Making sense of assets: Community asset mapping and related approaches for cultivating capacities

This working paper critically reviews some main aspects from asset based approaches highlights key strengths and weaknesses for future research/development. Drawing on a large body of reports and relevant literature we draw on different theoretical traditions and critiques, as well as practices and processes embedded within a broad range of approaches including, widely acknowledged frameworks such Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), Appreciative Inquiry (AI), Sustainable Livelihood Approaches (SLA) and Community Capitals Framework (CCF). Although these are presented as distinct approaches, there is a sense of evolution through them and many of them overlap (in terms of both theories and methodologies). We also include emerging frameworks, including geographical, socio-spatial, visual and creative approaches, stemming from a number of projects within AHRC’s Connected Communities programme and additional collaborations

Municipal transitions: The social, energy, and spatial dynamics of sociotechnical change in South Tyrol, Italy

With the aim of proposing recommendations on how to use social and territorial specificities as levers for wider achievement of climate and energy targets at local level, this research analyses territories as sociotechnical systems. Defining the territory as a sociotechnical system allows us to underline the interrelations between space, energy and society. Groups of municipalities in a region can be identified with respect to their potential production of renewable energy by means of well-known data-mining approaches. Similar municipalities linking together can share ideas and promote collaborations, supporting clever social planning in the transition towards a new energy system. The methodology is applied to the South Tyrol case study (Italy). Results show eight different spatially-based sociotechnical systems within the coherent cultural and institutional context of South Tyrol. In particular, this paper observes eight different systems in terms of (1) different renewable energy source preferences in semi-urban and rural contexts; (2) different links with other local planning, management, and policy needs; (3) different socio-demographic specificities of individuals and families; (4) presence of different kinds of stakeholders or of (5) different socio-spatial organizations based on land cover. Each energy system has its own specificities and potentialities, including social and spatial dimensions, that can address a more balanced, inclusive, equal, and accelerated energy transition at the local and translocal scale

Repair Matters

Repair has visibly come to the fore in recent academic and policy debates, to the point that ‘repair studies’ is now emerging as a novel focus of research. Through the lens of repair, scholars with diverse backgrounds are coming together to rethink our relationships with the human-made matters, tools and objects that are the material mesh in which organisational life takes place as a political question. This special issue is interested to map the ways that repair can contribute to organisational models alternative to those centered around growth. In order to explore the politics of repair in the context of organization studies, the papers gathered here investigate issues such as: repair as a specific kind of care and socially reproductive labour; repair as a direct intervention into the cornerstones of capitalist economy, such as exchange versus use value, division of work and property relations; repair of infrastructures and their relation with the broader environment; and finally repair as the reflective practice of fixing the organizational systems and institutional habits in which we dwell. What emerges from the diversity of experiences surveyed in this issue is that repair manifests itself as both a regime of practice and counter-conduct that demand an active and persistent engagement of practitioners with the systemic contradictions and power struggles shaping our material world

Publishing metadata of geospatial indicators as Linked Open Data: a policy-oriented approach

Ponencias, comunicaciones y pósters presentados en el 17th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science "Connecting a Digital Europe through Location and Place", celebrado en la Universitat Jaume I del 3 al 6 de junio de 2014.Geospatial indicators are becoming increasingly important for governments in monitoring and underpinning policy planning and political decision making. Currently, the discovery, viewing and sharing of these indicators is often made possible through geoportals that are developed according the concepts of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). However, this type of ‘business information’ exceeds the scope of traditional SDIs that solely focus on the common spatial aspects constituting a generic location context. The concept of an ‘augmented’ SDI adopting Linked Data principles reveals meanwhile much potential in integrating disparate reference and non-spatial business data but requires a formal revision of underlying standards. In this study we propose an alternative and policy-oriented viewpoint for publishing geospatial indicators as Linked Open Data. Focussing on metadata, we have elaborated a profile of the Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT) for describing geospatial indicators, including additional information on the related policy assessments, spatial characteristics, the provenance, and the measurement variables and dimensions of indicators. By implementing the vocabulary in an existing monitoring system it allows us to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of this approach

The Right to the Sustainable Smart City

Environmental concerns have driven an interest in sustainable smart cities, through the monitoring and optimisation of networked infrastructures. At the same time, there are concerns about who these interventions and services are for, and who benefits. HCI researchers and designers interested in civic life have started to call for the democratisation of urban space through resistance and political action to challenge state and corporate claims. This paper contributes to an emerging body of work that seeks to involve citizens in the design of sustainable smart cities, particularly in the context of marginalised and culturally diverse urban communities. We present a study involving co- designing Internet of Things with urban agricultural communities and discuss three ways in which design can participate in the right to the sustainable smart city through designing for the commons, care, and biocultural diversity

Foreign direct investments distribution in the Russian Federation: do spatial effects matter?

In this paper we explore the hypothesis of spatial effects in the distribution of Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) across Russian regions. We make use of a model, which describes FDI inflows as resulting from an agglomeration effect (the level of FDI in a given region depends positively on the level of FDI received by the regions in its neighbourhood) and remoteness effect (the distance of each Russian regions from the most important outflows countries). Considering a panel of 68 Russian regions over the period 2000-2004 we find that the two effects play a significant role in determining FDI inflows towards Russia. The two effects are also robust to the inclusion of other widely used explanatory variables impacting the level of FDI towards countries or regions (e.g. surrounding market potential, infrastructures, investment climate)

Code, space and everyday life

In this paper we examine the role of code (software) in the spatial formation of collective life. Taking the view that human life and coded technology are folded into one another, we theorise space as ontogenesis. Space, we posit, is constantly being bought into being through a process of transduction – the constant making anew of a domain in reiterative and transformative practices - as an incomplete solution to a relational problem. The relational problem we examine is the ongoing encounter between individuals and environment where the solution, to a greater or lesser extent, is code. Code, we posit, is diversely embedded in collectives as coded objects, coded infrastructure, coded processes and coded assemblages. These objects, infrastructure, processes and assemblages possess technicity, that is, unfolding or evolutive power to make things happen; the ability to mediate, supplement, augment, monitor, regulate, operate, facilitate, produce collective life. We contend that when the technicity of code is operationalised it transduces one of three forms of hybrid spatial formations: code/space, coded space and backgrounded coded space. These formations are contingent, relational, extensible and scaleless, often stretched out across networks of greater or shorter length. We demonstrate the coded transduction of space through three vignettes – each a day in the life of three people living in London, UK, tracing the technical mediation of their interactions, transactions and mobilities. We then discuss how code becomes the relational solution to five different classes of problems – domestic living, travelling, working, communicating, and consuming

Re-emerging landscapes : militarised territories from the Cold War period

This paper is part of my research that investigates the large-scale remains of military activities from the Cold War period. The aim of the research is to provide a meta-perspective on the post-militarised spaces and their different developmental trajectories, that may lead to various outcomes, such as heritage status, requalifiaction or destruction. I am conducting the research on the evolution of the remains, the discourses concerning their transformation and the relevant heritage policies. Different case studies from the Belgian and the European mainland context are taken into account, where artefacts of Cold War military spaces are found within or in the immediate proximity of inhabited areas. Throughout the history of the modern military, different warfare techniques have created a non-linear succession of distinct military spaces. Such large-scale military heritage from the past has been subject to preservation efforts as well as thorough redevelopment. This led to structures becoming urban heritage in their original form, or by undergoing subsequent transformations. However, the transformation process of the large scale Cold War military structures brings particular challenges, due to the dual nature of the military institutions in this period, that is being both 'invisible' and 'omnispresent'. Looking at the various case studies in my research, the artefacts of Cold War military spaces are being (re)interpreted in the frameworks of different landscape transformation processes. Relating to the overall topic of this seminar, my research is presented in the light of the relevance of this research for the nowadays state of urbanism as a discipline. The paper is discussing the complex situation that arises from the perceived ‘vacant’ spaces and the ‘disappearance’ of a powerful agent such as the military. Namely, the transformation of the post-militarised structures comes in part as a result of the neo-liberal tendencies (‘less state’). Furthermore, the very transformation process is a result of negotiations performed within networks that involve a myriad of actors and agencies, with often conflicting views and agendas. The main working hypothesis is that the 'non-human' agency of the material artefacts, renders these networks as flat, rather than hierarchical structures. This in turn allows both for multiple meanings to be ascribed to the artefacts, coming from actors and agencies that are usually perceived as acting from different 'levels' (local, national, global). As a consequence, the transformation policies come as a result of the process, rather than a predefined guideline. The paper takes closer look at the transformation of the military domain in Koksijde. There, a vast area has been used by the military during few decades, resulting in significant changes to the surrounding system of settlements, while preserving certain landscape elements that were otherwise lost outside of the domain. At the present moment, there is an ongoing procedure for defining a vision as well as legal framework for the transformation of the domain that would include various non-military activities