Publication in Transactions of the British Institute of Geographers

Carr and Kryvets recently published "Imagining post-war futures amid cycles of destruction and efforts of reconstruction" in Transactions - the official journal of The Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers).

Download here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/3G8EJXSGMK7GKWRASCKK?target=10.1111/tran.12738

Or request access here: https://orbilu.uni.lu/handle/10993/62587

Welcome Deepa Joshi, a Visiting PhD Researcher from DAStU, Politecnico di Milano

We are delighted to host Deepa Joshi for the next 6 months, visiting us from Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Politecnico di Milano

Project Title: The Role of Digital Platforms: Exploring the Socio-Spatial Implications in the context of the Italian region (DP-SSI) 

Funded by the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) 

Fulfillment Centre at Rondissone, Piedmont, Italy (Photo: Joshi, 2024)

 

Project Summary:
Currently, our cities are meeting with new forms of urban conditions that are produced by data, technologies and managed by a new category of economic actors: Digital Platforms (DPs). Typically, they are characterised by the networks, automation, circulation of goods, people, information and money across the planet. In development agendas (both national and international), they are often framed as ‘Digitalisation tools’ and acknowledged as a necessary means to address the complex issues of equity, social cohesion and sustainability. Concerning this phenomenon, the critical inquiries in literature , provide useful references for urban research by questioning the credibility of data itself, data-driven methods, technology-based governance structure, uneven distribution of labour and work and the capital accumulation by platforms (Carr and Hesse 2022; Kenny and Zysman 2019; Kitchin et al. 2017; Ash et al. 2018; Graham and Dittus 2022; Srnicek 2017,Artioli 2018).

In the urban planning and policy domain, DPs present themselves as important drivers in developing urban processes. On a broader level, DPs are prominently urban-based actors with a ‘technology-based solutions’ rationale. For policy framing and decision-making, DPs have emerged as guiding actors for city investments, public policy implementations, knowledge production and know-how processes for governments and institutions. However, at the same time, they are not without critics, and numerous questions about their operationalisation remain. They appear as distant entities from local urban conditions and places but are simultaneously visible through their diverse infrastructure arrangements with new operational setups and functional reuse of existing spatial typologies, often in the periphery of the urban regions.

Against this background, this PhD study is positioned at the confluence of three key thrust areas of our current time i.e. 1) digitalisation processes in e-commerce retail and logistic segments; 2) technology-based urban governance structure and institutional relations; 3) new kind of physical infrastructural arrangements and spatial typologies.

This research takes the Amazon Platform as the key element for analysis and explores its socio-spatial effects on the Italian regional context. The broader aim is to trace the operational sites of the Amazon platform that often occupy the spaces that are next to big cities. In particular, it explores the role of the Amazon platform through the vantage point of e-commerce retail and logistic functions. The key objectives of this study are 1.) to understand Amazon’s operational characteristics, their infrastructure needs and interaction with local institutions and other actors 2) to investigate the major location sites of Amazon's process of settling and development stories in the context of Italian regions and 3) to explore, How some cities in Italy are selling to Amazon platform some of their services?

Carr invited to the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Politecnico di Milano

Thank you Deepa Joshi and Valeria Fedeli for organizing this wonderful event !

The Role of Digital Platforms: Exploring Socio-spatial Implications
at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Contemporary urban spaces are increasingly shaped by digital technologies, data, and the increased circulation of materials and goods, people, and information. These changes are particularly relevant to the E-Commerce operations, logistic spaces and managed by a new category of economic actors: Digital Platforms(DP’s). They are visible through diverse infrastructural arrangements, new production settings, automation, the functional reuse of existing spatial typologies and the arrival of new ones. This further poses many challenging questions for urban research: How do DPs shape physical urban spaces, and what are the impacts at the local level? What are the interdependencies between places of circulation and urban spaces in cities? What kind of new local-global arrangements and interventions are being formed? Oriented around the operational characteristics of DPs, this seminar aims to build a reflection on the socio-spatial implications and sustainability interventions from the vantage point of e-commerce retail and logistics functions.

Sina Hardaker, University of Würzburg, presented on "The Platform Fix: A critical lens on how digital platforms address pending urban-economic challenges"

Constance Carr (DGEO) presented, "Three ways that Amazon entrenches social-spatial patterns of urban development"

Niccolò Cuppini, The University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland, presented "Circulations: Genealogies and Tendencies of Platform Urbanization"
 

Nicholas Rudikoff, Campaigns Director at UNI Global Union, talked about labour issues with Amazon.

These were followed by a discussion round  led by Deepa and Valieria with special feedback from Stefano Di Vita and Simonetta Armondi.

 

 

gerne wieder!

The IGU Urban Commission

Who we are? 

We are a group of geographers from almost all continents of the world who have a common interest in the study of cities, urban areas and urbanisation processes. The Urban Commission represents the urban geography community under the roof of the IGU-UGI, the World's main geography association (https://igu-online.org). IGU-Urban is used to organise an annual conference and also participates in the IGU's general and regional conferences. It includes both established geographers and early career researchers, such as PhD students. Our members come from different parts of the discipline and work either in academia, in non-university research institutes or in practice. The current Steering Committee consists of eight members from countries as diverse as Brazil, China, France, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Russia and South Africa, and is chaired by Professor Maria Pinheira Mantiñan, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and co-chaired by Professor Javier Delgado, Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM, and Professor Markus Hesse, University of Luxembourg. These representatives will be elected for a period of four years.

What we do?

Our primary aim is to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas on geographical and urban issues at an international, if not global, level, with particular emphasis on bringing together geographers of very different origins, interests and levels of qualification. A second commitment is to represent the urban geography and research communities within IGU-UGI/The International Geographical Union as the world's umbrella organisation for geography. A key activity of the Urban Commission is the organisation of its annual conference (usually held in the second half of August), which each year attracts between 70 and 100 or more geographers from around the world to present papers, hold workshops and explore the site on field trips. The current four-year mandate of the Commission can be found on this website.

Our target groups

Since we represent urban geography within IGU-UGI, our natural partners are individuals working in geography departments worldwide, as well as members of planning departments and those working in non-university research institutes or in practice. While we are committed to promoting current geographical research and raising public awareness of geography as a scientific discipline in general, we also place particular emphasis on supporting early-career researchers. We encourage young researchers to become part of our network and to attend our annual conferences. Outstanding conference papers submitted by early career researchers have the opportunity to be selected through a competitive process to receive the Young Scholars Award.

2024 Annual Meeting, Cork (Ireland)

This year's meeting will take place next week at University College Cork (UCC) in Cork, Ireland. This is the second time we have met in the country after 2015. We are now meeting in conjunction with the IGC, the IGU's main conference, which will be held in Dublin on the campus of Dublin City University from 24-29 August. The UCC campus in Cork offers the best of what can be expected in terms of a creative space for gathering. Thanks to our local hosts and co-organisers, especially Therese Kenna, urban social geographer from the UCC Department of Geography, we are looking forward to an excellent conference. The conference outline and further information can be found on the IGU Urban Commission's website.

MH, 16 August 2024

So much great work at the 10th Nordic Geographers Meeting in Copenhagen

Opera goers in Copenhagen can park their cars in a very fancy underground parking (Photo: Carr 2024; and thank you Gene Desfor for the hint!)

For me, the Nordic Geographers Meeting in Copenhagen got going bright and early on Day 1 with a packed session on "Tech and the City" organized by Maja de Neergaard and Adriana de La Pena Espinosa, who presented on, respectively, 'pilotism' in the aftermath of smart city tech, and the Ciudad Creativa Digital in Mexico. It was also a great pleasure to finally meet and listen to Guy Baeten and Carina Listerborn. For my part, I presented some work on data center expansion as led by Google and Amazon.

Another highlight was listening to Federico Cugurullo present his new book, "Artificial Intelligence and the City" that he edited together with Federico Caprotti, Matthew Cook, Andy Karvonen, Pauline McGuirk and Simon Marvin. (One would also do well to follow his fantastic work on The Line in Saudi Arabia!) Published by Routledge, “AI and the City” is a must-read for contemporary urban planners. Unlike the endless catalogue of new technologies that are emerging that can potentially be applied in urban environments, and unlike the hype around AI that is unfolding today, this book thinks about the links between the myriad of artificial intelligences, their developers, the institutional networks that might embed them, and then different kinds of urban path dependencies that evolve from decisions around implementation. In this way, one has to think not just about the kinds of technological solutions that might be applied to certain urban problems, but more broadly about questions concerning the kind of cities do we want to live in, and how can this be achieved. Thank you Andy, for inviting me to the discussion panel with Lorena Melgaco, Ramon Ribera Fumaz, Maja de Neergaard, and Johanna Yipull.

--Constance Carr

Saffron, a casualty of data center development

A wonderful and precious gift from Tu Nube Seca Mi Rio (photo: Carr 2024)

 

Last week in Cambridge, at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, I met some inspiring activists from Spain who are fighting data centre constructions. They, from the organization Tu Nube Seca Mi Rio (Your Cloud is Drying up my River), presented everyone at the event with this precious gift of saffron from the Albacete region, one of the victims--casualties--of the data centre development that is planned for the area. Spain is, of course, famous for its saffron, and it is incredible to think that one day it could be a spice of the past.

It seems also incredible that thirsty data centers would be built in the arid fields of Spain where there is a long history of water politics. But as these activists explained: To Spanish authorities, Spain is such an awesome place for business development, that they see absolutely no reason why a lack of water would be a barrier to data center development; Spain c/should even become the new Virginia(!) (currently known by some as the data center capital of the world). This kind of confident cognitive dissonance is frustrating to those interested in an actual conversation and debate. Knowing what we know about narrative/hype versus delay/failure/competition in the industry, I also wonder what else is going on.

 

--Constance Carr

Invited talk at the Minderoo Centre for Technology & Democracy, University of Cambridge

"Bringing sounds of yesterday into my city room," Pink Floyd, Grantchester Meadows
(Photo: Carr 2024)

Last week, I had the great pleasure speaking at the Minderoo Centre for Technology & Democracy, University of Cambridge on issues of democratic participation and the social spatial distribution of data centers in metropolitan regions under growth pressure. A huge thanks to Dr. Julia Rone, Tom Lacey, Christine Adams, and Dr. Ann Kristin Glenster for the wonderful invitation, and for organizing such an engaging event.

Focussing on the Metropolitan Areas of Seattle and Washington, my main contribution was showing some of the spatial logics behind data center expansion and describing some of the sociological problems that result. It was an honour to be the only urban geographer in the room!

The main messages I wanted to deliver were:

• Data centers are urban infrastructures, clustering in or around metropolitan regions where they build upon existing digital infrastructures (cables, pipes, roads), and can make use of local labour, markets and politics.
• The uneven spatial distribution of data centers can invoke inter-jurisdictional competition for tax revenue, (in addition to competition over water, power, and land resources that data centers require).
• Data centers can encroach on communities devaluing properties, and causing the flight of residents with higher incomes
• Protest movements can be mischaracterized by media (as, for example, a white middle class NIMBYist movement)
• The data center industry shops around for different offers in regulation.
• The scale of the problem is unknown because the input needs of many data centers are not publicly available, and pressure is increasing as demand rises

Listening to others throughout the event, several further issues surfaced:

• Awareness campaigns are needed. It is clear that most people who are confronted with data center development in their neighbourhoods are taken rather unawares about what data centers are, what their functions are, what resources they need, how these might need to be maintained over time, the costs that will be incurred, and who is behind them. They are then confronted with a steep learning curve that must then be communicated (which takes time) to the wider public. In this respect, data industry leaders profit from the lack of transparency and missing regulatory frameworks.
• Protest groups that react to data center developments have (until this event) largely operated in isolation. Enhancing networking opportunities and facilitating knowledge exchange would significantly boost awareness and informed decision-making.
• A moratorium? Clearly, data centers fulfil a purpose in helping the emergence of important new technologies. However, a temporary halt on data center development could generate the needed time for communities to make necessary assessments in order to arrive at founded and informed decisions.

 --Constance Carr

INURA Málaga and the touristification of the city -- It includes Google

 

Google offices on the Malaga waterfront. Can you spot the G for Google? (Photo: Carr 2024)

 

 

The 2024 conference of the International Network of Urban Research and Action (INURA) took place this year in Málaga, Spain. Like every INURA conference, the city part was also followed by the INURA Retreat, which took place this year in the desert of Archidona.

A key objective of this year’s city conference was to expose participants to how cities like Malaga build dependencies on mass tourism. In some ways, this kind of urban development reminds me of other cities like Venice or Florence--cities that depend on the arrival of thousands of tourists into the city. They appeal to temporary tourists, visiting the city for just a few hours as their cruise ships dock and allow them to go souvenir shopping and consume a little bit of culture. They also attract overnight tourists that support the hotel industry and the Airbnbification of the historic downtown.

For Málaga, this has meant the renewal of the waterfront and the building of museums, as well as the promotion of strange stories about Picasso, which can be sold back to tourists. In this way, Málaga also reminds me of cities like Salzburg, which have built a dependency on popular narratives of Mozart.

It is clear that these cities make a conscious policy decision to boost the tourist industry. One Málaga resident explained that in some ways this was necessary. As Málaga is in the periphery of Spain and has no other industry, tourism was a logical choice. Another explained that tourism itself wasn't the problem, rather that many residents had little voice in the organization of the industry, while the Spanish authorities were lethargic in redistributing the wealth generated from it. This situation thus leaves a wide gulf between those who can profit, and those who left out.

There are definitely further downsides. For residents in Malaga, boosting the tourist industry has meant a housing squeeze, as downtown apartments are now almost wholly turned into Airbnbs. Additionally, it manifests as a water crisis, as water is reserved for avocado farms and businesses catering to tourists. Meanwhile, one looks around and sees riverbeds that are completely dried up and full of plants, or agricultural fields that are growing cactus crops. There were also reports of water being shut off between 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM for certain parts of the city. This reminds me of Swyngedouw's work , “Liquid Power” on water politics in Spain.

Obviously, these topics are not directly central to DIGI-GOV. However, I did manage to find a Google headquarters on the waterfront. During one tour of the waterfront, I was informed that these lands are not managed by municipal authorities.

At the Retreat Katja Schwaller, Stanford University, and I held a nice panel looking at Big Tech and urban development. For Katja, big tech appropriates participatory urbanism and claims to build cities and offices "for people“ while it clearly does not. For my part, I talked about some of the processes of vertical integration of Amazon.com in both Seattle and Washington DC where Amazon.com has, or is building, its headquarter. 

--Constance Carr

 

Von Don Quichote und den Windmühlen. Der „Mobilitéitsplang“ der Hauptstadt

Nach zweieinhalb Jahren Bearbeitung und vielen Diskussionen wurde der Öffentlichkeit nun der neue Mobilitäts- bzw. Verkehrsentwicklungsplan für die Hauptstadt präsentiert.(1) Als Beobachter von außen gibt es verschiedene Möglichkeiten, das Ergebnis zu kommentieren: Eine Praxisperspektive könnte nach dem Nutzen dieser und jener Maßnahme für bestimmte Verkehrsmittel oder Interessengruppen fragen. Eine (partei-)politische Perspektive würde sich darauf richten, wie sich der Plan zur jeweiligen Programmatik von Parteien, Bürgerinitiativen oder Syndikaten verhält. Der hier eingenommene wissenschaftliche Blick auf das Dokument verfolgt primär die Klärung von zwei Fragen: Erstens: sind die Aussagen bezogen auf die hiesige Problemlage glaubwürdig und in sich konsistent, d.h. lassen sie realistisch eine Problemlösung erwarten? Zweitens: sind die dazu formulierten Absichten durch entsprechend konkretisierte Maßnahmen gedeckt? Beide Fragen gehen also der internen Logik und Stimmigkeit des Planwerks nach. Drittens ließe sich überprüfen, ob die im Planwerk getroffenen Annahmen und Aussagen in Einklang stehen mit dem Stand der allgemeinen Diskussion zum Problemfeld der städtischen Mobilität—soweit es eine solche Ambition gibt.

Das Dokument im Überblick

Das Beste, was man über den Mobilitéitsplang an sich sagen kann, ist dass es ihn gibt. Oh-ne ein solches Konzept bleibt jede Praxis Stückwerk und in ihren Wirkungen zwangsläufig begrenzt. Städte brauchen Strategien, und neben Fragen der Flächennutzung und urbanen Struktur ist die Organisation der Mobilität immens wichtig. Eine Reihe von Aspekten zum Thema werden hier erstmals zusammen geführt und in Karten übersichtlich dargestellt. Das ist ein kleiner, nicht zu unterschätzender Fortschritt, den diese Zwischenetappe auf dem Weg zu einer besseren, stadtverträglichen und nachhaltigen Mobilität markiert. 

    Der Plan entfaltet über seine insgesamt 129 Seiten einen illustrierten Überblick über das gesamte Spektrum der Mobilitätspraxis. Aufbauend auf einer Analyse der aktuellen Situation werden in drei Szenarien(gruppen) künftige Entwicklungsverläufe antizipiert; auch dieses Denken in Alternativen ist wichtig. Ausgehend von den nur kurz aufgerufenen langfristigen Perspektiven Luxemburgs und seiner Hauptstadt auf Basis der Landesplanung (sie sind am Ende des Plans, nicht zu Beginn positioniert) treffen die Szenarien Annahmen über die künftige Rolle, die die jeweiligen Verkehrsträger spielen können oder sollen. Entsprechend der weiter wachsenden Bevölkerung wird davon ausgegangen, dass im Jahr 2035 1,14 Mio. Wege zurückgelegt werden. Diese Gesamtwegezahl wird über alle Szenarien als kon-stant angenommen; variabel sind jeweils die Anteile der Verkehrsmittel daran – u.a. aufgrund unterstellter Wirkungen planerischer und infrastruktureller Maßnahmen. Pkw-Verkehr wird, trotz unterschiedlicher Anteile am Gesamtverkehr, in allen Szenarien absolut weiter wachsen, was vor allem der Abhängigkeit der Hauptstadt von ihrer Erreichbarkeit für auswärtige Besucherinnen und vor allem Pendler geschuldet ist. Daten über die zurückgelegten Distanzen (gemessen in Personenkilometern) liegen gleichwohl nicht vor; diese Kennziffer ist jedoch für die Umwelt- und Klimawirkung des Verkehrssektors zentral. Ebenfalls fehlen Angaben zu den in den Haushalten zugelassenen Kfz. Daraus resultiert nicht nur die schiere Präsenz der Fahrzeuge im Stadt- und Straßenraum; auch die Verkehrsmittelwahl steht unter dem direkten Einfluss der Verfügbarkeit motorisierter Verkehrsmittel. Eine autoreduzierte Zukunft der Stadt ist im Mobilitätsplan offenbar nicht einmal als Gedankenspiel vorgesehen.

    Zentraler Inhalt des Plans sind Ausführungen zur Nutzung der Mobilitäts- bzw. Verkehrsträger, vom Fuß- und Radverkehr über den öffentlichen Transport hin zum Kfz-Verkehr; damit wird suggeriert, dass der Straßenverkehr nicht mehr im Zentrum allen Denkens und Handelns stehe, wie dies im Land und seiner Hauptstadt über Jahrzehnte der Fall war. Heute sollen alle Verkehrsträger ihren Beitrag zu einer sicheren und nachhaltigen Fortbewegung leisten. Dazu sollen u.a. ein Verkehrssystemmanagement sowie ein Monitoring eingeführt werden. Ob die Stadt ihren Zielen damit näher kommt, bleibt offen: Wichtige Parameter, mit denen die mögliche Wirkung von planerischen Maßnahmen auf das künftigen Mobilitätsbild abgeschätzt werden könnten, bleiben in Ermangelung einer empirischen Basis unbestimmt. Entsprechendes gilt für die zu erwartenden Folgen für Stadt-, Lebens- und Umweltqualität.

Bewertung

Das Dokument bietet einen brauchbaren Überblick über die meisten, wenn auch nicht alle Aspekte des Verkehrs. Damit ist zugleich eine Leerstelle im Plan benannt: Im Zentrum der Darstellung stehen die Verkehrsträger und ihre Infrastrukturen, und somit isoliert man seinen Inhalt von den historischen, rezenten und künftigen Entscheidungen, die durch die Stadtplanung getroffen bzw. durch die Entwicklung der Region beeinflusst werden. Der Fokus auf die Infrastruktur lässt, ähnlich wie im Nationalen Mobilitätsplan der vorherigen Regierung, Aspekte der Mobilitätsentstehung sowie der mit dem Verkehr verbundenen Probleme und Konflikte (als konkrete, handlungsleitende Verpflichtung) weitgehend außen vor; erst recht ist der Plan immun gegenüber der sozialen Differenzierung unter den Verkehrsteilnehmern. Im Kern herrscht ein technischer Blick auf die Sicherstellung der Erreichbarkeit der Stadt. Das zugrunde liegende Paradigma der Leichtigkeit und Flüssigkeit des Verkehrs ist jedoch im internationalen Maßstab bereits sichtbar gescheitert. Viele Städte erproben einen anderen Umgang mit dem Verkehrsproblem, mal mehr (Paris, Kopenhagen, Gent), mal weniger spektakulär. 

    Die von der EU-Kommission 2013 vorgeschlagene Strategie der Planung für nachhaltige urbane Mobilität (SUMP), an der sich auch der Mobilitéitsplang orientiert,(2) wurde jüngst vom Europäischen Rechnungshof einer kritischen Bilanzierung unterzogen.(3) Dabei wurden Umsetzungshemmnisse und entsprechend begrenzte Wirksamkeit moniert, in deren Konsequenz die besondere Verantwortung der Mitgliedstaaten hervorgehoben wurde: „On the basis of audit work at the Commission and eight different cities in Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain, we found no indication that EU cities are fundamentally changing their approaches and that there is no clear trend towards more sustainable modes of transport.“(4) Dies ist eine Bewertung, die zweifellos auch auf die hiesigen Verhältnisse zutrifft. Doch wer sich, wie die Verantwortlichen der Hauptstadt, an diesem Schema orientiert, muss sehr glaubwürdig aufzeigen, wie man diesen Ansatz in die Realität bringt. Dies ist im Dokument nicht zu erkennen. 

    Während Einzelaspekte des Mobilitätsplans wie die Trassenführung einer zweiten Tramlinie durch die Innenstadt in der Öffentlichkeit bereits lebhaft diskutiert wurden, ist die Crux m.E., wie so oft in Luxemburg, nicht das Detail, sondern die Herangehensweise im Grundsatz: Erstens versammelt das Dokument viele gute Absichten und unkonkrete Ziele nebeneinander, ohne darauf gesondert einzugehen, wie genau diese Ziele umzusetzen sind und an welcher Stelle sie miteinander in Konflikt geraten. Damit folgt der Plan dem bisherigen Versuch, Zielkonflikte möglichst zu vermeiden und es allen Beteiligten recht zu machen. Daraus resultiert eine entschiedene Unentschiedenheit, die den Status Quo nur verlängert und auch relativ moderate Ziele unerreichbar macht. Zweitens liegt ein großes Versäumnis darin, dass der Plan jede konkretisierte, d.h. auch quantifizierte, Aussage zum Thema Klima und Umwelt vermeidet. Der Begriff des Klimaschutzes taucht ein einziges Mal in einer Illustration auf, wird ansonsten komplett ausgespart. Damit bleibt der große Beitrag des fossil betriebenen Verkehrs zum Problem unangetastet. Wie soll Luxemburg unter dieser Bedingung seine verbindlich vereinbarten Klimaziele erreichen? Kann man sich erlauben, im Jahr 2024 einen Plan vorzulegen, der für sich strategischen Gehalt reklamiert, aber zu dieser Zukunftsfrage schweigt? Das ist mindestens fahrlässig. 

    Gelegentlich benannt, aber nie konsequent zu Ende gedacht wird die Wachstumsfrage. Auch dies setzt den guten Absichten enge Grenzen, denn die stetige Zunahme von Sozialprodukt, Beschäftigung und Bevölkerung ist zwangsläufig mit weiterem Wachstum der Verkehrsmengen verbunden. Unter diesen Bedingungen muss jeder mögliche Fortschritt als unzureichend erscheinen. Als wohlhabende Insel im Meer der Großregion ist Luxemburg auf Dauer elementar auf den Einstrom der Arbeitskräfte von außen angewiesen; im Plan jedoch erklärt sich die Hauptstadt, die nahezu die Hälfte des nationalen Arbeitsmarkts ausmacht, für diesen Teil des Problems unzuständig. Will man nicht als Don Quichote vor den sich immer schneller drehenden Windmühlen enden, bedarf es einer pro-aktiven Politik, zwangsläufig auch national und international angelegt. 

    Ansätze, die sich mit den strukturellen Ursachen der Mobilität in Stadt und Land befassen und entsprechende Dilemmata thematisieren (etwa die Relation Arbeitsplatz vs. Wohnbevölkerung, Telearbeit, …), sucht man im Text mit der Lupe, oder es bleibt bei ihrer Beschreibung, ohne dass daraus  planerische Konsequenzen gezogen würden (vgl. Grafik 6 auf S. 8). Ein interessanter Aspekt taucht eher beiläufig unter dem etwas technokratischen Sujet der betrieblichen Mobilitätspolitik auf. Es wäre in der Tat ein den hiesigen Verhältnissen überaus angemessener Schritt, die großen Unternehmen stärker in die Pflicht zu nehmen. Sie sind zentral an der „Produktion von Knappheiten“ beteiligt: je dynamischer der Arbeitsmarkt, umso höher die Einpendlerströme, umso prekärer gestaltet sich die Versorgung mit Wohnraum und Verkehrsraum. Daher stellt sich die Frage, inwiefern die alte Arbeitsteilung zwischen privat und öffentlich (Betriebe schaffen Jobs, die öffentliche Hand besorgt die Infrastrukturen) noch sinnvoll Bestand haben kann, oder ob es nicht mehr Verantwortung der Unternehmen braucht.

Fazit

Versucht man die eingangs genannten Fragen zu beantworten, dann ist das Dokument insgesamt nicht konsistent mit Blick auf den Problemdruck und die gewählten Strategien: formulierter Anspruch und Realität passen kaum zusammen; dies gilt bereits heute und erst recht mit Blick auf anstehende Herausforderungen wie Klimawandel oder Wachstum. Um sich darauf einzustellen, müsste der Gegenstand dieser Strategie sichtbar erweitert werden: Mobilität und Verkehr sind integraler Bestandteil von Flächennutzung und Standortentwicklung, wenn nicht des wirtschaftlichen Geschäftsmodells des Landes. Außerdem müssen die Ziele von Umwelt-, Klima- und Gesundheitsschutz konkretisiert und operationalisiert werden. Mit Blick auf die Zeithorizonte müsste die Umsetzung deutlich entschiedener und schneller als bisher erfolgen-—und zwar auch solcher Schritte, die die kaum hinterfragten Privilegien des Kfz-Verkehrs zur Disposition stellen, so unpopulär das auch ist. Selbst wenn dies gelegentlich suggeriert wird und im Text Schlagworte wie die 15-Minuten-Stadt oder die Superblocks aus Barcelona en passant auftauchen: Dieser Plan ist (noch) nicht auf der Höhe der Zeit.(5)

    Würde man tatsächlich zum Stand der Diskussion in anderen europäischen Städten aufschließen wollen, muss man weit mehr tun als nur Ziele und Absichten zu formulieren. Ziele müssen glaubwürdig mit konkreten Strategien und Maßnahmen hinterlegt werden. Dabei kommt es auf zwei Punkte an: erstens die Umsetzung von Maßnahmen, zweitens eine plausible Abschätzung ihrer Wirkung. Beide Elemente fehlen im vorliegenden Plan oder bleiben unbestimmt. Die jüngere Vergangenheit war zu sehr durch Konfliktvermeidung geprägt, als dass man jetzt entschlossene Umsetzung erwarten dürfte. Um den Mobilitätsplan produktiv zu machen, braucht es aber Mut zum Konflikt – nicht zuletzt deshalb, weil kaum ein Thema gesellschaftlich so umstritten, polarisiert erscheint wie der Verkehr.

    Verglichen mit der Präsentation der Zwischenergebnisse des Planungsprozesses, die noch den Geist der 1980er Jahre, der ingenieurtechnischen Verkehrsplanung, versprühte (6), gibt sich das vorliegende Dokument einen fortschrittlicheren Look. Dieser Anspruch wird jedoch real nicht eingelöst. Man lernt über den Mobilitéitsplang vor allem aus dem, was er nicht enthält. Vor allem wird das große Thema der nachhaltigen Entwicklung nicht angemessen gewürdigt. Eine ausdrückliche Referenz an das europäische Modell der nachhaltigen Planung städtischer Mobilität (SUMP) vorzunehmen, ohne Umwelt- oder Klimaaspekte im Planwerk zu behandeln, ist mehr als nur eine optische Täuschung.

    Sollte es so sein, dass der Mobilitéitsplang eine Lücke zwischen Anspruch und Realität aufweist, stellt sich die Frage, an welchem Ende sie geschlossen werden kann: durch weniger Ambition und mehr Realitätssinn, oder durch nachholende Strategie und Praxis? Nimmt man die eigene Verpflichtung zu Nachhaltigkeit und die unübersehbaren Probleme des Status Quo ernst, kann es nur um Letzteres gehen. Dabei könnten drei Bausteine helfen: die systematische Einbettung des Mobilitätssystems in die Entwicklung und Planung von Stadt und Region; die konkrete Benennung der Konfliktfelder innerhalb des städtischen Verkehrs und mit anderen Planungszielen; schließlich eine Pluralisierung der Szenarien, um Alternativen auch jenseits des business as usual aufzuzeigen. Sollte der Plan, wie die Verantwortlichen anlässlich seiner Präsentation betonten, nur als Strategie gedacht sein, deren konkrete Ausformung erst folgen muss: dann ist es wirklich allerhöchste Zeit. Denn planerisch gesehen ist das Zieljahr 2035 praktisch übermorgen. 

Markus Hesse

Index

(1) VdL (2024): Onse Mobilitéitsplang. Vernetzt, innovativ, nohalteg. Luxembourg. Zur ersten Präsentation des Prozesses siehe diesen Blog: urbanunbound.blogspot.lu vom 14. Oktober 2021.

(2) European Commission (2013): A concept for sustainable urban mobility plans (Annex). Brussels, COM(2013) 913 final.

(3) European Court of Auditors (2020): Sustainable urban mobility in the EU: no substantial improvement is possible without the Member States‘ commitment. Special Report 06. Luxembourg.

(4) ebda., S. 61.

(5) Zum Stand der Diskussion und zu den Anforderungen nachhaltiger Mobilität siehe bspw. Hartl, R., Harms, P., & Egermann, M. (2024). Towards transformation-oriented planning: what can sustainable urban mobility planning (SUMP) learn from transition management (TM)?. Transport Reviews, 44(1), 167-190, oder Bertolini, L. (2023). The next 30 years: planning cities beyond mobility?. European Planning Studies, 31(11), 2354-2367.

(6) Auf diesem Blog: urbanunbound.blogspot.lu vom 4. März 2022

'Saving the city' / "Auf dem Weg zur multifunktionalen Innenstadt ..."

So we're back to cities that need saving? A German practice network called "Die Stadtretter" is currently active in revitalising inner cities, particularly in Germany, in response to the damage left by the COVID-19 pandemic, the hollowing out of urban retail by online shopping, and the like. This vocabulary reminds me of an older discourse that was quite popular in the 1960s and beyond, when factors such as industrial decline or suburbanisation began to critically affect the central cities. In response to that feeling of crisis, the manifesto "Save our cities now!" was adopted by the Annual General Assembly of the Association of German Cities in Munich in 1971 (Deutscher Städtetag 1971).

    Participants in the meeting and authors were mayors and chief administrative officers of major West German cities who, a quarter of a century after the end of the Second World War, warned of the consequential burdens of urban growth - infrastructure, traffic density, environmental problems and social conflicts were the relevant keywords. They were taken as an opportunity for an urgent appeal: "The problems of cities must finally be placed at the centre of policy at national and international level (emphasis M.H.). The cities can still be saved." (Deutscher Städtetag 1971: 247) As a discourse of practice, the manifesto is in line with classics of criticism of modern urban planning, as expressed in the 1960s by Jane Jacobs (1961), Alexander Mitscherlich (1965) or Wolf-Jobst Siedler et al. (1964).

  The propensity of urban scholars to pursue doomsday scenarios and perform as end-times prophets had once inspired Dennis Judd to mock that according to them, "everything is always going to hell..." (Judd 2005). While there are good reasons to disbelieve the triumphant vocabulary once presented to the media and the public by suspects such as Richard Florida or Edward Glaeser, things are always contextual and worth examining in detail. More food for thought on the ever-shifting tone and nature of crisis-related discourses can be found, for example, in Raumforschung & Raumordnung (5/2008), in a paper entitled 'Reurbanisation? Urban discourses, conflicting interpretations, conceptual confusion', making the case specifically of German urban discourses. There are indeed some parallels in the related debates, while today's challenges seem quite different and possibly more difficult to resolve than they were decades ago.

  As far as current debates and practices are concerned, the 'Stadtretter' are now coming to Trier, effectively a neighbouring city of Luxembourg, to present and discuss strategies for revitalising the city centre, for converting empty department stores and perhaps office buildings into apartments. See the information presented by the organisers below (in German).

"In Zeiten tiefgreifender Veränderung von Innenstädten rückt der Begriff der „Multifunktionalität“ immer häufiger in den Fokus. Aber was genau verbirgt sich dahinter? Welche neuen und alten Funktionen müssten angesiedelt werden resp. erhalten bleiben, um Multifunktionalität (wieder-) herzustellen? Welchen Einfluss können Verwaltungen auf die Entwicklung ausüben und wie kann der Perspektive von Bürgerinnen und Bürger vor Ort Rechnung getragen werden? 

Dies sind nur einige der Fragen, auf die aktuell viele Städte Deutschlands für ihre Innenstädte Antworten suchen. Im Sinne örtlicher Aufenthaltsqualität und Belebung sind Wohnen, Freizeit, Kultur, Arbeit und Kreativität Schlüsselbegriffe, die neue Ansätze und Umsetzungsbeispiele erfordern. Im Rahmen des Bundesprogramms „Zukunftsfähige Innenstädte und Zentren“ möchten wir in Kooperation mit der bundesweiten Initiative „Die Stadtretter“ mit Ihnen ins Gespräch kommen. Themendialog, Best Practice und Inspiration stehen auf der Agenda."

Im Namen von Ralf Britten,

Beigeordneter, Dezernent für Innenstadt & Handel

lädt die Stadt Trier zur Veranstaltung

„Multifunktionalität findet Stadt“

am 17. und 18. April 2024 im ECC Trier, Metzer Allee ein.

More information on the event see the weblink/weitere Informationen zur Veranstaltung finden sich HIER.

From Smart City to Truck Rental

No Sign of Sidewalk Labs (Carr 2024)

 

Where is Sidewalk Labs or Google?  It seems full speed ahead at Quayside, but so far Google is no where to be found. Are they gone? I wonder. Or are they in the background, somewhere buried in the contracts with the Ontario Pension Plan as it was said years ago? Or, will I find a small innocuous tiny little Google sign hanging somewhere, like they do at the HQ in Zurich? Is this a game of Hide & Seek? A look around the properties of the former Sidewalk Labs, it would seem that the big tech firm totally gone and is far from anyone’s mind.

 

In March 2021—almost a year after Sidewalk Labs abandoned its project—Waterfront Toronto launched another competition to search for new parters to develop the 4.9 hectare, L-shaped, strip of land. The winner this time—or more precisely, the chosen “preferred proponent” (Waterfront Toronto 2024)—was a consortium known as Quayside Impact Limited Partnership. Quayside Impact, for short, was a collaboration between real estate developers Dream Unlimited Corp and Great Gulf Group Ltd. Both have strong footholds in Toronto’s downtown development. Dream records over 70 projects and/or “assets”, 20 of which are located in the Distillery District (Dream 2024); Great Gulf has several towers in downtown Toronto, including Monde, a condo building that borders Quayside to the west (Great Gulf 2024).

 

In February 2022, negotiations commenced over the Project Agreement between Waterfront Toronto and Quayside Impact. These would lead a design team composed of Adjaye Associates from London/New York/Accra, Alison Brooks Architects from London, Henning Larsen who has offices in North America, Europe and Asia, SLA housed in Copenhagen/Aarhus/Oslo, and Two Row Architect from Ohsweken/Six Nations (Waterfront Toronto 2024). Quayside is also supported by a number of “community partners” including The Bentway, Centre for Social Innovation, Crow/s, George Brown College, The Rekai Centres, and Woodgreen. And, there are “Project Consultants” including a-A AEA Consulting, ARUP, Aspect Structural Engineers, Benoy, Entuitive, G architects, CH+A design studio, Golder, Innovation Seven, cahdco, KPMB, Transolar KlimaEngineering, Tucker Hirise, Urban Strategies Inc. Ledcor Group, Norm Li, Murray Twohig, PMA Landscape Architects, Purpose, reteam, Smith + Andersen, Frontier Design.

 

The former Sidewalk Labs 307 is now a truck rental company. Waterfront Toronto has a new home across the street and the properties along the lakeside where Sidewalk Lab’s mass timber buildings were to be built are near completion. Aquabella and Aqualuna, built by Tridel, are offering ‘luxury by the lake’ for between 2.3 and 8.9 million a piece plus taxes and maintenance (Tridel 2024). Four more condo towers and a ‘community forest’ are planned for the remaining 4.9 hectare plot.

 

At a public session of Waterfront Toronto’s Design Review Panel in March 2024, presenters discussed the planning objectives focussing on retail integration/retail frontage, timber construction, building height adjustments, zoning requirements, design flexibility, “porosity” (which I think is about human-building interaction), rooftop urban agriculture, signature skylines, community green and public spaces.

 

Questions from the audience focussed on street-level design and diverse retail environments. Some zeroed into questions about the meaning of 'public': which spaces were in fact open to the wider public, as opposed to residents of the new towers? How, for example, would the rooftop urban agriculture be a public space as advertised? Framing constraints to questions of zoning, seemed to preclude discussions of housing.

 

Further properties that were set aside for Sidewalk Labs’ IDEA District on Villier’s Island are now being re-landscaped to allow for a new mouth to the Don River. Massive amounts of land have been pushed around, ecological studies of wildlife have been completed, and bridges and bike lanes installed. According to Waterfront Toronto at a public information session on March 26, circa 80% of the land is publicly owned, and once the landscaping is complete a new residential district will be built featuring several more towers, a school, a “site for ceremony” (for the non-seculars?), and plenty of green space. 

 

Re-landscaping the Don River (Carr 2024)

 

Did the Toronto smart city die? 

So far, it seems like it's back to business-as-usual condo development in Toronto with all the usual suspects -- landowners, real estate developers, (st)architects, city officials, interested buyers, existing residents -- this time with emphasis on re-naturalization and reconciliation. These modes of urban development invoke old debates about market-led housing, respective exclusionary pricing with all sorts of knock-on effects, vertical cities (condo living), and the gaps between design process and actual needs, profits and distribution of wealth, variations on public-private relationships in urban planning. But how curious: No conversations about automatic lighting, climate sensors, underground robotic waste disposal, data collection/privacy, hackathons, or administration dashboards. Where is Google? Olly olly oxem free! 

 

--Constance Carr

Welcoming Visiting Researcher, Nathan Flore

The Urban Studies Group is happy to announce that they will be welcoming Nathan Flore (PhD candidate) from the Institute for Public Decision Making, a division of Cité, an interdisciplinary Research Unit dedicated to issues of governance, justice and society at the University of Liège.  Flore will be conducting field work in Luxembourg this spring for this PhD project entitled, "Smart Cities and the Regulation of Urban Mobilities (SCRUM)"

A short summary:
The aim of this doctoral research is to investigate the regulation of urban mobilities induced by smart mobility projects. Thousands of cities around the world have adopted "smart city" plans since the beginning of the 2000s. These plans include public strategies targeting efficiency goals and based on the utilisation of digital technologies. A large part of smart city projects consist indeed in the reduction of resource consumption in the city, be it water, power or time. In this context, the infrastructure is represented as the locus of the optimisation of urban life, hence the appearance of concepts such as smart grid, smart environment and smart mobility, for instance. So-called smart mobility projects focus on the citizen use of roads and means of transport when the latter across the city. They mobilise whole sociotechnical systems that include sensors, data, algorithms and digital interfaces to analyse in real time the state of transportation networks. Public authorities are then in a position to intervene directly, either by adapting flexible transport infrastructure or steering citizens through digital media. The SCRUM research project investigate this type of digitally mediated regulation of urban mobility with a case study research design. The smart mobility policies of three cities, namely Namur, Luxembourg and Lyon are explored through multisite ethnography based on the combined use of document analysis, semi-structured interviews and observations.

IGU 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: Crises, what crisis? Urban development and policy in search of the "new normal", 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).

    The deadline for the submission of abstracts for the 2024 IGU-Urban has been extended until 29th February, 2024. Anyone interested in submitting an abstract should do it on the template available on https://www.igu-urban.org/2024-cork

    This is the short conference description: "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."

  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.

   FURTHER INFORMATION

All the information about the congress and about our commission is available on the IGU Urban Geography Commission website: https://www.igu-urban.org/

    EARLY CAREER AWARD 2024

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/ 

   CONTACT

For information concerning the fees and the abstracts submission:

Therese Kenna: t.kenna@ucc.ie

María Jose Piñeira Mantiñán: mariajose.pineira@usc.es

We look forward to seeing you in Cork! 

María José Piñeira

Chair IGU Urban Geography Commission

Professor Michael Wegener R.I.P.

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 S&W). In this respect he definitely set a standard.

    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).

    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.

Markus Hesse

Recalling December keynote invitations and a looking forward to a happy new year

Face-to-face meetings allow people to run into the unexpected: Luneburg University's Libeskind Building (photo:  Markus Hesse 2023).

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.

Two highlights from December stand out in particular. The first was a trip to the University of Stavanger, where Anders Riel Müller invited me give a keynote at his final event of the Research Network for Smart Sustainable Cities. It was a treat to present alongside Jens Fisker, Ramon Ribera Fumaz, Maja de Neergaard, Casey Lynch, and Ugo Rossi. 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.

The second highlight was at the Center for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University Lüneburg where Armin Beverungen and Maja-lee Voigt 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.

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).

New Publication on urban development in the Glatt Valley in The Elgar Companion to Valleys – Social Science Perspectives

Was lange währt, wird endlich gut
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 here.

Thank you Luis, Donna and Diana; it was lovely collaborating with you and congratulations!

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.

Other works on sustainability in the Glatt Valley
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) “Integrative Planning of Post-suburban Growth in the Glatt Valley (Switzerland)” Raumforschung und Raumordnung | Spatial Research and Planning. DE, 76(2), pp. 109–122. doi: 10.1007/s13147-016-0403-x.

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. "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" SocArXiv Papers, DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/jvbue