Robert Cowley | King's College London (original) (raw)
Papers by Robert Cowley
Theology and Science, 2019
I argue that programmes of Mars colonization might usefully be guided by a consideration of “Mart... more I argue that programmes of Mars colonization might usefully be guided by a consideration of “Martian Rights”. I outline four categories of possible rights which would need to be guaranteed, depending on the precise nature of the colonization: those directly transferable from existing human rights, new rights, rights in need of modification, and the rights of Mars itself. Debates over Martian Rights should not be deferred until the technological challenges of supporting human life on Mars have been resolved. Rather, they have the potential to usefully inform the development of relevant space technologies.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2019
The paper analyses the varieties of smart urbanism to be found in the contemporary urban landscap... more The paper analyses the varieties of smart urbanism to be found in the contemporary urban landscape in the UK. In so doing, it builds on and extends two currently dominant sets of critiques of the smart city: those that call into question its technocratic and top‐down modes of governance, and those that describe the smart city as an empty signifier. The paper makes sense of the UK's variegated local smart urban practices by tracing the emergence of a national, state‐led cultural economy of smart urbanism. Based on an analysis of smart‐city programmes in 34 UK cities, we identify two broad discursive logics through which varieties of smart urbanism are produced and performed. First, the invocation of crisis
forms a discursive foundation on which place‐specific logics are based. Second, sets of what we term variegated logics are differently combined to build on the “foundational story” of crisis in the construction of local smart agendas. We discuss three of these variegated logics: the city portrayed as technological simulacrum; the focus on specific sectoral activities; and a chameleonic tendency to envelop previous eco‐urban agendas into smart urbanism. By making these logics visible, the paper opens up a new critical space for debate about alternative future pathways that smart cities might take.
The paper analyses the varieties of smart urbanism to be found in the contemporary urban landscap... more The paper analyses the varieties of smart urbanism to be found in the contemporary urban landscape in the UK. In so doing, it builds on and extends two currently dominant sets of critiques of the smart city: those that call into question its technocratic and top-down modes of governance, and those that describe the smart city as an empty signifier. The paper makes sense of the UK’s variegated local smart urban practices, by tracing the emergence of a national, state-led cultural economy of smart urbanism. Based on an analysis of smart city programmes in 34 UK cities, we identify two broad discursive logics through a national variation of smart urbanism is produced and performed. First, the invocation of crisis forms a discursive foundation on which place-specific logics are based. Second, a set of what we term variegated logics are differently combined to build on the ‘foundational story’ of crisis, in the construction of local smart agendas. We discuss three of these variegated logics: the city portrayed as technological simulacrum; the focus on specific sectoral activities; and a chameleonic tendency to envelop previous eco-urban agendas into smart urbanism. The critical questions raise by these UK-specific logics demonstrate the value of considering particular multi-scalar constellations of smart urbanism through a cultural economy lens.
Critical commentaries have often treated the smart city as a potentially problematic 'top down' t... more Critical commentaries have often treated the smart city as a potentially problematic 'top down' tendency within policy-making and urban planning, which appears to serve the interests of already powerful corporate and political actors. This article, however, positions the smart city as significant in its implicit rejection of the strong normativity of traditional technologies of planning, in favour of an ontology of efficiency and emergence. It explores a series of prominent UK smart city initiatives (in Bristol, Manchester and Milton Keynes) as bundles of experimental local practices , drawing on the literature pointing to a growing valorisation of the 'experimental' over strong policy commitments in urban governance. It departs from this literature, however, by reading contemporary 'smart experiments' through Shapin and Schafer's work on the emergence of 17th-century science, to advance a transhistorical understanding of experimentation as oriented towards societal reordering. From this perspective, the UK smart city merits attention primarily as an indicator of a wider set of shifts in approaches to governance. Its pragmatic orientation sits uneasily alongside ambitions to 'standardise' smart and sustainable urban development ; and raises questions about the conscious overlap between the stated practical ambitions of smart city initiatives and pre-existing environmental and social policies.
Critical commentaries have often treated the smart city as a potentially problematic ‘top down’ t... more Critical commentaries have often treated the smart city as a potentially problematic ‘top down’ tendency within policy-making and urban planning, which appears to serve the interests of already powerful corporate and political actors. This article, however, positions the smart city as significant in its implicit rejection of the strong normativity of traditional technologies of planning, in favour of an ontology of efficiency and emergence. It explores a series of prominent UK smart city initiatives (in Bristol, Manchester and Milton Keynes) as bundles of experimental local practices, drawing on the literature pointing to a growing valorisation of the ‘experimental’ over strong policy commitments in urban governance. It departs from this literature, however, by reading contemporary ‘smart experiments’ through Shapin and Schafer’s work on the emergence of 17th-century science, to advance a transhistorical understanding of experimentation as oriented
towards societal reordering. From this perspective, the UK smart city merits attention primarily as an indicator of a wider set of shifts in approaches to governance. Its pragmatic orientation sits uneasily alongside ambitions to ‘standardise’ smart and sustainable urban development; and raises questions about the conscious overlap between the stated practical ambitions of smart city initiatives and pre-existing environmental and social policies.
Cowley, R. and Caprotti, F. (accepted for publication 2018). 'Smart City as Anti-Planning in the UK'. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.
Cities have become a focal point for efforts to transition towards a more sustainable, low-carbon... more Cities have become a focal point for efforts to transition towards a more sustainable, low-carbon society, with many municipal agencies championing ‘eco city’ initiatives of one kind or another. And yet, national policy initiatives frequently play an important – if sometimes overlooked – role, too. This chapters provides comparative perspectives on four recent national sustainable city programmes from France, India, Japan, and the United Kingdom. The analysis reveals two key insights: first, national policy is found to exercise a strong shaping role in what sustainable development for future cities is understood to be, which helps explain the considerable differences in priorities and approaches across countries. Second, beyond articulating strategic priorities,
national policy may exercise a ‘soft’ governance function by incentivising and facilitating wider, voluntary governance networks in the effort to implement sustainable city projects locally. This innovative role, however, depends on the ability of national policy to produce resonance among societal actors and on its effective interaction with formal planning processes.
Joss, S. & Cowley, R. (2017). National policies for local urban sustainability: a new governance approach? In Eames, M., Dixon, T., Hunt, M., and Lannon, S. (eds.) Retrofitting Cities for Tomorrow’s World. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN: 978-1119007210.
Commentaries on future-oriented Chinese urban development tend to focus on showcase projects unde... more Commentaries on future-oriented Chinese urban development tend to focus on showcase projects underway in wealthy coastal cities. This chapter instead sheds light on the way that the smart has been integrated into more ‘ordinary’ Chinese urban life, using the case of Wuhan, a ‘Tier II’ city in Central China. It explores the conditions of the emergence of Wuhan’s smart city activities from three perspectives. First, it outlines a series of ‘vertical’ enabling factors, whereby an international body of discourse and practice has been ‘translated’ into national Chinese urban policies. Second, it considers the simultaneous significance of ‘horizontal’ links between Wuhan’s local government, city governments abroad, local private enterprises, and foreign firms. Third, it relates Wuhan’s smart credentials to a broader process of digitalisation of everyday life in the city. It concludes by reflecting on the distinctive characteristics of Chinese smart urbanism, as exemplified by Wuhan, and finally draws out some implications for future research into smart cities elsewhere. Specifically, it proposes that the smart city is most usefully approached as a shifting and locally inflected concept which not only channels multiple policy agendas, but also reflects broader changes to urban space and governance in particular contexts.
Cowley, R., Caprotti, F., Ferretti, M. and Zhong, C. (forthcoming 2018). Ordinary Chinese Smart Cities: The Case of Wuhan. In Karvonen, A., Cugurullo, F. and Caprotti, F. (eds) Inside Smart Cities: Place, Politics and Urban Innovation. London: Routledge.
The media coverage of Hurricane Harvey's impact on the city of Houston in August 2017 reveals an ... more The media coverage of Hurricane Harvey's impact on the city of Houston in August 2017 reveals an 'Anthropocenic' sensibility, which tends to deny our ability to solve pressing environmental and social problems through strong and direct human action. This sensibility is reflected at city level in new forms of governance, exemplified here with reference to resilience , smart urbanism, and design-thinking. These have in common a cautious, inductive logic of change; their limited imaginations of space and time imply a dispersed sense of human agency. But if these new rationalities are unlikely to yield convincing solutions to problems such as Hurricane Harvey, perhaps there is a need to rethink the dominant framing of the Anthropocene, which underpins them.
The policy pointers presented in this report are the result of a three-year (2015-18) research pr... more The policy pointers presented in this report are the result of a three-year (2015-18) research project led by Federico Caprotti at the University of Exeter. The project, Smart Eco-Cities for a Green Economy: A Comparative Analysis of Europe and China, was delivered by a research consortium comprising scholars and researchers in the UK, China, the Netherlands, France, and Germany. The aim of the project was to investigate the way in which smart city and eco-city strategies are used to enable a transition towards digital and green economies.
Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses, 2017
This forum aims to encourage theorists of resilience to engage more closely with different aspect... more This forum aims to encourage theorists of resilience to engage more
closely with different aspects of design theory and practice. The
introduction outlines a series of largely unacknowledged parallels
between resilience and design, relating to the valorisation of processes
over states, the loss of faith in ‘planning’, the ambivalent status of
boundaries and interfaces, and open-ended political possibilities.
Four short reflections then follow on various design-related topics:
the significance of the ‘wicked problem’ in contemporary urban
planning and design, and the urbanisation of responsibility; design’s
potential to repoliticise and engender new forms of responsibility; the
significance of the digital interface; and the condition of everyday life
in the ‘unplanned’ post-colonial city. Readers are invited to build on
or refute the explicit and implicit links made between resilience and
design in the various forum contributions.
The UN-HABITAT III conference held in Quito in late 2016 enshrined the first Sustainable Developm... more The UN-HABITAT III conference held in Quito in late 2016 enshrined the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) with an exclusively urban focus. SDG 11, as it became known, aims to make cities more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable through a range of metrics, indicators, and evaluation systems. It also became part of a post-Quito 'New Urban Agenda' that is still taking shape. This paper raises questions around the potential for reductionism in this new agenda, and argues for the reflexive need to be aware of the types of urban space that are potentially sidelined by the new trends in global urban policy.
Urban Research & Practice, 2013
The global mainstreaming of urban sustainability policy, since the early 2000s, points to a new p... more The global mainstreaming of urban sustainability policy, since the early 2000s, points to a new phenomenon: the ‘ubiquitous eco-city’. Its key features – based on the analysis of a census of 178 initiatives – include: the significant, global proliferation of eco-city initiatives; increased international knowledge transfer activities involving both public and private actors; the centrality of ‘carbon discourse’ guiding concepts, policy and practice; the marrying of ‘green’ with ‘smart’ technological systems; and a focus on achieving environmental innovation through economic growth. Among the implications is the need to moderate the ‘ubiquitous eco-city’ paradigm with strong local contextualisation and social sustainability measures.
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 17535069 2012 762216, Jan 18, 2013
ABSTRACT
Urban Research & Practice, 2013
ABSTRACT
A growing body of critical literature seeks to identify conceptual and practical problems accompa... more A growing body of critical literature seeks to identify conceptual and practical problems accompanying the realisation of mainstream ‘eco-city’ initiatives around the world. However, little attention has been paid to the status of the ‘city’ itself within the broader discourse. If eco-cities are to be more than experimental ‘technological showcases’, and aim to transform urban life more generally, the question of what types of ‘cityness’ will ensue is of considerable importance. To effect a more significant sustainability transition, eco-city plans and policies may need somehow to encompass a more nuanced conceptualisation of cities as complex, unpredictable, and emergent spaces. The incompatibility of such a conceptualisation with liberal-modernist modes of planning means that radically innovative new approaches to eco-city development may need to be found.
This thesis considers whether the eco-city, theorised as a multiple process of real-world experimentation, may shed some light on how ‘cityness’ might better be planned for in future. To do so, it conceptualises cityness through the lens of ‘publicness’. It makes an original contribution to knowledge by developing a new theoretical model of publicness as an ‘assemblage’ of space and behaviour, with an ‘emergent’ and ‘civic’ modality. It thereby extends recent debates over the idea of ‘urban assemblage’, and makes innovative links between theories of planning and of the public. This model informs the analysis of original empirical research, investigating the conceptualisation of the public in an international sample of official eco-city documents, and exploring the publicness of two implemented initiatives, in Portland, Oregon (US) and newly built Sejong City (South Korea).
The research finds that publicness tends to be poorly articulated in mainstream eco-city plans and policies, with potentially negative implications for sustainability in the ‘urban age’. However, it also argues that state institution-led planning – even when experimental ‘governance’ approaches are adopted – may inevitably be limited in its ability to encompass the emergent public life of the city. The thesis concludes by considering the prospects for overcoming or more productively acknowledging these limits in future.
Theology and Science, 2019
I argue that programmes of Mars colonization might usefully be guided by a consideration of “Mart... more I argue that programmes of Mars colonization might usefully be guided by a consideration of “Martian Rights”. I outline four categories of possible rights which would need to be guaranteed, depending on the precise nature of the colonization: those directly transferable from existing human rights, new rights, rights in need of modification, and the rights of Mars itself. Debates over Martian Rights should not be deferred until the technological challenges of supporting human life on Mars have been resolved. Rather, they have the potential to usefully inform the development of relevant space technologies.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2019
The paper analyses the varieties of smart urbanism to be found in the contemporary urban landscap... more The paper analyses the varieties of smart urbanism to be found in the contemporary urban landscape in the UK. In so doing, it builds on and extends two currently dominant sets of critiques of the smart city: those that call into question its technocratic and top‐down modes of governance, and those that describe the smart city as an empty signifier. The paper makes sense of the UK's variegated local smart urban practices by tracing the emergence of a national, state‐led cultural economy of smart urbanism. Based on an analysis of smart‐city programmes in 34 UK cities, we identify two broad discursive logics through which varieties of smart urbanism are produced and performed. First, the invocation of crisis
forms a discursive foundation on which place‐specific logics are based. Second, sets of what we term variegated logics are differently combined to build on the “foundational story” of crisis in the construction of local smart agendas. We discuss three of these variegated logics: the city portrayed as technological simulacrum; the focus on specific sectoral activities; and a chameleonic tendency to envelop previous eco‐urban agendas into smart urbanism. By making these logics visible, the paper opens up a new critical space for debate about alternative future pathways that smart cities might take.
The paper analyses the varieties of smart urbanism to be found in the contemporary urban landscap... more The paper analyses the varieties of smart urbanism to be found in the contemporary urban landscape in the UK. In so doing, it builds on and extends two currently dominant sets of critiques of the smart city: those that call into question its technocratic and top-down modes of governance, and those that describe the smart city as an empty signifier. The paper makes sense of the UK’s variegated local smart urban practices, by tracing the emergence of a national, state-led cultural economy of smart urbanism. Based on an analysis of smart city programmes in 34 UK cities, we identify two broad discursive logics through a national variation of smart urbanism is produced and performed. First, the invocation of crisis forms a discursive foundation on which place-specific logics are based. Second, a set of what we term variegated logics are differently combined to build on the ‘foundational story’ of crisis, in the construction of local smart agendas. We discuss three of these variegated logics: the city portrayed as technological simulacrum; the focus on specific sectoral activities; and a chameleonic tendency to envelop previous eco-urban agendas into smart urbanism. The critical questions raise by these UK-specific logics demonstrate the value of considering particular multi-scalar constellations of smart urbanism through a cultural economy lens.
Critical commentaries have often treated the smart city as a potentially problematic 'top down' t... more Critical commentaries have often treated the smart city as a potentially problematic 'top down' tendency within policy-making and urban planning, which appears to serve the interests of already powerful corporate and political actors. This article, however, positions the smart city as significant in its implicit rejection of the strong normativity of traditional technologies of planning, in favour of an ontology of efficiency and emergence. It explores a series of prominent UK smart city initiatives (in Bristol, Manchester and Milton Keynes) as bundles of experimental local practices , drawing on the literature pointing to a growing valorisation of the 'experimental' over strong policy commitments in urban governance. It departs from this literature, however, by reading contemporary 'smart experiments' through Shapin and Schafer's work on the emergence of 17th-century science, to advance a transhistorical understanding of experimentation as oriented towards societal reordering. From this perspective, the UK smart city merits attention primarily as an indicator of a wider set of shifts in approaches to governance. Its pragmatic orientation sits uneasily alongside ambitions to 'standardise' smart and sustainable urban development ; and raises questions about the conscious overlap between the stated practical ambitions of smart city initiatives and pre-existing environmental and social policies.
Critical commentaries have often treated the smart city as a potentially problematic ‘top down’ t... more Critical commentaries have often treated the smart city as a potentially problematic ‘top down’ tendency within policy-making and urban planning, which appears to serve the interests of already powerful corporate and political actors. This article, however, positions the smart city as significant in its implicit rejection of the strong normativity of traditional technologies of planning, in favour of an ontology of efficiency and emergence. It explores a series of prominent UK smart city initiatives (in Bristol, Manchester and Milton Keynes) as bundles of experimental local practices, drawing on the literature pointing to a growing valorisation of the ‘experimental’ over strong policy commitments in urban governance. It departs from this literature, however, by reading contemporary ‘smart experiments’ through Shapin and Schafer’s work on the emergence of 17th-century science, to advance a transhistorical understanding of experimentation as oriented
towards societal reordering. From this perspective, the UK smart city merits attention primarily as an indicator of a wider set of shifts in approaches to governance. Its pragmatic orientation sits uneasily alongside ambitions to ‘standardise’ smart and sustainable urban development; and raises questions about the conscious overlap between the stated practical ambitions of smart city initiatives and pre-existing environmental and social policies.
Cowley, R. and Caprotti, F. (accepted for publication 2018). 'Smart City as Anti-Planning in the UK'. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.
Cities have become a focal point for efforts to transition towards a more sustainable, low-carbon... more Cities have become a focal point for efforts to transition towards a more sustainable, low-carbon society, with many municipal agencies championing ‘eco city’ initiatives of one kind or another. And yet, national policy initiatives frequently play an important – if sometimes overlooked – role, too. This chapters provides comparative perspectives on four recent national sustainable city programmes from France, India, Japan, and the United Kingdom. The analysis reveals two key insights: first, national policy is found to exercise a strong shaping role in what sustainable development for future cities is understood to be, which helps explain the considerable differences in priorities and approaches across countries. Second, beyond articulating strategic priorities,
national policy may exercise a ‘soft’ governance function by incentivising and facilitating wider, voluntary governance networks in the effort to implement sustainable city projects locally. This innovative role, however, depends on the ability of national policy to produce resonance among societal actors and on its effective interaction with formal planning processes.
Joss, S. & Cowley, R. (2017). National policies for local urban sustainability: a new governance approach? In Eames, M., Dixon, T., Hunt, M., and Lannon, S. (eds.) Retrofitting Cities for Tomorrow’s World. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN: 978-1119007210.
Commentaries on future-oriented Chinese urban development tend to focus on showcase projects unde... more Commentaries on future-oriented Chinese urban development tend to focus on showcase projects underway in wealthy coastal cities. This chapter instead sheds light on the way that the smart has been integrated into more ‘ordinary’ Chinese urban life, using the case of Wuhan, a ‘Tier II’ city in Central China. It explores the conditions of the emergence of Wuhan’s smart city activities from three perspectives. First, it outlines a series of ‘vertical’ enabling factors, whereby an international body of discourse and practice has been ‘translated’ into national Chinese urban policies. Second, it considers the simultaneous significance of ‘horizontal’ links between Wuhan’s local government, city governments abroad, local private enterprises, and foreign firms. Third, it relates Wuhan’s smart credentials to a broader process of digitalisation of everyday life in the city. It concludes by reflecting on the distinctive characteristics of Chinese smart urbanism, as exemplified by Wuhan, and finally draws out some implications for future research into smart cities elsewhere. Specifically, it proposes that the smart city is most usefully approached as a shifting and locally inflected concept which not only channels multiple policy agendas, but also reflects broader changes to urban space and governance in particular contexts.
Cowley, R., Caprotti, F., Ferretti, M. and Zhong, C. (forthcoming 2018). Ordinary Chinese Smart Cities: The Case of Wuhan. In Karvonen, A., Cugurullo, F. and Caprotti, F. (eds) Inside Smart Cities: Place, Politics and Urban Innovation. London: Routledge.
The media coverage of Hurricane Harvey's impact on the city of Houston in August 2017 reveals an ... more The media coverage of Hurricane Harvey's impact on the city of Houston in August 2017 reveals an 'Anthropocenic' sensibility, which tends to deny our ability to solve pressing environmental and social problems through strong and direct human action. This sensibility is reflected at city level in new forms of governance, exemplified here with reference to resilience , smart urbanism, and design-thinking. These have in common a cautious, inductive logic of change; their limited imaginations of space and time imply a dispersed sense of human agency. But if these new rationalities are unlikely to yield convincing solutions to problems such as Hurricane Harvey, perhaps there is a need to rethink the dominant framing of the Anthropocene, which underpins them.
The policy pointers presented in this report are the result of a three-year (2015-18) research pr... more The policy pointers presented in this report are the result of a three-year (2015-18) research project led by Federico Caprotti at the University of Exeter. The project, Smart Eco-Cities for a Green Economy: A Comparative Analysis of Europe and China, was delivered by a research consortium comprising scholars and researchers in the UK, China, the Netherlands, France, and Germany. The aim of the project was to investigate the way in which smart city and eco-city strategies are used to enable a transition towards digital and green economies.
Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses, 2017
This forum aims to encourage theorists of resilience to engage more closely with different aspect... more This forum aims to encourage theorists of resilience to engage more
closely with different aspects of design theory and practice. The
introduction outlines a series of largely unacknowledged parallels
between resilience and design, relating to the valorisation of processes
over states, the loss of faith in ‘planning’, the ambivalent status of
boundaries and interfaces, and open-ended political possibilities.
Four short reflections then follow on various design-related topics:
the significance of the ‘wicked problem’ in contemporary urban
planning and design, and the urbanisation of responsibility; design’s
potential to repoliticise and engender new forms of responsibility; the
significance of the digital interface; and the condition of everyday life
in the ‘unplanned’ post-colonial city. Readers are invited to build on
or refute the explicit and implicit links made between resilience and
design in the various forum contributions.
The UN-HABITAT III conference held in Quito in late 2016 enshrined the first Sustainable Developm... more The UN-HABITAT III conference held in Quito in late 2016 enshrined the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) with an exclusively urban focus. SDG 11, as it became known, aims to make cities more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable through a range of metrics, indicators, and evaluation systems. It also became part of a post-Quito 'New Urban Agenda' that is still taking shape. This paper raises questions around the potential for reductionism in this new agenda, and argues for the reflexive need to be aware of the types of urban space that are potentially sidelined by the new trends in global urban policy.
Urban Research & Practice, 2013
The global mainstreaming of urban sustainability policy, since the early 2000s, points to a new p... more The global mainstreaming of urban sustainability policy, since the early 2000s, points to a new phenomenon: the ‘ubiquitous eco-city’. Its key features – based on the analysis of a census of 178 initiatives – include: the significant, global proliferation of eco-city initiatives; increased international knowledge transfer activities involving both public and private actors; the centrality of ‘carbon discourse’ guiding concepts, policy and practice; the marrying of ‘green’ with ‘smart’ technological systems; and a focus on achieving environmental innovation through economic growth. Among the implications is the need to moderate the ‘ubiquitous eco-city’ paradigm with strong local contextualisation and social sustainability measures.
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 17535069 2012 762216, Jan 18, 2013
ABSTRACT
Urban Research & Practice, 2013
ABSTRACT
A growing body of critical literature seeks to identify conceptual and practical problems accompa... more A growing body of critical literature seeks to identify conceptual and practical problems accompanying the realisation of mainstream ‘eco-city’ initiatives around the world. However, little attention has been paid to the status of the ‘city’ itself within the broader discourse. If eco-cities are to be more than experimental ‘technological showcases’, and aim to transform urban life more generally, the question of what types of ‘cityness’ will ensue is of considerable importance. To effect a more significant sustainability transition, eco-city plans and policies may need somehow to encompass a more nuanced conceptualisation of cities as complex, unpredictable, and emergent spaces. The incompatibility of such a conceptualisation with liberal-modernist modes of planning means that radically innovative new approaches to eco-city development may need to be found.
This thesis considers whether the eco-city, theorised as a multiple process of real-world experimentation, may shed some light on how ‘cityness’ might better be planned for in future. To do so, it conceptualises cityness through the lens of ‘publicness’. It makes an original contribution to knowledge by developing a new theoretical model of publicness as an ‘assemblage’ of space and behaviour, with an ‘emergent’ and ‘civic’ modality. It thereby extends recent debates over the idea of ‘urban assemblage’, and makes innovative links between theories of planning and of the public. This model informs the analysis of original empirical research, investigating the conceptualisation of the public in an international sample of official eco-city documents, and exploring the publicness of two implemented initiatives, in Portland, Oregon (US) and newly built Sejong City (South Korea).
The research finds that publicness tends to be poorly articulated in mainstream eco-city plans and policies, with potentially negative implications for sustainability in the ‘urban age’. However, it also argues that state institution-led planning – even when experimental ‘governance’ approaches are adopted – may inevitably be limited in its ability to encompass the emergent public life of the city. The thesis concludes by considering the prospects for overcoming or more productively acknowledging these limits in future.
In response to policy-makers' increasing claims to prioritise 'people' in smart city development,... more In response to policy-makers' increasing claims to prioritise 'people' in smart city development, we explore the publicness of emerging practices across six UK cities: Bristol, Glasgow, London, Manchester, Milton Keynes, and Peterborough. Local smart city programmes are analysed as techno-public assemblages invoking varie-gated modalities of publicness. Our findings challenge the dystopian speculative critiques of the smart city, while nevertheless indicating the dominance of 'entrepre-neurial' and 'service user' modes of the public. We highlight the risk of bifurcation within smart city assemblages, such that the 'civic' and 'political' roles of the public become siloed into less obdurate strands of programmatic activity.
The UN-HABITAT III conference held in Quito in late 2016 enshrined the first Sustainable Developm... more The UN-HABITAT III conference held in Quito in late 2016 enshrined the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) with an exclusively urban focus. SDG 11, as it became known, aims to make cities more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable through a range of metrics, indicators, and evaluation systems. It also became part of a post-Quito 'New Urban Agenda' that is still taking shape. This paper raises questions around the potential for reductionism in this new agenda, and argues for the reflexive need to be aware of the types of urban space that are potentially sidelined by the new trends in global urban policy.
This research report presents the findings of an ongoing multi-centre comparative analysis of ‘sm... more This research report presents the findings of an ongoing multi-centre comparative analysis of ‘smart-eco city’ initiatives in the UK. The ‘smart-eco city’ concept captures the recent trend for future-oriented urban development schemes that display both ‘green’ and ‘smart’ ambitions. More precisely, the smart eco-city is defined here as an experimental city, functioning as a potential niche for testing and introducing environmental and economic reforms. The report forms part of an ESRC-funded research project titled SMART ECO-CITIES FOR A GREEN ECONOMY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EUROPE AND CHINA, coordinated by the University of Exeter in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of researchers from King’s College London, the Universities of Westminster, Plymouth and Cardiff. The international partnership includes research teams in China, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
A Manifesto for Governing Life on Mars, 2019
This manifesto responds to the recent expansion of human-led activities in space, high-profile de... more This manifesto responds to the recent expansion of human-led activities in space, high-profile declarations of ambitions to develop settlements on Mars, and growing media interest in these developments. Its purpose is to provoke a richer set of debates in mainstream thinking about the social and political dimensions of establishing a permanent human presence on Mars. It outlines some basic parameters for thinking about the governance of Martian society, and then flags up some key topics for debate: economics, the Martian natural environment, dealing with dissent among Martian inhabitants, reproduction, the built environment, and education. It ends by considering the possibility that future settlement will need to be supported by a guaranteed bill of Martian Rights.
This report builds on a side event at the Ninth Session of the UN-Habitat World Urban Forum (WUF9... more This report builds on a side event at the Ninth Session of the UN-Habitat World Urban Forum (WUF9), held in Kuala Lumpur, 8-13 February 2018. The side event aimed to stimulate discussion around the potential for ‘urban experiments’ to contribute to the implementation of the New Urban Agenda. It summarises some of the key learnings from the audience discussion and feedback.
![Research paper thumbnail of 中国与欧洲的智慧生态城市：2016年发展趋势与城 市摘要 [Smart-Eco Cities in Europe and China: Trends and City Profiles 2016]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/54757027/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Chinese-language overview report of smart-eco urban development in China, France, Holland and the UK
Journal of Urban Affairs, 2020
Around the world, local innovations in the management and development of urban space are often si... more Around the world, local innovations in the management and development of urban space are often significantly shaped by national government competitions. This article argues that the competition is a characteristic but underdiscussed feature of contemporary national policymaking on urban innovation, and considers how such competitions might be more constructively implemented in the future. It does so by closely tracing the outcomes of one paradigmatic example: the UK’s Future City Demonstrator competition, launched in 2012, which awarded funding to four cities (Glasgow, Bristol, Peterborough, and London) to implement their proposals. The analysis offers lessons for similar competitions by highlighting six factors which co-determined the implementation and outcome of this initiative: asserting the need for speed; conflating export opportunities with local benefits; focusing on the need for institutional reform; reliance on cross-sectoral collaboration; positioning the city as a platform for digital solutions; and a lack of integration at the national level. Relatedly, we urge commentators to adopt a critical distance from justificatory assertions of urgent urban crisis and local governments being straightforwardly in need of reform.