Urenio Watch Watch: Innovation

New book: Geographies of Disruption

This new book Geographies of Disruption: Place Making for Innovation in the Age of Knowledge Economy, written by Tan Yigitcanlar and Tommi Inkinen, provides a timely contribution to the literature on the geography of innovation. Providing a detailed set of case studies on the evolving dimensions of the knowledge economy across Europe, North America, Asia and Oceania, it focuses on the importance of place making for the emergence and spread of knowledge-based economies.

Smarticipate: Guide for creating new apps

cover_how to create a new appSmarticipate is a research project revolved around the development of the smarticipate platform, a web-connected solution that allows citizens to interact in a new way with their local government. Based upon the idea that smartphones and web applications are widely used in our daily life, this project aims at opening up the process of creating new applications. So, this guide is a step-by-step manual explaining how the smarticipate platform can support the creation of new apps aiming to make cities more liveable, greener and smarter.

Unlocking Sustainable Cities: A Manifesto for Real Change

book cover_unlocking sustainable citiesThis book, written by Paul Chatterson, seeks to explore the power of rapidly emerging constellations of connected experiments that can harness the creative power of the many and have the potential to radically unlock the latent potential of cities. It foregrounds that one of the central problems is the way that we approach the very idea of sustainability and questions the dominant urban project of the human species, which he defines as Capitalocene.

Artificial Intelligence: A European Perspective

AI report EU_coverThis report presents a European view of Artificial Intelligence (AI) based on independent research and analysis by the European Commission Joint Research Centre to inform the debate at the European level. Shedding light on the opportunities as well as challenges emerging from the recent developments in AI, this report attempts to outline the way towards building a human-centred, diverse, and socially driven AI.

New Urban Worlds: Inhabiting Dissonant Times

new urban worlds coverWritten by AbdouMaliq Simone and Edgar Pieterse, this book attempts to address the relationship between urban theory and practice in Asia and Africa. It is argued that we need to look at the neighborhood or district level to get the essence of urban lives. This book reads like a collection of authors’ thoughts on urban change over the past several decades. It reflects their concern for social justice in African and Asian cities, which is ever challenged by the commodification and technologization of urban spaces.

Redefining the Smart City: Culture, Metabolism and Governance

redefining smart citiesThis paper reviews the literature about the Smart City paradigm in terms of culture, metabolism and governance and proposes a theoretical framework around it. This framework adopts a citizen-centered and outcome-oriented approach rather than a technology-based, corporate-driven solution. This approach applies smart infrastructure to each of the three fundamental values of a city in order to show how smart culture, smart metabolism, and smart governance can be created.