0gWHtbkJH-yo-aWUFnZXNfkB8e9aBwFsi_Gq1-z_lWcb3Qbua0PnEeReqLOdBUtIcATdJaJz-tIrKib68bdv6KpHYgcLeg6n87sY3ynP0u1D_qE3ZjBVMvJXNpzrGgqDFc1dtCq_Bq0bMbxzJbA/w640-h370/inura31_blau_pos.webp" width="640" /></a><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Between May 29 and June 4, 2023 the INURA Conference will take place in Zurich, Richterswil and Salecina, Switzerland. For a week, an international crowd of researchers, scholars, activists and urbanites will gather to imagine, discuss and reflect upon new forms of urban living and models of everyday civic activism for sustainable urban life. What are those new possible spatialities that can provide the necessary openness to act toward social, economic and ecological responses to the current multiple planetary crises? </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">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. </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">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 <a href="http://inura.org">inura.org</a>).</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Find the program here: https://inura23.wordpress.com/city/ </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Press Release here: https://inura23.wordpress.com/press-release/ </span></b></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-22419547141712644752023-03-06T01:00:00.006-08:002023-03-06T01:00:43.892-08:00INURA Bulletin No. 33 is out<p><span style="font-family: arial;">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, <a href="https://www.inura.org/v2/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/INURA-Bulletin-No33.pdf" target="_blank"><b><span style="font-size: large;">here</span></b></a>: </span></p><p><span class="break-words"><span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="break-words"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdeMUuwqX3IGIwRbJ4P2iXPTe8wOeikwXTbQ9EUlc2CL7hVjonNd2PFVuxL0Viyh7a3iE82uHtEXbcmIWrvD30rCmQ5me969ZBdbD1eewLSkAe7oHV-1_KqkrwT3rjBoi_k80nR6h79ub_yyqpFVUzJtRBXjhjWmoKxXfLL3BmxEg911fSihYceJMoFA/s1304/Screenshot%202023-02-13%20at%2021.16.37.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1304" data-original-width="954" height="778" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdeMUuwqX3IGIwRbJ4P2iXPTe8wOeikwXTbQ9EUlc2CL7hVjonNd2PFVuxL0Viyh7a3iE82uHtEXbcmIWrvD30rCmQ5me969ZBdbD1eewLSkAe7oHV-1_KqkrwT3rjBoi_k80nR6h79ub_yyqpFVUzJtRBXjhjWmoKxXfLL3BmxEg911fSihYceJMoFA/w569-h778/Screenshot%202023-02-13%20at%2021.16.37.png" width="569" /></a></span></span></div><span class="break-words"><span><br /><span dir="ltr"><br /></span></span></span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-76702535127704271482023-01-24T12:12:00.009-08:002023-01-24T12:26:59.208-08:00Call for Applications for our next ARL Summer School 2023 in Luxembourg!<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG6EO3Mo6_hri21Wac79ZatU_V18Z_OByBZ2RsZZcKCY3bGHey3DOx5mY88XEq6zjYNtskA_pPjFKz3FOuN5BSmd-Y4s1i1VwuCwS50f5s7rG4bkVEFhd-Wr2kA7jjiasiRVHB4P2jzTrI9ZOD7czCgoJZ1TwKBchXoSKiO3rPRzFZgjN4nUce6z73yw/s1488/Screenshot%202023-01-24%20at%2021.18.31.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1066" data-original-width="1488" height="468" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG6EO3Mo6_hri21Wac79ZatU_V18Z_OByBZ2RsZZcKCY3bGHey3DOx5mY88XEq6zjYNtskA_pPjFKz3FOuN5BSmd-Y4s1i1VwuCwS50f5s7rG4bkVEFhd-Wr2kA7jjiasiRVHB4P2jzTrI9ZOD7czCgoJZ1TwKBchXoSKiO3rPRzFZgjN4nUce6z73yw/w654-h468/Screenshot%202023-01-24%20at%2021.18.31.png" width="654" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The ARL in co-operation with the Department of Geography and Spatial Planning invite applicants for the ARL International Summer School 2023, entitled, <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>A CONTESTED RELATIONSHIP? Urbanisation & the Digital vs. Digitalisation & the Urban</b></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">in Luxembourg</span><span style="font-family: arial;">, 6 to 8 July, 2023.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We invite advanced doctoral students from all disciplines to apply and we are looking forward to having an inspiring event!<br /><br />For more information, check out the <b><a href="https://www.arl-net.de/de/projekte/summer-school-2023-%E2%80%93-digital-cities" target="_blank">Summer School website</a></b> or have a look at the <b><a href="https://www.arl-net.de/system/files/attachments/2023-01/20230117_ARL_SummerSchool_2023_Call.pdf" target="_blank">call for application</a></b>.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-18883844401312726022023-01-18T01:23:00.009-08:002023-01-18T05:17:29.022-08:00Fundraising for the Faculty of Geography, Taras Shevchenko National University, damaged by missles<p></p> <br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOEmt-6dCtCNybpuzvUUv91t4UEUDXG70nBmT8a2uFOaIBHQ_f4_AYm8U2m52ZYDLzCN9WBoS3HHFZ2oN1VJyjy9JTj6GoriQtHgI1Oygq5W5sSUIYbGrIUtXa62awJIDw2WBiOwbUlQQ1wAsFUdU_if4H9lJOUkCnNcwuBjTAOm5EfTUG-TjjBCCukA/s630/from%20zn.ua%20they%20write%20that%20this%20is%20from%20open%20sources.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="630" height="412" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOEmt-6dCtCNybpuzvUUv91t4UEUDXG70nBmT8a2uFOaIBHQ_f4_AYm8U2m52ZYDLzCN9WBoS3HHFZ2oN1VJyjy9JTj6GoriQtHgI1Oygq5W5sSUIYbGrIUtXa62awJIDw2WBiOwbUlQQ1wAsFUdU_if4H9lJOUkCnNcwuBjTAOm5EfTUG-TjjBCCukA/w650-h412/from%20zn.ua%20they%20write%20that%20this%20is%20from%20open%20sources.jpg" width="650" /></a></td></tr><tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Missile attack on the Taras Shevchenko National University (open source photo also published at zn.ua, 2023)</span><br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: left;"> <br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">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 <a href="https://www.univ.kiev.ua/en/departments/geography/" target="_blank">Geography Faculty of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (TSNUK)</a> was damaged, destroying windows, stained glass windows, and wrecking furniture.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">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. </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://geo.knu.ua/fakultet/pidrozdily/kafedry/kafedra-ekonomichnoyi-ta-soczialnoyi-geografiyi/vykladachi-kafedry-ekonomichnoyi-ta-soczialnoyi-geografiyi/zapotoczkyj-sergij-petrovych/" target="_blank">Professor Serhii Zapotoskyi, Dean of the Faculty of Geography (TSNUK)</a> launched a fundraiser to assist in repairs and reconstruction.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">IBAN: UA353052990000026203750212012</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">SWIFT CODE/BIC: PBANUA2X</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Bank Name: JSC CB Privatbank (Bank of beneficiary, 1D Hrushevskyi Street, 01001 Kyiv) // JP Morgan AG (Intermediary Bank, Germany, swiftcode CHASDEFX) </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Country of bank: Ukraine</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Name of beneficiary: Serhii Zapototskyi</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Address of beneficiary: Lomonosova, Building 71v, flat 12, 03022 Kyiv, Ukraine</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaY8vm5565nxnofVseDSHQXWgtSuZVeZ9a9ssfp4by2jq2bhWW5bOmSMhUC35vMu_jlL7BlsBN55APpuvVkV30Rz9eWIfu8qwmOU1zp6NvpzjcA0bsnD4CTGCu9hXKDGToVKl50ljnhxPc0a1o29SuvVwIChi5i6OCXM4fZcHCJVXbA25M8oFy397rHw/s1600/GD_by%20Sergii%20Zapototskyi.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1600" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaY8vm5565nxnofVseDSHQXWgtSuZVeZ9a9ssfp4by2jq2bhWW5bOmSMhUC35vMu_jlL7BlsBN55APpuvVkV30Rz9eWIfu8qwmOU1zp6NvpzjcA0bsnD4CTGCu9hXKDGToVKl50ljnhxPc0a1o29SuvVwIChi5i6OCXM4fZcHCJVXbA25M8oFy397rHw/w640-h288/GD_by%20Sergii%20Zapototskyi.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Photo by Sergii Zapototskyi, 2023</span></span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNfAcx7DEFRl9CWhoV74Z7OqRkLGeyCdzS936MI_atz56nGI-LKxHHkdmTregZ3fT1KuvLnGXCpMUp3G7gfIz2DaZHKgDEfoQsxofjOUW0Np7GB8Pyng5F8giHFbliyAAhNRZw1OVYjk_oGO7N5zbFNJuHs_dSvkvT8A6DzGHZ5uCSKM6O29ef2_VePw/s1600/GD_by%20Sergii%20Zapototskyi1.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1600" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNfAcx7DEFRl9CWhoV74Z7OqRkLGeyCdzS936MI_atz56nGI-LKxHHkdmTregZ3fT1KuvLnGXCpMUp3G7gfIz2DaZHKgDEfoQsxofjOUW0Np7GB8Pyng5F8giHFbliyAAhNRZw1OVYjk_oGO7N5zbFNJuHs_dSvkvT8A6DzGHZ5uCSKM6O29ef2_VePw/w640-h288/GD_by%20Sergii%20Zapototskyi1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Photo by Sergii Zapototskyi, 2023</span></span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> <p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ID_c5ioEJk4rOivGIKoYiWjzaui22TStTpXCGn-Xra_S-kknEkESDSet_3E_h15MQGto2o9fbUsipSCQflgRBLopgLf07ILZNkeD5t_ApDnGakh2EExC_vau_nAJ4ujbwsl89IuTta7li66x7nHDm52QttDlfE5zwUDjcPnvKrZ-301lW-eg28h_uQ/s1600/GD_by%20Sergii%20Zapototskyi3.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ID_c5ioEJk4rOivGIKoYiWjzaui22TStTpXCGn-Xra_S-kknEkESDSet_3E_h15MQGto2o9fbUsipSCQflgRBLopgLf07ILZNkeD5t_ApDnGakh2EExC_vau_nAJ4ujbwsl89IuTta7li66x7nHDm52QttDlfE5zwUDjcPnvKrZ-301lW-eg28h_uQ/w480-h640/GD_by%20Sergii%20Zapototskyi3.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Photo by Sergii Zapototskyi, 2023<br /></span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3vzO5ccPfUbMuFJv2tMxsTr1d2dBvImyGm7Ks7RlUO7ISOcpry0dPhZpGfiVqEeCgW1CSkKFLzE-sI7NfR2vr8fmY8yPMQms9l-1sMsWvuFj3jSzjj1WepBZjHf1bmMcG2AKaw8OUer2VMtb0QmOt73bEJWgYsrnbHbbcsshZarZUEU2ySJ4zhg7LuQ/s960/GD_by%20Sergii%20Zapototskyi2.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3vzO5ccPfUbMuFJv2tMxsTr1d2dBvImyGm7Ks7RlUO7ISOcpry0dPhZpGfiVqEeCgW1CSkKFLzE-sI7NfR2vr8fmY8yPMQms9l-1sMsWvuFj3jSzjj1WepBZjHf1bmMcG2AKaw8OUer2VMtb0QmOt73bEJWgYsrnbHbbcsshZarZUEU2ySJ4zhg7LuQ/w480-h640/GD_by%20Sergii%20Zapototskyi2.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Photo by Sergii Zapototskyi, 2023<br /></span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-77832669767927952052023-01-13T07:47:00.004-08:002023-01-16T00:55:45.578-08:00Lasst uns doch mal die alten Artikel (wieder-)lesen. or: Let's re-visit the old stuff.<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">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.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDKS0_W1RIzhwqv8DnGqB7H3bTAzsMedPa211R1qStsDRqKeDBcnMeQrsMx0-SLPrTX3fSC4Vb1x8A_ohTAJb1hLkofXItY3OAXiEJU2nCZZMiecgJTNi4xhezfcaQDXRf9ivkQ8wiJaF8-jSVgv7QK5oWJyVVwwxI4IQ1zlGiY19VeuIEC-QDAa3VTQ/s1116/Screenshot%202023-01-13%20at%2016.18.53.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1116" data-original-width="1074" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDKS0_W1RIzhwqv8DnGqB7H3bTAzsMedPa211R1qStsDRqKeDBcnMeQrsMx0-SLPrTX3fSC4Vb1x8A_ohTAJb1hLkofXItY3OAXiEJU2nCZZMiecgJTNi4xhezfcaQDXRf9ivkQ8wiJaF8-jSVgv7QK5oWJyVVwwxI4IQ1zlGiY19VeuIEC-QDAa3VTQ/s320/Screenshot%202023-01-13%20at%2016.18.53.png" width="308" /></a></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW-f24ITnQAnUvvJ6nzJW7jYuWitfiYQVELhB0tJJBs576XA1WryH_i0jE8tQFZ5zEZAWgfBwyxhEGE1kv6ZY2Yt1Z6_ziYJA9Wv9i6I6r6UZWuMRIY38H69dAcf-gBenzMEdZ0c-Zd844wJQqW8_ytGhWXSL5DRgRHHtyVFYlFCATdMV3L72U9xv0Uw/s665/Der%20Zukunft%20zugewandt.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="665" data-original-width="195" height="483" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW-f24ITnQAnUvvJ6nzJW7jYuWitfiYQVELhB0tJJBs576XA1WryH_i0jE8tQFZ5zEZAWgfBwyxhEGE1kv6ZY2Yt1Z6_ziYJA9Wv9i6I6r6UZWuMRIY38H69dAcf-gBenzMEdZ0c-Zd844wJQqW8_ytGhWXSL5DRgRHHtyVFYlFCATdMV3L72U9xv0Uw/w142-h483/Der%20Zukunft%20zugewandt.png" width="142" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">"Länger" heißt auch bei einem fast zweiseitigen Interview, dass ein derart komplexes Problem wie das Wachstum der <i>small-but-global city</i> Luxemburg nicht erschöpfend behandelt werden kann. ("Immer an die Leser denken"). Vor allem kommen die spezifischen Produktionsbedingungen von Stadt sowie die entsprechenden Praktiken der maßgeblichen Akteure dann zwangsläufig zu kurz. Es geht ja nicht um das schönste Gebäude oder das grünste Quartier, sondern um soziale Prozesse und wirtschaftliche Dynamik, und es geht darum, welche Spielräume diese beiden den städtischen Akteuren zur Stadtgestaltung lassen bzw. ob und inwiefern diese genutzt werden.</span></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Ist alles dazu gesagt? Im Prinzip ja. Es gibt auch - unwissenschaftlich formuliert - haufenweise Publikationen und Berichte zu diesem Thema, wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen (mit und ohne <i>peer review</i>), solche die ans Allgemeinpublikum gerichtet sind u.v.a.m. Sage niemand, dass sich die Uni nicht mit dem Land auseinander setzen würde.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">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).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">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...</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><h3 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
Der Zukunft zugewandt </span></h3><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Von Markus Hesse</span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Ausgewählte Beiträge in der heutigen Ausgabe dieser Zeitung werfen einen Blick auf Vergangenheit und Zukunft des Großherzogtums. Diese Übung ist mit einigen Perspektivwechseln verbunden: Es geht nicht nur darum, für die Zukunft aus der Vergangenheit zu lernen, oder Geschichte im Licht der Gegenwart besser zu verstehen. Im kleinen Land geht es immer auch um das Verhältnis von innen und außen, um das Wechselspiel zwischen den eigenen Interessen und denen Dritter, um die geschickte Positionierung des Kleinen in Nachbarschaft zu den Großen. </b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><b><span> </span>Mit Blick darauf liest sich die jüngere Vergangenheit Luxemburgs in der Tat als Erfolgsgeschichte, wie sie die Selbstbeschreibung des Landes bestimmt und wie sie auch von vielen, wenn auch nicht allen, Beobachtern von außen geteilt wird. Über mehr als ein Jahrhundert hinweg war man offen für die Zukunft und hat sich geschickt international positioniert; bemerkenswert auch die Fähigkeit, sich immer wieder neu zu erfinden. Als nur ein Beispiel unter vielen: der Sprung vom Satellitenbetrieb zum Weltraumbergbau erscheint fast als ein logisches Kapitel im Fortsetzungsroman des erfolgreichen Wandels.</b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><b><span> </span>Was in der Vergangenheit gelungen ist, muss aber nicht ewig gelten, selbst wenn man die Finanzkrise elegant umschifft hat, das Rentenproblem vorläufig vertagt und beim Propheten Rifkin eine neue Zukunft bestellt wurde. Doch die Erfolgsgeschichte hat schon heute massive Bildstörungen. Das Land ächzt unter der Ungleichzeitigkeit von wirtschaftlichem Wachstum und den sehr viel trägeren Infrastrukturen; Letztere sollen den Betrieb nicht nur am Laufen halten, sondern Stadt und Land lebenswert machen. Verkehrsstaus und Immobilienpreise sind allerdings nur die oberflächlichen Signale dafür, dass das Erfolgsmodell „Nische im globalen Netz“ an seine objektiven Grenzen stößt. Von den Großbaustellen Schule und Bildung, Sprache oder nationale Identität ganz abgesehen.</b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><b><span> </span>Die Spielräume für weiteres Wachstum im Innern erscheinen ebenso aufgezehrt wie die stetige Mobilisierung der Ressource Arbeitskraft von außen. Geradezu heroisch mutet der Versuch an, Arbeitsplätze und Wohnraum (in dieser Reihenfolge) für künftiges Wachstum zu schaffen, die nötigen Verkehrswege zu planieren und zugleich Lebensqualität und soziale Kohäsion sicherzustellen. Ob das tatsächlich funktioniert, oder ob die Erfolgsgeschichte zur Illusion wird, wissen wir nicht. Es ist aber offensichtlich, dass Landesplanung, Urbanismus und Lokalpolitik im selbst gewählten Schatten der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung stehen. Die mitunter großen Hoffnungen auf eine Ordnung des Raumes sind kaum einlösbar, sollen Wirtschaft und Wohlstand weiter wachsen wie bisher. </b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><b><span> </span>Die politisch Verantwortlichen sind um diese Herausforderung nicht zu beneiden: Das Problem hat sich längst verselbständigt, einfache Rezepte zur Lösung gibt es nicht, und gute Ratschläge sind in der Politik unpopulär. Kann die Vergangenheit eine Lehre für die Zukunft bereithalten? Diese Erwartung erscheint verwegen, und doch lohnt es sich darüber nachzudenken, die nach außen erfolgreiche Öffnung auch im Innern zu praktizieren. Wer modern sein will, muss Transparenz statt Kontrolle ausüben, produktiven Streit zulassen und die Bürgerschaft auch an wichtigen Entscheidungen beteiligen. Und die richtige Mischung aus konkreter Utopie und Realitätssinn im Auge haben. Die Zukunft so anzunehmen wie sie ist, nämlich widersprüchlich, facettenreich und kaum planbar -- dies heißt ja nicht, dass Politik nur daraus bestehen würde, das zu tun, was ohnehin geschieht.
</b></span></div></div>MHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11118631591346523026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-56232323010856999292023-01-07T04:17:00.003-08:002023-01-08T01:54:19.805-08:00Project Announcement - Digital urban futures: The role of emerging tech-ecosystems in Kyiv reconstruction (KYIV-DIGIURB)<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We are pleased to announce that Dr. Olga Kryvets received support form the FNR to continue her work with the DIGI-GOV team, with a project entitled "Digital Urban Futures: The Role of Emerging Tech-Ecosystems in Kyiv Reconstruction (KYIV-DIGIURB)."</span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This project is a continuation of Dr. Kryvets' initial work with DIGI-GOV, which focused on understanding the gendered dimensions of urban digitalization led by large digital corporations and the innovation ecosystems in which they are embedded (GEN-DIGIURB). Conceptually, an initial crucial point was to understand how tech-ecosystems impacted urban digitalization at different scales, what type of challenges these could represent, and how stakeholders tackle them. Orienting to the city of Kyiv as her empirical focus, her work necessarily generated an analysis of tech-ecosystems and urban reconstruction in the context of war.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With her project extension, Kryvets develops a new pillar of DIGI-GOV looking at tech-ecosystems in Kyiv and surrounding region. She will be examining the role of tech-ecosystems in Kyiv's reconstruction efforts, with a particular focus on the activities of large digital corporations like Amazon and Google. By analyzing the relationship between urban digitalization, governance, and new forms of urban reconstruction and resilience generated at different temporal and spatial scales, she aims to provide valuable insights for policy-makers in Ukraine and abroad interested in the variegated nuances of urban reconstruction for resilience. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">We look forward to the valuable contributions from Dr. Kryvets.</div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634061767475661894.post-740941454526961102023-01-06T01:33:00.000-08:002023-01-06T01:33:04.969-08:00New Master Student Assistant for DIGI-GOV<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDbc4mH6_KZvDhrDUeqH65Uraj36rGinOWgbx4jjLMsoXTKXGq42ccxU4u-SRulZx88wfNnTQjLQiN5mSc3c-_OR_8B5sa1hY_xNzlSGn-ANNTXMjFTtinEDSJ-e1UnBGdZxfo714y0s4JlDztp91ViggcDyX2cVmWJ_IRQMIlqDZN59PxKWyC7R89Xg/s2674/60ACD04B-A424-470C-8454-01349C0DFE2A.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2674" data-original-width="1931" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDbc4mH6_KZvDhrDUeqH65Uraj36rGinOWgbx4jjLMsoXTKXGq42ccxU4u-SRulZx88wfNnTQjLQiN5mSc3c-_OR_8B5sa1hY_xNzlSGn-ANNTXMjFTtinEDSJ-e1UnBGdZxfo714y0s4JlDztp91ViggcDyX2cVmWJ_IRQMIlqDZN59PxKWyC7R89Xg/w210-h291/60ACD04B-A424-470C-8454-01349C0DFE2A.jpeg" width="210" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In December, DIGI-GOV welcomed a new research assistant to the team. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Golnoosh Darvish is completing her second Master in Geography and Spatial Planning at the University of Luxembourg. She holds a MSc in Urban Planning from Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran, where she is come from, and a BA in Urban Planning from University of Mazandaran, Mazandaran Iran. She has also 2 years of professional experience as an Urban Planner in Iran.Her research interests include Smart Cities, Energy Efficiency, Low Carbon Cities, Urban Governance and Sustainable Development among other subjects.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Welcome Golnoosh!</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0