Dear colleagues and list members,
We are organising a special session at the Regional Studies Annual Conference in Lugano, Switzerland (June 3-6 2018) on the topic “Smart City Research meets the Geography of Innovation”. Would you be interested in participating, please find the call for papers below.
Best wishes for 2018,
Luís Carvalho (University of Porto), Willem van Winden (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences) & Mário Vale (University of Lisbon)
***Apologies for cross-posting***
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“Smart city research meets the geography of innovation” (SS9)
RSA Annual Conference Lugano 2018, 3rd-6th June, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, Switzerland
http://www.regionalstudies.org/conferences/special-sessions/special-sessions-lugano
Session organisers
Luís Carvalho (University of Porto), Willem van Winden (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences) & Mário Vale (University of Lisbon)
Topic
Over the last decade, a whole new assemblage of technologies, devices and associated innovations started to become deployed and experimented in cities. Under the banner of the “smart city”, those include sensors, meters and software alongside the city´s infrastructure (e.g. energy, mobility, water), urban operating systems, (open) data platforms, the development of city apps, and many other technologies and IT-related innovations that promise to make cities better, cleaner, safer, more efficient, transparent, etc. These developments increasingly mobilise different types of actors, ranging from global tech companies to local grassroots movements, drawing on multiple geographies, local and global, permanent and temporary, which may influence how these innovations unfold and become embedded (or not) in society. Thus far, scholarship in urban geography and urban studies has developed a vigorous critique on smart city development but has paid less attention to the geographical and (socio-technical) innovation dimensions associated with it. At the same time, research focusing on the geographies of knowledge and innovation has not yet actively looked into smart city innovation as a new (multi) knowledge and industrial domain that can bring new insights to current frameworks.
This session intends to (contribute to) bring these two research streams together. It seeks both conceptual and empirical papers that provide new viewpoints on how smart city innovations are being promoted, unfold and eventually travel across multiple places and spaces, who is involved and how these processes and geographies contribute to better understand (successful or unsuccessful) processes of smart city innovation and experimentation. Potential topics may include but are certainly not limited to:
• The nature of smart city innovation;
• Smart city innovation and different forms of proximity;
• The types of knowledge involved in smart city innovation;
• Temporary spaces for smart city innovation and experimentation;
• Local and global dimensions of smart city innovation;
• The actors and geographical dimensions of smart city embedding;
• Upscaling and “travelling “of smart city solutions;
• Territorial valuation and market creation for smart city innovation;
• Smart city policy mobilities;
• Smart city-related innovation policies.
Would you be interested in participating, please submit proposals for papers in the form of a 250-word abstract directly through the RSA conference portal at (http://www.regionalstudies.org/conferences/conference/rsa-lugano-2018) by Friday 23rd February 2018.
For any questions, please get in touch: [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask] Further publication plans in a journal´s special issue may be considered. Feel free to promote the session within your networks!
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