LSE Cities’ Director, Professor Ricky Burdett, has joined the Mayor of London’s ‘Smart London’ board, comprised of experts including leading academics, businesses and entrepreneurs.

The board will look at how the capital can best use technology and data to ensure it remains one of the world’s most efficient and liveable cities. They will help to address the capital’s core challenges such as population growth, congestion, ageing infrastructure and reduced energy use.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said: “London has been at the forefront of technological wizardry for generations, but in a rapidly changing world we will need to work harder than ever to stay ahead of the game. We must harness the huge potential that new technology offers us and by drawing on the expertise of some of the brightest minds around we can make our great city an even smarter one too. I’m delighted to welcome on board a fantastic line up of experts to help spur the kind of innovation and entrepreneurship that will secure London’s future as the best big city on earth.”

For more information about Smart London, and details of the board members, visit the Mayor of London website.

The Urban Age Electric City Conference is featured in Urbanista.org, a new webzine edited by Lucy Bullivant.

To read the report, click here.

Ricky Burdett gave a keynote presentation on “Living in the Endless City” at the Innovative Metropolis forum at the Brookings Institution on 21 February 2013. Read the report and listen to presentations.

The LSE has been awarded a grant of US$900,000 by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The grant will support a major new initiative within LSE Cities exploring the intersection of architecture, urbanism and the humanities.

The programme, which will run for approximately four years, will have two components: a Fellowship Programme to be based at LSE Cities (The Mellon Fellowship Programme at LSE in Cities and the Humanities) and a new project to launch a network of urban scholars (the Urban Research Network), which will be extended to centres on a global basis, including the USA, Asia and Latin America.

The Mellon Fellows will be invited to spend nine months at LSE, to engage humanists in the study of urban life – as pursued by LSE Cities – and to become involved in postgraduate teaching and research. The posts will be advertised in spring 2013, with the first Fellowships starting in autumn 2013. The project will be overseen by Professors Ricky Burdett and Richard Sennett and involve key teaching and research staff at LSE Cities.

Please note: the Fellowship Programme is not currently open for applications. Further details will be available in due course.

For more information, see the press release.

LSE Cities’ Karl Baker will be presenting at Plymouth School of Architecture’s symposium in London on 20th February. The event brings together a group of international professionals and academics interested in urban regeneration, and in particular on the potential for the ‘remnants’ of industry in contemporary European post-industrial cities (using Birmingham, London and Warsaw as examples) to re-industrialise a city. Registration is required.

For details, visit the website here: http://plymarch.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/symposium-re-industrialisation-and-urban-regeneration-in-europe-birmingham_london_warsaw/