Dear All,

I am pleased to have the opportunity to invite you to the Manchester EPIC project workshop on Tuesday 29th March 2011, here at MDDA Offices.

‘The EPIC platform will combine the industrial strengths of IBM’s ‘Smart City’ vision and cloud computing infrastructure with the knowledge and expertise of leading European Living Labs… to ensure the development of a European ‘innovation ecosystem’ for sustainable user-driven web-based services for citizens and businesses.’ (EPIC, 2010)

The purpose of the workshop is to communicate the SMART City concept and demonstrate the Manchester EPIC pilot, energyhive, to a representative stakeholder community from the City.

energyhive is an energy monitoring product, which allows users to view the household’s energy consumption via a web-based dashboard. The product collates household data at regular intervals via a number of energy monitoring units from within the home, this data can then be stored on a cloud-based storage system.

The workshop will allow the EPIC team to highlight the environmental and technological benefits of using cloud-based approaches to support sustainable web-based services and products.

see more here

Welcome to 2011 Spaces and Flows: An International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies. The conference will be held at the Monash University Prato Centre, Prato, Italy from 17-18 November 2011.

This conference aims to critically engage the contemporary and ongoing spatial, social, ideological, and political transformations in a transnational, global, and neoliberal world. In a process-oriented world of flows and movement, we posit, the global north and global south now simultaneously converge and diverse in a dialectic that shapes and transforms cities, suburbs, and rural areas. This conference addresses the mapping of, the nature of, and the forces that propel these processural changes.

Read More

A JOINT EDF DIVERSITERRE FOUNDATION/CITY ON THE MOVE INSTITUTE EXHIBITION

What are the major challenges facing urbanism today? What new compromises does it need to make? How can individual desires – for space, urban intensity and nature, access to all the resources of the city – be reconciled with the demands of sustainability? Going to the heart of the public debate and of our concerns as citizens, this exhibition was first presented at the EDF Diversiterre Foundation in Paris in October 2009/March 2010, then in Mulhouse in October 2010/February 2011 and will be at Espace Bazacle in Toulouse from March 30 to June 12, 2011. Read More

The conference will be held at Manchester Metropolitan University – where the GSA was first established in 2000 – in conjunction with the Department of Sociology.

Two of our keynote speakers have already been arranged. They are:
Professor Richard Giulianotti, Durham University who has written extensively on globalization and sport, especially football, and Professor Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College, Boston, USA, who has published extensively on transnational migrants.

In addition we invite scholars, postgraduates and other interested and informed lay-persons to submit abstracts by May 31st, 2011. We also hope to publish one or more books consisting of the most interesting readings drawn from the conference. Read More

*a symposium, University of Manchester, **September 24-25, 2010* **

*The event is hosted by the University of Manchester and supported by the
Hallsworth Fund, the Institute for Political and Economic Governance (IPEG),
and the ESRC Centre for Economic and Social Change (CRESC).***

The financial crisis of 2007-2009 is the biggest shock to have hit the
global economy since the Great Depression.

The collapse and government takeover or rescue of leading international
financial institutions in the US and Europe pointed to a systemic failure of
‘sophisticated self-regulating markets’ which was an essential component of
the Greenspan doctrine of fiscal laissez-faire that underpinned not only US
economic policy but that of the international financial community as whole.

But if the events of recent years point to a global crisis in the operation
of the international finance system, the crisis has a much longer history
and much wider implications than the investment-banking sector.

At the heart of this broader crisis of global capitalism are cities, and the
billions of people who now live and work in them.

Nearly all US sub-prime mortgage loans were sold to low-income urban and
suburban householders. High levels of business failures and unemployment are
compounding an already difficult situation for city administrations that
face record levels of debt and heavily reduced tax revenues. Federal and
national governments appear to lack the will or the resources to ‘bail out
the cities’ in the way they have the banks and ‘strategically important’
corporations.

As national governments gear up for a sustained period of major retrenchment
which will impact heavily on public services and those dependent on public
sector jobs and contracts in the world’s towns and cities, this symposium
will explore whether we are entering a new phase in the governance and
political life of cities in which both state-centric and market-centric
models are seen as inadequate to the challenges that cities and their
populations face in the decades ahead.

The symposium will therefore focus on three key themes:

·         What impact has the global financial crisis had particularly on
‘second tier’ cities and urban regions such as Manchester and the North-West
of England?

·         How is the crisis of private capital investment and public sector
spending cuts affecting the governance and economic viability of cities?

·         What are the actually existing alternatives to market-based urban
governance in different national contexts and what are the prospects for a
wider diffusion of alternative models in the core economies of the United
Kingdom and the United States?

This event will take place at the Chancellors Hotel and Conference centre on
the 24th and 25th September. If you would like to attend this conference
there are a limited number of places and these will be allocated on a first
come, first served basis, so please complete the attached registration form
and forward back to stacey.vigars@manchester.ac.uk If you require
accommodation then please let me know and I will be happy to make some
suggestions.

Best wishes

Stacey Vigars
Centre Secretary
Centre for Research in Socio-Cultural Change
University of Manchester
178 Waterloo Place
Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9PL
Tel: 0161 275 8985
Fax: 0161 275 8986

Urban Affaires Anual Conference

41st Conference
Reclaiming the City: Building a Just and Sustainable Future
New Orleans, Louisiana
Sheraton New Orleans Hotel
March 16-19, 2011

Rebuilding efforts–in New Orleans, Port au Prince and other parts of the world– provide an opportunity to examine the paths selected for public policy and private investment, and how these decisions shape the future of urban places. Six years after the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is in the midst of a large-scale rebuilding effort and redefinition of place. Powerful dynamics at the local, regional, national and international levels filter various values and interests to yield a powerful development logic. This logic determines the nature of change, its impacts, and most importantly, who benefits and who ultimately pays. New Orleans provides a dramatic and significant context to examine the processes and outcomes of change. However, developmental change in New Orleans has much in common with transformative processes that occur in other urban places. Critical perspectives suggest that change and transformation of cities across the globe, increasingly favors private capital, large institutions, and visitors. This bias poses certain challenges to the possibility of building a just and sustainable future for cities. The conference is an invitation to consider a broad range of concepts and strategies for rebuilding that can yield urban futures that are both equitable and sustainable. The challenges embedded in seeking such futures are significant. The conference will seek to identify ways to overcome those barriers while reclaiming the city.

In keeping with the tradition of UAA Annual Meetings, we encourage proposals that focus on the conference theme as well as submissions on the array of research topics typically found at UAA conferences:

• Arts, Culture, Media
• Disaster Planning for Urban Areas, Disaster Management, Emergency Preparedness, Cities and Security
• Economic Development, Redevelopment, Tourism, Urban Economics, Urban Finance
• Education, Schools, Universities
• Environmental Issues, Sustainability, Urban Health, Technology and Society
• Globalization, International Urban Issues
• Governance, Intergovernmental Relations, Regionalism, Urban Management
• Historic Preservation, Space and Place
• Housing, Neighborhoods, Community Development
• Human/Social Services, Nonprofit Sector
• Immigration, Population and Demographic Trends
• Infrastructure, Capital Projects, Networks, Transport, Urban Services
• Labor, Employment, Wages, Training
• Land Use, Growth Management, Urban Development, Urban Planning
• Poverty, Welfare, Income Inequality
• Professional Development, The Field of Urban Affairs
• Public Safety in Urban Areas, Criminal Justice, Household Violence
• Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Diversity
• Social Capital, Democracy and Civil Society, Social Theory, Religion and the City
• Urban Design, Urban Architecture
• Urban Indicators, Data/Methods, Satisfaction/Quality of Life Surveys
• Urban Politics, Elections, Citizen Participation
• Urban Theory, Theoretical and Conceptual Issues in Urban Affairs

Proposal Deadline—October 1, 2010

This call for abstracts may interest the IAPS communities, and others active in people and environment research.

Please kindly circulate widely to colleagues.

Associate Editors, Ombretta Romice, and Sergio Porta

Publisher: Bentham Science Publishers

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

Bentham Science Publishers plans to publish a new e-book titled: “The Role of Place Identity in the Perception, Understanding, and Design of the Built Environment”  to be edited by Dr. Hernan Casakin, Dr. Ombretta Romice, and Dr. Sergio Porta.

Background

In the era of globalization, where the progressive deterioration of local values is a dominating characteristic, identity is seen as a fundamental need that encompasses all aspects of human life. Identity in relation to places and the physical environment is one of those. To these regards, identity is the basis of perception, experience, and appreciation of the built form. It allows people to develop a sense of belonging and attachment in relation to a place and its spatial features, and brings together people around shared values, issues and localities.

While place identity constitutes a significant theme for debate, the relationship between identity, place, architecture, and urbanism still deserves more attention. The book aims at developing knowledge in relation to place identity, focusing both on people’s identity, and related factors which play a part in this process, and most of all on a science of identity in the built environment, across a multifaceted and multicultural society.

Researchers from a variety of disciplines including environmental psychology, semiotics, urban sociology/ecological sociology, geography, urban planning, urban design, architecture, or landscape architecture are invited to contribute.

Send an abstract (about 800 words) as a Word attachment, a brief list of references, and a short biography (about 100-150 words) to Dr. Hernan Casakin (email: casakin@bezeqint.net) with “submission Place Identity and Perception of Built Environment” in the subject line.

Deadline: June 20, 2010

Selected candidates will be contacted with a request for full articles and additional information will be provided at that time.

Due date for full articles will be e/o October 2010.

Sincerely,

Hernan, Ombretta, and Sergio

Dr. Hernan Casakin, architect.

Ariel University Center of Samaria

Department of Architecture

P.O. Box 3, 44837  Ariel, Israel.

Telephone/Fax: +972-9-7660756

Email. casakin@bezeqint.net

Crime and Social Justice research group seminar

Manchester Metropolitan University

All Saints Campus

Dr Joe Yates and Dr Janet Jamieson, Liverpool John Moores University
‘Section 30 Dispersal Powers: Youth, Ethnicity and the Policing of Social Space in a Northern City’
Wedesday 24 February  at 2pm in GM223

lunchtime talk by Professor Ida Susser, Ph.D., Anthropology Department, Graduate Center, CUNY

2 March 2010, 12-2pm, CRESC Seminar Room, 178 Waterloo Place.

You are welcome to bring your lunch and we will provide tea, coffee and biscuits.

For further details including abstract, please see our website

http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/ricc/events/index.html

Please RSVP to caitriona.devery@manchester.ac.uk to help us with numbers for catering.