Monthly Archives: August 2017

Ricky Burdett to deliver keynote to open Seoul Biennale

29 August 2017

Professor Ricky Burdett, Director of LSE Cities, will deliver the keynote at the opening of the 2017 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism in Seoul on 1 September. “Conflicts of the Urban Age: Lessons from London” will draw on lessons from the Urban Age, a research programme that has investigated the future of cities for over a decade. Registration (English version) is required to attend the keynote. The Seoul Biennale, which runs from 2 September to 5 November 2017 at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), is introduced by Dynamics of the Urban Age, an exhibition that highlights the spatial and social consequences of dramatic urban growth in cities across the world.

New paper on local government transparency and the web

A new paper entitled “Explaining the transparency of local government websites through a political market framework” by Antonio F. Tavares and Nuno Ferreira da Cruz investigates what drives the differences in local government levels of transparency in Portugal. The main focus is to understand whether transparency is driven by leaders and local government or by community factors.  This is tested by using the results of the Municipal Transparency Index, which is based on the information disclosed in official local government websites.

Urban Age call for papers

21 August 2017

LSE Cities is hosting two sessions as part of the African Centre for Cities international urban conference on 1-2 February 2018 in Cape
Town, South Africa. These sessions form part of the prelude to the next Urban Age conference, which will be hosted in an African city towards the end of 2018. The subject of the LSE Cities-hosted sessions will be: digitalisation and technology, particularly with respect to models of transport; and urban informality, particularly with respect to infrastructure. Please see the call for papers for more details.

New York Times interviews Ricky Burdett on Crossrail

1 August 2017

Ricky Burdett, Director of LSE Cities at the London School of Economics, was interviewed by Michael Kimmelman for his latest article in the New York Times: London’s New Subway Symbolized the Future. Then Came Brexit. The article explores whether Brexit will signal the end of an ambitious era of trying to bind London together through megaprojects. According to Burdett, “Crossrail is a culmination of years of serious thinking by experts and public officials about what London needs, the imbalance of east and west and how to unite the city.”