Sustainable Urban Futures in Africa: Concepts, Practices and Prospects

The COVID-19 pandemic has put lifestyles in question, changed daily routines, and limited citizen freedoms that seemed inalienable before. A human activity that has been greatly affected since the beginning of the health crisis is mobility. Focusing on mobility, we aim to discuss the transformational impact that the pandemic brought to this specific urban domain, especially with regards to the promotion of sustainability, the smart growth agenda, and the acceleration towards the smart city paradigm. We collect 60 initial policy responses related to urban mobility from cities around the world and analyze them based on the challenge they aim to address, the exact principles of smart growth and sustainable mobility that they encapsulate, as well as the level of ICT penetration. Our findings suggest that emerging strategies, although mainly temporary, are transformational, in line with the principles of smart growth and sustainable development. Most policy responses adopted during the first months of the pandemic, however, fail to leverage advancements made in the field of smart cities, and to adopt off-the-shelf solutions such as monitoring, alerting, and operations management.

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Urban specters

Environment and Planning D Society and Space ◽

10.1177/02637758211030286 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 026377582110302

Author(s):

Asha Best ◽

Margaret M Ramírez

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Black Women ◽

Urban Space ◽

Women Artists ◽

Social Life ◽

The United States ◽

Spatial Method ◽

Urban Futures ◽

Black Life ◽

The Relationship

In this piece, we take up haunting as a spatial method to consider what geography can learn from ghosts. Following Avery Gordon’s theorizations of haunting as a sociological method, a consideration of the spectral offers a means of reckoning with the shadows of social life that are not always readily apparent. Drawing upon art installations in Brooklyn, NY, White Shoes (2012–2016), and Oakland, CA, House/Full of BlackWomen (2015–present), we find that in both installations, Black women artists perform hauntings, threading geographies of race, sex, and speculation across past and present. We observe how these installations operate through spectacle, embodiment, and temporal disjuncture, illuminating how Black life and labor have been central to the construction of property and urban space in the United States. In what follows, we explore the following questions: what does haunting reveal about the relationship between property, personhood, and the urban in a time of racial banishment? And the second, how might we think of haunting as a mode of refusing displacement, banishment, and archival erasure as a way of imagining “livable” urban futures in which Black life is neither static nor obsolete?

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Out of the loop? On the radical and the routine in urban big data

Urban Studies ◽

10.1177/00420980211014026 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 004209802110140

Author(s):

Sarah Barns

Keyword(s):

Artificial Intelligence ◽

Big Data ◽

Computational Models ◽

Data Driven ◽

Urban Systems ◽

Out Of The Loop ◽

Urban Futures ◽

Urban Behaviour ◽

The City

This commentary interrogates what it means for routine urban behaviours to now be replicating themselves computationally. The emergence of autonomous or artificial intelligence points to the powerful role of big data in the city, as increasingly powerful computational models are now capable of replicating and reproducing existing spatial patterns and activities. I discuss these emergent urban systems of learned or trained intelligence as being at once radical and routine. Just as the material and behavioural conditions that give rise to urban big data demand attention, so do the generative design principles of data-driven models of urban behaviour, as they are increasingly put to use in the production of replicable, autonomous urban futures.

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Re-imagining Inclusive Urban Futures for Transformation

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability ◽

10.1016/j.cosust.2016.06.001 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 20 ◽

pp. 67-72 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Richard M Friend ◽

Nausheen H Anwar ◽

Ajaya Dixit ◽

Khanin Hutanuwatr ◽

Thiagarajan Jayaraman ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Urban Futures

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Urban Futures

10.2307/j.ctv1nh3m7n ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Timothy J. Dixon ◽

Mark Tewdwr-Jones

Keyword(s):

Urban Futures

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Planning Urban Futures for Autonomous and Shared Vehicles: The Role of Planning Support Tools as a Policy Instrument

Shaping Smart Mobility Futures: Governance and Policy Instruments in times of Sustainability Transitions ◽

10.1108/978-1-83982-650-420201005 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 75-103

Author(s):

Sam McLeod ◽

Carey Curtis ◽

John Stone

Keyword(s):

Policy Instrument ◽

Planning Support ◽

Support Tools ◽

Urban Futures

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Why bright city lights dazzle and illuminate: A cognitive science approach to urban promises

Urban Studies ◽

10.1177/0042098018804762 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 56 (2) ◽

pp. 452-470 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Rodrigo Cardoso ◽

Evert Meijers ◽

Maarten van Ham ◽

Martijn Burger ◽

Duco de Vos

Keyword(s):

Imperfect Information ◽

Cognitive Biases ◽

Urban Life ◽

Urban Migration ◽

Economic Prosperity ◽

Urban Migrants ◽

Urban Futures ◽

The Many ◽

Biases And Heuristics ◽

Human Rationality

Despite the many uncertainties of life in cities, promises of economic prosperity, social mobility and happiness have fuelled the imagination of generations of urban migrants in search of a better life. Access to jobs, housing and amenities, and fewer restrictions of personal choices are some of the perceived advantages of cities, characterised here as ‘urban promises’. But while discourses celebrating the triumph of cities became increasingly common, urban rewards are not available everywhere and for everyone. Alongside opportunity, cities offer inequality, conflict and poor living conditions. Their narrative of promise has been persistent across different times and places, but the outcomes and experiences of urban life compare poorly with the overoptimistic expectations of many newcomers. And yet, millions still come and stay regardless of odds, raising the question why we have such positive and persistent expectations about cities. To examine this question, this paper considers the process of urban migration from the perspective of decision-making under uncertainty. It discusses how decisions and evaluations are based on imperfect information and offers a novel contribution by examining how the cognitive biases and heuristics which restrict human rationality shape our responses to urban promises. This approach may allow a better understanding of how people make decisions regarding urban migration, how they perceive their urban experiences and evaluate their life stories. We consider the prospects and limitations of the behavioural approach and discuss how biases favouring narratives of bright urban futures can be exploited by ‘triumphalist’ accounts of cities which neglect their embedded injustices.

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