Technology continues to unlock new ways for Americans to live and work. To illustrate these changes, this broadside explores the promise of online platforms such as Uber and Airbnb. Unfortunately, instead of embracing innovation, many cities insist on applying antiquated regulations or completely banning these new services to protect special interests—at the expense of workers and consumers. These fights go far beyond the sharing economy. To promote the benefits of new technology, it is time for states to step up and overrule cities when local policies threaten innovation. If cities are going to remain a driving force for economic progress, then states need to save so-called progressive cities from themselves.
This book is an outcome of the conference 'Urban Innovation: Working Solutions to the Problems of Human Settlement' held in 1977. It focuses on urban innovations as working alternatives that reflect an institutional capacity to adapt complex human systems in response to basic environmental change.
This book explores the leading role that cities can play in shaping progressive policies in collaboration with various stakeholders. It examines the timing of such shifts to progressivity in cities, the interactions that enable progressive actions to be developed and sustained, and the challenges and constraints facing progressive cities. The book approaches the themes using an array of methods to investigate how progressive city governments emerge, what constitutes a “progressive city” in terms of governance institutions, processes and outcomes and whether progressive cities are destined to be ephemeral or if they can be sustained over time. With its focus on the emerging role of local governments in shaping city futures, this book is useful for students, academics, government official and policy makers interested in geography, sociology, urban planning, public policy, political economy, social movements, participatory democracy and Asian and European studies.
Smart Cities for Technological and Social Innovation establishes a key theoretical framework to understand the implementation and development of smart cities as innovation drivers, in terms of lasting impacts on productivity, livability and sustainability of specific initiatives. This framework is based on empirical analysis of 12 case studies, including pioneer projects from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and more. It explores how successful smart cities initiatives nurture both technological and social innovation using a combination of regulatory governance and private agency. Typologies of smart city-making approaches are explored in depth. Integrative analysis identifies key success factors in establishing innovation relating to the effectiveness of social systems, institutional thickness, governance, the role of human capital, and streamlining funding of urban development projects. Cases from a range of geographies, scales, social and economic contexts Explores how smart cities can promote technological and social innovation in terms of direct impacts on livability, productivity and sustainability Establishes an integrative framework based on empirical evidence to develop more innovative smart city initiatives Investigates the role of governments in coordinating, fostering and guiding innovations resulting from smart city developments Interrogates the policies and governance structures which have been effective in supporting the development and deployment of smart cities
Das Energiekonzept und die Beschlüsse der Bundesregierung zur Energiewende sind wichtige Weichenstellungen für die Gestaltung des zukünftigen Energiesystems. So soll u. a. die Energieeffizienz in dem Maße gesteigert werden, dass bis zum Jahr 2050 nur noch die Hälfte des Primärenergieverbrauchs im Vergleich zum Jahr 2008 benötigt wird. In Deutschland leben rund 75 % der Menschen in Städten. Daher sind Städte und Agglomerationen besondere Lebens-, Wirtschafts- und Kulturräume. Als solche verlangen sie nach einem zukunftsfähigen Energiesystem und müssen in hohem Maße energieeffizient ausgestaltet sein. Besonders relevant für die Steigerung der Energieeffizienz ist der Gebäudesektor: In den Wohn- und Nichtwohngebäuden bundesweit entstehen rund 35 % des Endenergieverbrauchs, etwa drei Viertel davon in Form von Wärme. Die von der Bundesregierung beschlossene Energiewende, also der Umbau der deutschen Energieversorgung auf Basis hoher Effizienz und mit weitgehender Nutzung erneuerbarer Energien, kann deshalb nur gelingen, wenn diese Wende nicht nur im Strom-, sondern auch im Wärmemarkt umgesetzt wird (sogenannte "Wärmewende"). Mit Blick auf das energie- und klimapolitische Ziel eines nahezu klimaneutralen Gebäudebestands bis zum Jahr 2050 sind neben einer gesteigerten Energieeffizienz die erneuerbaren Energien in weit größerem Maße in den Wärmesektor zu integrieren. Städte und Agglomerationen bieten aufgrund der großen Hebelwirkung die Möglichkeit, technologische und gesellschaftliche Innovationen ungleich schneller und wirksamer in die Praxis umzusetzen und damit die energiepolitischen Ziele der Bundesregierung zu erfüllen.
Bridge Maintenance, Safety, Management, Life-Cycle Sustainability and Innovations contains lectures and papers presented at the Tenth International Conference on Bridge Maintenance, Safety and Management (IABMAS 2020), held in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan, April 11–15, 2021. This volume consists of a book of extended abstracts and a USB card containing the full papers of 571 contributions presented at IABMAS 2020, including the T.Y. Lin Lecture, 9 Keynote Lectures, and 561 technical papers from 40 countries. The contributions presented at IABMAS 2020 deal with the state of the art as well as emerging concepts and innovative applications related to the main aspects of maintenance, safety, management, life-cycle sustainability and technological innovations of bridges. Major topics include: advanced bridge design, construction and maintenance approaches, safety, reliability and risk evaluation, life-cycle management, life-cycle sustainability, standardization, analytical models, bridge management systems, service life prediction, maintenance and management strategies, structural health monitoring, non-destructive testing and field testing, safety, resilience, robustness and redundancy, durability enhancement, repair and rehabilitation, fatigue and corrosion, extreme loads, and application of information and computer technology and artificial intelligence for bridges, among others. This volume provides both an up-to-date overview of the field of bridge engineering and significant contributions to the process of making more rational decisions on maintenance, safety, management, life-cycle sustainability and technological innovations of bridges for the purpose of enhancing the welfare of society. The Editors hope that these Proceedings will serve as a valuable reference to all concerned with bridge structure and infrastructure systems, including engineers, researchers, academics and students from all areas of bridge engineering.
This volume analyzes sustainability-related innovations in the building sector and discusses how regional contexts articulate transition trajectories toward green building. It presents ‘biographies’ of drivers and processes of green building innovation in four case studies: Brisbane (AUS), Freiburg (GER), Luxembourg (LU), and Vancouver (CA). Two of them are relatively well known for their initiatives to mitigate climate change – particularly in the building sector, whereas the other two have only recently become more active in promoting green building. The volume places emphasis on development paths, learning processes, and innovations. The focus of the case studies is not restricted to purely technological aspects but also integrates regulatory, procedural, institutional, and other processes and routines and their influence on the variations of the building sector. The diversity of the selected case studies offers the reader the opportunity to gain a thorough understanding of how sustainability developments have unfolded in different city regions. Case study-specific catalogues of transition paths provide insights to inform policy debates and planning processes. The catalogues identify crucial innovations (technological, regulatory, etc.) and explain the factors and circumstances that have led to their success and broader acceptance in Freiburg, Vancouver, Luxembourg, and Brisbane. With the help of a number of micro case studies within each of the four city regions, the case studies also offer ground for comparison and identification of differences. The book represents the outcome of the GreenRegio project, which stands for ‘Green building in regional strategies for sustainability: multi-actor governance and innovative building technologies in Europe, Australia, and Canada.’ GreenRegio was a 3-year CORE-INTER research project funded by the National Research Fund Luxembourg (FNR) and the German Research Foundation (DFG).
Drawing upon the smart experiences of "world class" cities in North America, Canada and Europe, this book provides the evidence to show how entrepreneurship-based and market-dependent representations of knowledge production are now being replaced with a community of policy makers, academic leaders, corporate strategists and growth management alliances, with the potential to liberate cities from the stagnation which they have previously been locked into by offering communities: the freedom to develop polices, with the leadership and strategies capable of reaching beyond the idea of "creative slack"; a process of reinvention, whereby cities become "smarter," in using intellectual capital to not only meet the efficiency requirements of wealth creation, but to become centres of creative slack; the political leadership capable of not only being economically innovative, or culturally creative, but enterprising in opening-up, reflexively absorbing and discursively shaping the democratic governance of such developments; the democratic governance to sustain such developments. Drawing together the critical insights from papers from a collection of leading international experts on the transition to smart cities, this book proposes to do what has recently been asked of those responsible for creating Smarter Cities. That is: provide the definitional components, critical insights and institutional means by which to get beyond the all too often self-congratulatory tone cities across the world strike when claiming to be smart and by focussing on the critical role master-plans and design codes play in supporting the sustainable development of communities. This book was published as a special issue of Urban Technology.
The Routledge Companion to Smart Cities explores the question of what it means for a city to be ‘smart’, raises some of the tensions emerging in smart city developments and considers the implications for future ways of inhabiting and understanding the urban condition. The volume draws together a critical and cross-disciplinary overview of the emerging topic of smart cities and explores it from a range of theoretical and empirical viewpoints. This timely book brings together key thinkers and projects from a wide range of fields and perspectives into one volume to provide a valuable resource that would enable the reader to take their own critical position within the topic. To situate the topic of the smart city for the reader and establish key concepts, the volume sets out the various interpretations and aspects of what constitutes and defines smart cities. It investigates and considers the range of factors that shape the characteristics of smart cities and draws together different disciplinary perspectives. The consideration of what shapes the smart city is explored through discussing three broad ‘parts’ – issues of governance, the nature of urban development and how visions are realised – and includes chapters that draw on empirical studies to frame the discussion with an understanding not just of the nature of the smart city but also how it is studied, understood and reflected upon. The Companion will appeal to academics and advanced undergraduates and postgraduates from across many disciplines including Urban Studies, Geography, Urban Planning, Sociology and Architecture, by providing state of the art reviews of key themes by leading scholars in the field, arranged under clearly themed sections.
