Resourceful City publication now online

LSE Cities’ MSc City Design Research Studio focused on the Elephant & Castle in south London as a site for thinking about the potential of the ‘resourceful city’. Against the backdrop of large-scale redevelopment in the area, and amid the wider rhetoric of the ‘smart’ city, the students aimed to explore in more critical ways the assets, resources and capacities of such an urban context. Focusing on the central regeneration site and on the local streets and spaces that run out from it, the Studio groups analysed the connections and disconnections, diverse actors and interests, problems and potential that characterise this complex piece of city.

Resourceful City was designed and edited by MSc students Regina Kertapati and Claudia Sinatra.  It can be read as a PDF (for each chapter) here.

LSE Cities, working in partnership with UN Habitat and United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), is inviting local government administrations to contribute to a study on ‘Governing Urban Futures’ by taking part in a short [20 min] online survey that will cover the following thematic areas: Political power, budget & financing, multi-level governance, participation & accountability, continuity & strategic planning.

The survey and its underlying research has three main objectives:

1. Address the urban governance ‘data challenge’, i.e. deal with the problem that regardless of constantly increasing information on urban governance in individual cities, we continue to have very limited knowledge on the wide spectrum of different urban governance arrangements.
2. Establish a platform for individual cities to identify international urban governance cases that are of particular relevance to their own specific situations. This would potentially allow for a more fruitful exchange of good practice.
3. Explore new and innovative ways for communicating and mapping urban governance for public dissemination, comparative policy and research analysis.

For full details, click here.

LSE’s Jon Silver has published a new piece, The rise of Afro-Smart cities should be viewed with caution, on LSE’s Africa blog.

Click here to read the article.

Urban Vignettes is a collaborative visual-based blog capturing the different ways people experience, negotiate and engage with city life as the world undergoes the largest wave of urban growth in history. Through photos, illustrations, visuals and words, our contributors showcase across the globe what it means to live and make sense of the cities they call home.

Urban Vignettes is calling for contributions. For information please visit the website: http://urbanvignettes.com/editorial-a-new-start-for-season-3/

Urban Vignettes is supported by urban@lse and is run by a group of postgraduate students at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The blog itself is funded by Urban@LSE and this year I am helping out as a Collaborative Editor.