Community as Canvas: The Power of Culture in the Emergence of Intelligent Communities

Intelligent Communities are cities and regions that use information and communications technologies (ICT) to build prosperous economies, solve social problems and enrich their cultures in the 21st Century. Many people are familiar with the concept of the Smart City, which turns to technology for solutions to problems from traffic congestion to leakage from water mains, public safety to parking tickets. The Intelligent Community is the next evolutionary step. Intelligent Communities turn to technology not just to save money or make things work better: they create high quality employment, increase citizen participation and make themselves great places to live, work, start a business and prosper across generations.Each year, the Forum presents an awards program for Intelligent Communities. The program salutes their achievements in building those inclusive, prosperous economies on a foundation of ICT. In the process, it gathers data for ICF's research programs, which the Forum shares with other communities around the world.The Awards are divided into three phases,and the analysis becomes more detailed andrigorous at each successive stage

Valuing the Intersection Between Arts, Culture, and Community: An Exchange of Research and Practice

This report is based a half-day gathering of thirty-five practitioners and researchers that took place on September 12, 2013, at Downtown Art's East Village studio. Downtown Art is a member of Fourth Arts Block, a nonprofit coalition of cultural and community groups that lead the development of the East 4th Street Cultural District, the only official cultural district in Manhattan. This gathering was convened by Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts -- New York (NOCD-NY), a citywide alliance of artists, activists, creative manufacturers, and policy makers committed to revitalizing New York City "from the neighborhood up." Through presentations, questions, and dialogue, participants learned about the structural inequities that exist in cities and philanthropy and gained deeper insight into the power of neighborhood cultural clusters as sources of community health and resilience.The exchange grew out of NOCD-NY's initial explorations around a collaborative research agenda that responds to the shared needs of members. NOCD-NY recognized that coordinated efforts could broaden and deepen the impact of members' research (e.g., door-to-door surveys, oral histories, community asset mapping) already under way in their respective neighborhoods with the multiple goals of strengthening practice, understanding neighborhood and artist needs, case making, and field learning. At the same time, NOCD-NY members continue to grapple with one of the key challenges in this work -- identifying and communicating appropriate measures for the social, community, environmental, and economic impacts of these districts. While most people readily acknowledge that there is some degree of relationship between culture, community, and economy, the concrete connections are complex, subtle, and still largely undocumented. As a coalition of community-based cultural leaders, NOCD-NY was eager to tell a compelling story without falling back on data sets that diminish or dilute these complex connections. This gathering offered an entry point from which to explore research approaches and tools that can make visible the value of this work

Abstracts from the Twelfth Annual Conference on Ethnic and Minority Studies

In an attempt to record a sense of the formal sessions of the 1984 Conference, we asked the Chairs to assemble abstracts and discussant comments for their sessions. Although we are pleased with a response greater than in 1983, we are aiming for one hundred percent in 1985

Global universities in local contexts: fostering critical self-reflection and citizenship at branch campuses

There seems to be a race in the global age for universities to be associated with specific attributes: university marketing literature insists on institutions being ‘global’, promising to educate the citizens and leaders of tomorrow thanks to key and transferable skills such as problem solving, research‐based education, independent learning and the ever popular yet rarely defined ‘critical thinking’. Faculties are pressed to demonstrate their progress in the internationalisation of their curriculum, and the trend is fast growing that sees western institutions opening branch campuses abroad, and developing their international network and partnerships

Sustainable Development in Poland - why it is not workable?

The sustainable development principle was introduced into the Polish legal system when the New Constitution was adopted in Poland in 1997. Paradoxically, in Poland - one of the few countries which have introduced the concedpt of SD at the level of the Constitution, it is difficult to find a reference to it in the political debate. The national sustainable development strategy Poland 2025 has met no response among society and today it seems to be hardly remembered by anybody. An average citizen does not know the concept of SD. or has a vague notion of it, often identifying it exclusively with environmental protection.Problematyka trwałego rozwoju (sustainable development) w krajach "starej" Unii Europejskiej nabiera coraz większego znaczenia. Chodzi o równoczesne podnoszenie poziomu ekonomicznego życia społeczeństw, bezpieczeństwo socjalne oraz ochronę środowiska naturalnego. Polska, jak jeden z pierwszych krajów europejskich, wprowadziła imperatyw trwałego rozwoju do nowej konstytucji z 1997 r. Niestety, zapis w ustawie zasadniczej nie zmienił obojętnego podejścia polityków i społeczeństwa polskiego do koncepcji trwałego rozwoju. W rzeczywistości w Polsce nie toczy się żadna debata publiczna na powyższy temat. Wydaje się, że relatywnie ciągle jeszcze niski poziom gospodarczy i cywilizacyjny naszego społeczeństwa nie sprzyja podejmowaniu rzetelnej dyskusji i działań w kierunku zagwarantowania w Polsce trwałego rozwoju uwzględniającego czynniki ekonomiczne, społeczne i ekologiczne

Teaching geography for a sustainable world: a case study of a secondary school in Spain

Geography has a major responsibility in delivering education for sustainable development (ESD), especially because the geographical concepts of place and space are key dimensions for the analysis and pursuit of sustainability. This paper presents the results of a research that investigated how the teaching of geography in secondary education in Catalonia (Spain) contributes to ESD. For the development of this research it was explored what is involved in understanding and resolving issues about sustainable development and how geography teachers might best conceptualize and teach in this new domain. As a result of this theoretical reflection it has been defined a proposal or model for reorienting the geography curriculum from the basis of the ESD paradigm, which is based and structured in four groups of criteria and recommendations as follows: recommendations for defining competences and learning objectives; criteria for selecting geographical contents and themes; criteria for selecting geographical areas and for the use of scale; and finally, recommendations for choosing the most suitable teaching and learning approach

The Environmental Contribution to Wayfinding in Museums: Enhancement and Usage by Controlling Flows and Paths

The field of research in which wayfinding is situated refers to the way people move in reaction to environmental stimulation. It therefore fully concerns not just signage but also space designing, its geometric configuration, technical solutions and their material characterization. The focus is consequently on environmental factors that facilitate wayfinding in a museum (accessibility, visibility, etc.) and on other elements such as spatial configuration, architectural features and functional aspects. These factors influence relational phenomena and therefore visitors’ satisfaction. Methods and tools for designing and managing spaces have been studied in the research. The configurational analysis method of space has been used to objectify syntactic features of space. In particular, the outcomes of an experimental project, which have been analyzed in a master’s thesis on the re-functionalization of the museum of Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara, are presented. Permeability, proximity, connections of spaces, namely meaningful features to ensure wayfinding have been examined. Space parameters resulting from the geometry of the layout, from the visual connections and from the changes of direction were then evaluated. The outcomes have been used as inputs for designing a unitary tour route circuit, that also reconnects the museum’s second floor, and for planning three independent alternative routes for a differentiated use of the museum