Data Evidence-Based Transformative Actions in Historic Urban Context—The Bologna University Area Case Study

The rapidly growing use of digital technologies in urban contexts is generating a huge and increasing amount of data, providing real-time information about the urban environment and its inhabitants. The unprecedented availability of data allows us to not only improve advanced knowledge and gain a deeper understanding of urban dynamics, but also enact data evidence-based transformative processes and actions in the direction of smarter, more sustainable, resilient, and socially equitable cities. In this context, the literature on smart cities has recently expressed the need to more deeply involve urban visions and communities in the process of regeneration. This paper aims to analyze how big data can be useful in understanding the effectiveness of small pilot actions of regeneration and reactivation in valuable cultural heritage (CH) urban environments. Pilot actions were developed in the context of the European Union funded project “ROCK—Regeneration and Optimization of cultural heritage in Creative and Knowledge cities” (GA730280). The paper analyses data collected by the ROCK City People Flow tool, in different use and time conditions, in two central squares of Bologna (Italy), in order to rate event successes, spatial transformation effects, and regeneration tactics responses. Data confirm the complexity of interpreting phenomena in such contexts but also provide useful indications for future planning.

Urban Africa’s futures: perspectives and implications for agenda 2063

Purpose The implications of Africa’s growth and urbanisation are the subject of much interest and speculation, and are central to the vision of the African Union’s Agenda 2063. The purpose of this paper is to compare the dominant perspectives on urban futures in Africa to emerging directions in futures and urban thinking, suggesting alternative policy approaches for Africa’s urban agenda. Design/methodology/approach The paper scans and sorts through how Africa’s growth and urbanisation are being understood and framed by various futurists and other futures-commentators. It takes the form of a discussion of the issue of how, why and by whom a series of data points, trends and their implications are being computed and combined, and with what validity, so to inform policy and planning responses. Findings The paper argues from its findings that futuring about urban Africa has been intense, but not particularly objective, neutral or even empirically grounded. Emerging directions in anticipation theorisation and experimental approaches such as “urban tinkering” are proposed as possibly offering alternative approaches to how nations and policymakers might think and act on urban Africa’s futures. Originality/value This original interrogation of which and how actors anticipate Africa’s urban futures could be used to expand beyond the urban visions, assumptions and futuring conventions reflected in Africa’s Agenda 2063, as well as processes advancing the global sustainable development goals and UNHabitat’s new urban agenda.

Urban visions: Back from the future

The persistent growth of the human civilization, fueled in large part by technological progress has brought upon us a series of very serious challenges. The quality of our overall environment, energy and food supply are subjected to increased pressure, while access to decent employment, housing and medical care remains broadly unequal. According to the current trends most of the world’s future population growth will occur in cities, therefore positioning the city as a key component to solving challenges associated with human development. Based on that assumption, it seems crucial to think about what the city of the future should be and look like. If we look for existing and graphically convincing representation of the city of the future, we are inevitably drawn to popular culture media such as movies and graphic novels. For almost a century, movies in particular have proposed realistic constructs of future urban settlements along with the life associated with them. Based on a number of ideas expressed in motion pictures over the years about urban life in the future, one can argue that both past and recent predictions tend to be technologically optimistic but socially and environmentally pessimistic. This paper proposes to identify and discuss a number of challenges as well as opportunities associated with urban development in the next 100 to 200 years and present a series of urban visions to illustrate both positive and negative trends.

C. DÍEZ MEDINA, J. MONCLÚS (eds.) - Urban Visions: From Urban Planning Culture to Landscape Urbanism

Carmen Díez Medina y Javier Monclús (eds.)Urban visions: from urban planning culture to landscape urbanismSpringer International Publishing, Cham (Suiza), 2018. Pág. xxiv, 354. 93 ilustraciones b/n, 192 ilustraciones color. Tapa dura. $129.00 ($99.00 ebook). ISBN: 978-3-319- 59046-2. eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-59047-9.DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-59047-9. (versión española: Visiones Urbanas. De la cultura del plan al urbanismo paisajístico, Madrid, Abada Editores, 2017, 304 p. Tapa blanda. 49 €.)