Urenio Watch Watch: Cities

New Report: Public Space & Public Life during COVID 19

report_cover_publicspace_gehlWhat can be said about Covid-19 that hasn’ t been said already? Rather than simply talking and writing about the pandemic, Gehl staff wants to share the lived experience of it. With the support of Realdania and the City of Copenhagen, they worked with 60 surveyors in 4 cities in Denmark to observe and understand how streets and public spaces, parks and playgrounds are serving the very unique needs of the communities during this pandemic. The first results are listed in this report, both in terms of snapshots of public life during the “lock-down’ as well as highlights of the collected data.

Co-creating Responsive Urban Spaces

This book explores the opportunities for incorporating responsive technologies in spatial designs to improve the quality of public spaces. It also presents inspiring examples from a two-year practice-based study of responsive public spaces carried out by a consortium of spatial designers, interaction designers and local stakeholders, headed by the Chair of Spatial Urban Transformation of Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.

JRC publishes report on the Future of Cities

jrc_futurecitiesThis report identifies challenges influencing the future of cities in Europe and beyond, presenting several perspectives from which to look at resolving these issues. It is an initiative of the JRC and is supported by the Commission’ s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO). The main aim is to raise open questions and steer discussions on what the future of cities can, and should be, both within the scientific and policymaker communities.

Are we living in a Suburban Planet?

This book focuses on the process that creates the global urban periphery, namely suburbanization, as well as the ways of life, suburbanisms, that are encountered there. Inspired by Henri Lefebvre’s demand not to give up urban theory when the city in its classical form disappears, this book is a challenge to urban thought more generally as it invites the reader to reconsider the city from the outside in. It is part of the Urban Futures series.

CyberParks: The Interface Between People, Places and Technology

cyberparks cover

This book focuses on the potential of ICT to increased possibilities for new uses and elements or even types of urban open spaces, as an important added value to the quality of life, inclusiveness and atrractiveness of the city. The editors are Carlos  Smaniotto Costa, Ina  Å uklje Erjavec, Therese  Kenna, Michiel  de Lange, Konstantinos  Ioannidis, Gabriela  Maksymiuk and Martijn  de Waal and its is open access.

The Hackable City: Digital media and collaborative city-making

hackablecity_coverThis book presents a selection of the best contribution to the Digital Cities 9 Workshop held in Limerick in 2015 and was edited by Michiel de Lange and Martijn de Waal. It combines a number of the latest academic insights into new collaborative modes of city making that are firmly rooted in empirical findings about the actual practices of citizens, designers and policy makers.

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.