THEMATIC GROUPS

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Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS

Category: Resilience and Risks Mitigation Strategies

Published: 11 December 2017

The Guiding Principles for City Climate Action Planning reviews typical steps in the city-level climate action planning process in light of a proposed set of globally applicable principles. These principles, shown below, developed through a robust and open multi-stakeholder process, support local officials, planners and stakeholders in climate action planning. Such plans aim to help cities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adopt low emission development trajectories, as well as adapt to the impacts of climate change and build local climate resilience.

These Guiding Principles are intended to be applied flexibly, together with more detailed ‘how to’ manuals, to help cities more effectively play their role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and building climate resilience.

Toolkit

The intention now (May 2016) is to apply these GP in selected cities, i.e., to assess how closely ongoing climate action planning processes in those cities adhere to the GP, and to offer suggestions as needed to strengthen those processes. At the same time we plan to capture feedback on the Version 1.0 of the GP, with the aim of refining those Principles in the future as need be. As with the GP initiative as a whole, such city-level exercises should serve a broader aim of facilitating knowledge and information sharing amongst engaged partners, so as to promote strengthened, expanded and more consistent climate action planning in cities around the world.

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Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS

Category: Transportation planning and policy

Published: 15 October 2017

The mobil.TUM 2018 International Scientific Conference on Mobility and Transport will be held on June 13th- 14th 2018 in Munich, Germany, on the topic 'URBAN MOBILITY – SHAPING THE FUTURE TOGETHER' organized by the Focus Area Mobility & Transportation Systems Technical University of Munich (TUM).

CALL FOR PAPERS:
200 years ago the bicycle was invented – a technological innovation replacing horses… 
150 years ago the railway opened up new horizons – including rapid urban growth... 
100 years ago the car started its success story – with benefits and challenges along the way... 
50 years ago the limits to growth were discovered – initiating the aspiration for sustainability... 
10 years ago smartphones appeared – enabling new mobility services and the sharing economy... 

What will happen to urban mobility in the next 10, 50, 100 years, and beyond? Following the quote “The future is not predetermined and waiting to happen – it is ours to shape” (Lyons & Urry, 2006), we understand that our situation in the future largely depends on decisions we make today. We invite you to share your ideas on how to develop urban mobility for the future, to give your contribution, today. The mobil.TUM International Scientific Conference on Mobility and Transport is a platform for practitioners and researchers to meet and exchange their knowledge and experiences. In TUM's anniversary year 2018 – also the 10th anniversary of mobil.TUM – the conference will join forces from across different thematic fields, organized by four professorships of the Focus Area Mobility & Transportation Systems at TUM. International keynote speakers will provoke the debate, and posters, presentations, as well as discussions and interactive networking formats will enable inspiration from the latest innovations and explore new directions for shaping the future of urban mobility.

Key topics of interest include, but are not necessarily limited to:

• Transport Innovation and its Effects on Urban Systems ICT-enabled mobility services, Transportation Network Companies (TNCs), integrated mobility services, Mobility as a Service (MaaS), personalized ITS-technology, automation and self-organization in traffic flow and control, cloud-computing and internet of things applied in ITS, … 
• Modelling and Simulation of Urban Mobility Travel behavior research, integrated land-use and transport modelling, travel demand modelling, microsimulation of traffic, environmental impact modelling, urban freight modelling, modelling in a multimodal environment, systems thinking and system modelling, … 
• Transportation Data Analysis Big data in transportation, new opportunities and risks in data acquisition, fair data management, urban transportation data analytics, progress and effects of digitalization in transport systems, measuring, analyzing and mitigating environmental impacts, … 
• Strategies for Sustainable Mobility Systems Accessibility planning, integrated development of transport nodes and urban places, behavioral changes and retro-fitting of infrastructure and services, promotion of livable urban spaces, non-motorized transportation, transport and land-use policies, … 
• Governance of Urban Mobility Governance and networks, policy analysis, assessment and evaluation in urban mobility, funding schemes, participation and citizen involvement, co-creation of innovative solutions, …

Submission of proposals

Please submit your extended abstracts (1,000 – 1,500 words) including title, authors, affiliation, contact information of corresponding author, and keywords using the conference website www.mobil-tum.de Extended abstracts should include:

• Problem statement 
• Research objectives 
• Methodological approach 
• (Expected) results 

Please use the template for extended abstracts provided on the conference website under submissions.
Authors of accepted proposals will be invited to optionally submit a full paper by March 31th, 2018 (4,000 – 6,000 words). Full papers handed in on time will benefit from a peer-review by the end of May. Contributions will be included in the conference either as a presentation in the plenary sessions (max. 20 minutes per presentation), as a poster (DIN A0) to be presented and discussed in a dedicated poster session, or as part of a lightning talk session. Please indicate your preference with the abstract submission.

After the conference, authors will be invited to update their papers or abstracts based on the reviews and conference discussions and send a final version by July 15th, 2018, for publication in Transportation Research Procedia (Elsevier). Selected papers that have been reviewed particularly favourably are intended to be published in a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal. Important Dates Abstract submission deadline: November 30th, 2017 Acceptance notification: January 30th, 2018 Full paper submission (optional): March 31st, 2018 Final paper submission for publication: July 15th, 2018

Contributions from diverse backgrounds, regions, and cultures are very welcome. We will accept proposals for lectern presentations, poster presentations, and a lightning talk session, where research ideas and works in progress can be discussed. Criteria for acceptance are:

• Relevance for the conference’s general topic and focus on selected topic areas 
• Scientific quality in terms of methodologies applied and data handling 
• Usefulness for practice supported by successful implementations and/or relevance for scientific progress 

Additional workshops and conference-related activities will take place on Friday (June 15th) – details will be posted on the conference website soon. The conference will be accompanied by a small exhibition. 


Venue
June 13 th -14th, 2018 GALILEO, Munich (Garching), Germany www.galileo-tum.de

Fees
Attendees: 390 € Students*: 190 € *certificate of enrolment required
The registration fee covers the costs for admission to the conference, lunch and coffee breaks during the 2 days of the conference, and the conference dinner. Please visit our conference website for further information and news: www.mobil-tum.de 

Organizing Committee
Prof. Dr. Constantinos Antoniou
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Fritz Busch
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rolf Moeckel
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gebhard Wulfhorst

Benjamin Büttner, Emmanouil Chaniotakis, Karin Gairing, Silja Hoffmann, Matthew Okrah, Ursula Uhse

Conference contact: Maximilian Pfertner This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. www.mobil-tum.de

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Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS

Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures

Published: 03 October 2017

THE URBANIZATION of (IN)JUSTICE

Public spaces in uncertain geographies

The University of Cyprus, Department of Architecture invites you to the annual meeting of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP)’s Thematic Group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures, which will take place in the United Nations Buffer Zone in Nicosia in the period between 16th and 18th May 2018.This meeting is organized in parallel to the Cyprus Network of Urban Morphology conference, “Urban Morphology in South-Eastern Mediterranean Cities: challenges and opportunities”. The purpose of this meeting is to unfold, discuss, rethink and challenge prevailing discourses about“just” or “unjust” processes of urban transformation from the perspective of public space.We look forward to a critical and constructive debate on the research, policy and public agendas about this issue to contribute to the academic and public discussions on the role of public space to achieve “just” cities.

Theme. Over the past few decades, cities around the world have become radically and rapidly changed in the sense of scale, scope and complexity. This is mainly due to the increasing mobility of people, goods and information as a result of technological developments, liberalization of economic systems, economic fluctuations, wars, and climate change. These changes challenge the processes of production of built environment and create conflicts and contestations between different urban groups, who have contradicted claims on the decisions and processes influencing urban transformation.

Such situation brought the discussions on just/unjust urban transformation processes in urban research, policy and public debates.It raised questions on privileging the interests of affluent urban groups, while disadvantaging vulnerable communities. We see public space as central in these debates, as possible facilitator of a more just process of urban transformation.Public space is able to embrace different political, economic and cultural manifestations of urban groups, which allow them to voice their rights on the city. Public space can also submit encounters and interactions between different urban actors and perform as a place of negotiation between them. Public space is potentially able to promote fair allocations of wealth, resources, benefits and opportunities.

Different views on public space can provide us ways of thinking to develop planning and design strategies, policy measures, civil initiatives, and social movements to oppose processes of unjust urban transformation. Yet, in the context of a rapid-shifting economic, political and social reality, it is more and more urgent for critical re-thinking of public space as facilitator of urban justice.

The aim of this conference is to share international and interdisciplinary perspectives of public space as a facilitator of (in)just urban transformation processes from various angles based on practical and/or theoretical work. We particularly welcome topics such as:

• Public space in relation to urban just and unjust conditions, today and through time
• Public space and equity, public space and diversity, public space, identity, spatiality and power
• Re-thinking public space through the connections between notions of justice, social relations, and spatial form
• Responses to unjust urban patterns in form of emerging practices of self-organization and negotiations of difference in cities’ public spaces
• Role of actors in the production of public space.
• Everyday practices of establishing spatial justice and injustice
• Creation of subjectivities in or with public space
• Politics of public space

The meeting will be dedicated to the presentations, discussions and roundtables of high quality work of scholars and practitioners. We are interested in contributions from urban studies, urban planning, urban design, architecture, social geography, anthropology, sociology, ethnography, cultural studies, political science, history and others. Paper presentations will be followed by roundtable discussions to consolidate the ideas, concerns and recommendations presented during the meeting, and set the basis for further practical and theoretical explorations.

Format

The meeting will combine various formats of exchange including the keynote speeches of CyNUM and PSUC, presentations from the contributions to the call for papers, field visits on the second day and a workshop on the third day.The workshop participants will have the opportunity to visit locations within Nicosia in collaboration with local stakeholders and practitioners, to reflect on the case studies visited and to discuss, exchange views and propose ideas with the purpose of sharing resources and producing knowledge on contemporary public space concerns.

Abstract submission

Abstracts of paper proposals (300 words) should address at least one of the topics outlined in the call for papers (Please check the guidelines for the abstract at the conference website. Speakers should also submit a short biography (100 words).Submissions will ONLY be accepted online through www.easyacademia.org, where participants may register and instantly submit their abstracts using the provided template.

Authors will be notified of acceptance by the Conference Committee. Final acceptance will be based upon review of the full-length short paper.Full papers will be published in an electronic version in a form of a conference book of papers. The authors of the selected papers will be encouraged to prepare their contributions in the form of scientific articles for the publication in the thematic issue of a scientific journal.

Registration

To register for the conference please visit the conference’s website. Participation in the AESOP TG meeting with all its related activities is free of charge. AESOP TG delegates can also attend the CyNUM conference welcome reception and the keynote speeches free of charge. Moreover, coffee breaks are offered.

AESOP TG delegates, who would like to participate in the whole CyNUM conference and receive the full package and documentation, will have to register for the conference. AESOP TG delegates can also register for the conference farewell dinner and/or the conference field visits separately at an additional cost.

Important Dates

Call for papers: October 1st, 2017

Abstract submission: December 5th, 2017

Acceptance notification: January15th, 2017

Author registration and payment: February 15th, 2018

Full paper submission: April 30th, 2018

Conference: 16th -18th May 2018

Publication of proceedings: July 2018

The Venue

The location of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean offers a unique venue at the confluence of three continents and a multitude of cultures that face unique urban challenges. Throughout its history, Cyprus has been undergoing various dynamics related to refugees, migration and social fragmentation, which have led to changes in urban spaces and everyday social life, thus turning it to fertile ground for collaborative ideas among public space scholars and practitioners from different backgrounds. Nicosia, the last divided capital of Europe, offers an ideal location to discuss the issues addressed in this conference. As a city with a prolonged history of conflict, internal refugees’ displacements, migration and tourists’ flows, economic fluctuations and rapid, often abrupt urban transformations, it serves as a laboratory to observe and explore the production, development and the role of public spaces in unstable and contested contexts. More information about the venue is available at the conference website.

Contacts

For further information on AESOP TG PSUC Nicosia meeting please contact:

Nadia Charalambous (local host Cyprus), This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Organising Committee

Nadia Charalambous, Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus.

Andreas Savvides, Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus.

Ceren Sezer, Department of Urbanism, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.

Nikolai Roskamm, Department of Architecture and Urban Planning,FH Erfurt, Germany.

Scientific Committee

Ali Madanipour, Architecture, Planning and Landscape Department, Newcastle University.

Wendy Pullan, Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge.

Tarek Osseiran, United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat).

Nilly Harag, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Israel.

Christine Mady, Notre Dame University, Louaize, Beirut.

Elena Konstantinidou, National Technical University of Athens, Greece.

Vítor Oliveira, University of Porto, Portugal.

Related Links
The general TG blog at the AESOP page

The TG wiki page: http://publicspaces-urbancultures.wikispaces.com/

The TG FB page: https://www.facebook.com/AESOPPSUC/

The TG contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

CyNUM2018 conference: http://cyprusconferences.org/cynum2018/

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Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS

Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures

Published: 25 September 2017

GENERAL THEME

In the contemporary city, we are witnessing different “practices of re-appropriation of space” and self-organization: regeneration of empty buildings, spaces of cultural production, urban gardens, renewed green areas given as well as public spaces re-shaped through practices of commoning; beside this, we could also mention experimentations that are activating new social services and welfare spaces, and squatting projects which are defining different modes of co-existence, housing and service provision.

This is a vast field of activity and experiences - both illegal and legal - with the widespread involvement and the leading role of the inhabitants, individually or in associations, and other local actors, challenging roles and meanings of the institutions.

We should consider in particular micro-practices that are able to broaden and transform the city and urban societies, alongside more stable forms of social production. A specific kind of “collaborative city making” built upon a mix of practices, social relations and modes of local activation.

As a consequence, the way we are looking at the city is radically changing: questioning the relationship between the State and the citizens, these processes of self-organization are re-configuring both the mechanism of place making as well as the organization of social relations and local services.

These practices of re-appropriation are representing different modes of city organization as well as different cultures of action/policy making in the contemporary city. They are also representing different modes of what ‘public’ means in the city: some practices of re-appropriation are acting as collective actions that take into consideration the mechanism of social inclusion, while others are acting in a way which could be described more as private, or specific only to some groups and thus quite often with exclusive impacts, rather than designing public/collective actions and open access.

Among these practices, many of them are re-opening spaces or re-activating some specific territories/neighbourhoods benefiting from very localized creativity and capitalizing on social relations that are fully embedded in local societies.

These experimentations are focused on action that is simultaneously redefining the modes of social conflict as well as the routines and spaces of citizenship. Sites where these practices may eventually unfold, that are produced by these practices can be considered as arenas where to experiment and shape political capacity, thus challenging the very functioning of local democracy.

Discussing the tension between the different models of local activation and cultural/political production and the problematic erosion of the capacity of institutions in answering local need, we consider whether practices of re-appropriation are de facto substituting the role of institutions as well as weakening the transformative impact of traditional social conflict; and so doing reinforcing neoliberalism, and, as a consequence, an unequal distribution of disadvantages and uneven geographies in unstable contexts.

The topic is fully in focus on the theme ‘Unstable Geographies - Dislocated Publics’ developed by the AESOP Thematic Group on Public Spaces and Urban Cultures. Urban life is characterized by diverse manifestations of instability which continuously stretch or redefine the processes of city making, the production of space and place, the sense of institutions and their relationship with the inhabitants (organized or not), the diverse “cultures of public”, the everyday struggles related to the capitalist system of production, the role of the politics.

SESSIONS AND CALL FOR PAPER

The general theme will be articulated into three main focuses developed in different sessions, illustrated by the following call for papers:

1. Historical and cultural roots/rooting (as praxix) of self-organization in the city.

Planners have often confused reality with its representation, mistaking the city for the map that represents it. They have not sufficiently thought about the city as a dynamic set of people and of places produced by the visible and invisible relations that people establish with their living environments, but as a combination of forms and signs, situated in a space they imagined as continuous and homogeneous. By separating form from life, they conceived the city not as a process, not as the result of complex practices and social relationships, but as a drawing, as a mental product, designed in a laboratory or in a cabinet, and then projected, all at once and imperiously, on a territory they imagine empty, lacking life and history. On the contrary, the history of the city and urban life and of the territories themselves are crucial to understand how, if we focus on the moment when the city emerges as a coherent spatial agglomeration, we frequently underestimate what Soja calls «dynamic processes associated with the spatiality of social life and the social construction of human geographies».

Through the history, it is evident how processes of self-organization and self-management have a founding role in the shaping of different forms of territoriality. These processes cannot be reduced to classical dichotomies such as public/private; instead, they are connected with different forms of association, aimed at the production of common goods. They are specific forms of production of urban and territorial space, which have been produced by different historical processes, intimately linked with the cultural and environmental nature of the various geographic contexts. They have been called into question and marginalized by the establishment of modern nation states, or of colonial empires. It is crucial to investigate the rationality (the “collective intelligence”) that directs these experiences. It can be understood starting from the relation with the environment and with the territorial context, a founding element that constitutes specific cultures, abilities, competences, forms of relationship. By comparing different situations, we can reach a wider understanding of the complexity and richness of processes and cultures that took roots in them.

This panel investigates this huge set of problems, and aims to bring back the attention on the historic and cultural roots of self-organization, on its diversity, and on the organic and participative approaches to planning that try to highlight not only the dynamics of production of space, but also the different forms that the right to the city can take.

2. Searching for an "enabling" space. Dialogues and bridges between institutions and self-organization practices for a collaborative territorial planning and management.

In recent years, collaborative practices between different subjects in urban planning have changed following the transition from the rational paradigm to complexity.

The involvement of inhabitants, local communities and organized committees, as well as a wider network of public and private actors, in the government of the city (and the so called “participation”), seems to be a consolidated passage, at least in rhetoric, and it has also influenced in some cases norms and planning tools. This new collaborative perspective, which the seminar intends to underline and problematize, sees pressure for experimentation and consolidation by the institutions, but also by the inhabitants and other actors.

There is a wide interest not only in terms of policies, but also in terms of building co-research areas, where knowledge is the result of a multiplicity of shared practices and knowledge, within an emerging interdisciplinary approach including all the disciplines of the “urban”.

From this point of view, which opens to the search for a new model of representative democracy or deliberative democracy, it is to rethink both the role of the institutions as well as of the citizens, and the relationships between the different actors interacting with the construction of a territory. On the one hand, the public subject should wonder how to enhance the capabilities, the design, the skills and the social leading role, which territories express. On the other hand, local actors themselves should be able to pursue traditional conflictual but also subsidiary logic, learning to be the protagonists of a shared process of defining the public / collective interest. All actors, beyond the features and roles, have to start a path, specific to context and dynamics, which has a “enabling” character for everyone, because it requires each one to get out of the own frames and routines, to build new ones.

The session therefore focuses on this reflection, discussing the characteristics of processes, actions, collaborative interventions looking at what they have generated in terms of new skills, new organizational practices, new ways of interacting. So what is this "enabling" character? Is it necessary to develop an epistemological advance, and which one, that will overcome the state-private-community dichotomy? What achievements have reached the urban and territorial self-organizing movements in Italy and in the world? What practices has the public actor introduced, through which changes in the structure of public administration and management? Can we still talk about the right to participate and the utility of open forms of conflict?

3. Powers and terrains of ambiguity in the field of urban self-organization today.

Self-organization processes have always been part of the city's construction, of the ‘collaborative city making’ discussed above. They are by definition ambiguous situations where different subjects, with different intentions and interests, interact and can also conflict among them. This gets even more complicated in a condition where the role of institutions is changing (up to the modern state) and with socio-economic dynamics that are impacting on the welfare state. The radical change in the State organization and policy making involve a backwardness of the welfare state and an ambiguous support to neoliberal dynamics. In this process, the self-organization process is at risk to become a beneficial factor to such a retreat as it tends to control social conflict.

Agents involved in processes of self-organization can at the same time create important spaces of autonomy within these dynamics subordinating or expressing innovative pathways if they are structural and construct in this way a ‘city from below’. The question is how these processes can be used to substitute the welfare state provision or to profit for social resources de facto commodifying them. The interest is also to investigate whether these forms of autonomy are capable of creating ‘new spaces of freedom and action’ and/or ‘new institutions’ that might be able to change the way of making cities and to think and offer urban services. Finally, we want to investigate whether and how such processes are helping to create unprecedented forms of social inclusion, especially in increasingly diverse cities, or if they are creating benefits for closed communities in a general backwardness of public accountability.

To do this, it is probably also necessary to refine or redefine the interpretative tools and elaborate at the same time specific survey methodologies. What information, in terms of research methodologies, can offer ongoing studies and research?

Starting from the critical reading of the practices and processes in progress today, the session seeks to capture the problematic nodes and the ambiguities of practices and processes of self-organization in the city.

ORGANIZATION OF THE CONFERENCE

The conference will be held over three days, with three morning sessions (one for each day) on the following topics:

1) Historical and cultural roots of self-organization in the city;

2) Searching for an "enabling" space;

3) Powers and terrains of ambiguity in the field of urban self-organization today.

In the afternoon, fieldtrips and workshops will be managed by scholars, activists and local stakeholders. Video exhibitions and other non-academic events will be provided in the evening sessions.

The three thematic sessions will be introduced by keynote speakers and the other speakers will be selected through a call for paper.

A workshop organized by the AESOP Thematic Group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures will be specifically dedicated to the debate on the final frames on the theme "Unstable Geographies - Dislocated Publics" and to the discussion on the topics to be developed in the next cycle.

A selection of the best papers will be published in a scientific journal.

DEADLINES

October 10th, 2017 - Deadline for the abstracts (max 4.000 characters)

October 25th, 2017- Conclusion of abstract selection and communication to selected authors

December 5th, 2017 – Deadline for final papers (max 30.000 characters)

Abstracts and papers will be in English.

Please, send the abstracts and the final papers to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  

PLACE AND DATE

The conference is a joint event of the Italian research network “Tracce Urbane / Urban Traces” and Association of European School of Planning (AESOP) Thematic Group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures hosted by Sapienza University of Rome.

The conference will be held on December 11th-13th, 2017, at the Faculty of Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, v. Eudossiana 18, Rome, in the centre of the city, near the Coliseum and the church of St. Peter in Vincula.

The conference will be free access.