Abstract
We invite you to join us for a one-day research symposium and book launch, to mark the publication of Designing More-than-Human Smart Cities – Beyond Sustainability, Towards Cohabitation, co-edited by Sara Heitlinger, Marcus Foth and Rachel Clarke, published by Oxford University Press.
The book brings together the latest interdisciplinary research and insights on designing cities that go beyond human-centric approaches.
To celebrate the launch of the book, please join us for presentations from contributors to the book, as well as talks by experts from academia, and beyond.
There will be networking opportunities to connect with people who are passionate about creating genuinely sustainable and inclusive cities, with the help of digital technologies.
The event also marks the start of Dr Sara Heitlinger’s UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship on More-than-Human Sustainable and Inclusive Smart Cities, hosted by the Centre for Human Computer Interaction Design at City, University of London.
Schedule
10:00 – 10:30 Coffee
10:30 – 11:30 ACM Distinguished Speaker, Prof. Marcus Foth, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia: More-than-Human Futures: Connected Urbanism and Cohabitation in the Smart City
11:30 – 12:30 Panel discussion: Designing More-than-Human Smart Cities in practice, policy, and in ways that work for human and non-human communities, with speakers from Arup, Prof. Marcus Foth (QUT), Associate Prof. Alison Powell (LSE) and MC’ed by Dr Sara Heitlinger.
12:30 – 13:30 Lunch (provided)
13:30 – 15:00 Book launch with talks by chapter authors: Alex Taylor, Alison Powell, Clara Mancini, Lara Houston, Marcus Foth, Rachel Clarke and Sara Heitlinger
15:00 – 15:30 Afternoon tea
15:30 – 16:30 Town hall discussion around how to design nature positive smart cities.
This event is made possible with generous support from SST, HCID and ACM.
About the book
Heitlinger, S., Foth, M., & Clarke, R. (Eds.) (2024). Designing More-than-Human Smart Cities: Beyond Sustainability, Towards Cohabitation. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192884169.
Climate change, rapid urbanisation, pandemics, as well as innovations in technologies such as blockchain, AI and IoT are all impacting urban space. One response to such changes has been to make cities ecologically sustainable and 'smart'.
The 'eco smart city' for instance uses networked sensing, cloud and mobile computing to optimise, control, and regulate urban processes and resources. From real-time bus information to autonomous electric vehicles, smart parking, and smart street lighting, such initiatives are often presented as a social and environmental good.
Critics, however, increasingly argue that technologically driven, and efficiency-led approaches are too simplistic to deal with the complexities of urban life.
Sustainability in the smart city is predominantly performed in limited ways that leave little room for participation and citizen agency despite government efforts to integrate innovative technologies in more equitable ways.
More importantly, there is a growing awareness that a human-centred notion of cities, in which urban space is designed for, and inhabited by, humans only, is no longer tenable.
Within the age of the Anthropocene - a term used to refer to a new geological era in which human activity is transforming Earth systems, accelerating climate change and causing mass extinctions - scholars and practitioners are working generatively by acknowledging the entanglements between human and non-human others (including plants, animals, insects, as well as soil, water, and sensors and their data) in urban life.
In Designing More-than-Human Smart Cities, renowned researchers and practitioners from urban planning, architecture, environmental humanities, geography, design, arts, and computing critically explore smart cities beyond a human-centred approach.
They respond to the complex interrelations between human and non-human others in urban space. Through theory, policy and practice (past and present), and thinking speculatively about how smart cities may evolve in the future, the book makes a timely contribution to lively, contemporary scientific and political debates on genuinely sustainable smart cities.
About the speakers
Rachel Clarke
Rachel Clarke is a design researcher and practitioner combining visual communication with qualitative research, performance and storytelling on the climate emergency, sustainability, and social inequality.
She has exhibited work internationally and co-authored research papers across design research, human–computer interaction (HCI), and social sciences.
She is course leader of the BA (Hons) Design for Climate Justice, an innovative new course that develops student skills in diverse design practices for climate action and changemaking at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.
She is a member of DEFRA’s Futures Advisory Group informing UK agricultural and environmental policy and practice.
Lauren Davies
Lauren Davies is a senior designer and researcher in Arup’s Global Foresight team.
Previously working as a lecturer in Design practice, she holds a BA(Hons) and MA in Design from Goldsmiths, University of London.
As a critically engaged designer, her practice uses and develops design methods for visioning possible futures in the context of the current ecological crisis.
This became her area of focus after moving from rural Cornwall to London and being shocked by the experience of non-humans in a city context.
Lauren’s current focus is exploring how design-led foresight methods, such as visioning and speculative design, can ‘build worlds’ that elicit feelings and discussions about preferred futures.
Marcus Foth
Marcus Foth is a Professor of Urban Informatics in the School of Design and a Chief Investigator in the QUT Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC), Faculty of Creative Industries, Education, and Social Justice, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
For more than two decades, Marcus has led ubiquitous computing and interaction design research into interactive digital media, screen, mobile and smart city applications. Marcus founded the Urban Informatics Research Lab in 2006 and the QUT Design Lab in 2016.
He is a founding member of the QUT More-than-Human Futures research group. Marcus has published more than 280 peer-reviewed publications.
He is a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society and the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Distinguished Member of the international Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and currently serves on Australia’s national College of Experts.
Sara Heitlinger
Sara Heitlinger is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Computer Science, in the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design at City, University of London.
She leads the More-than-Human Sustainable and Inclusive Smart Cities (MoSaIC) project.
Her research at the intersections of urban sustainability, computation, and participatory design draws on methods from the arts and humanities to find ways for co-designing more just and inclusive smart cities.
Lara Houston
Lara Houston is a social scientist who investigates sustainability through grassroots, citizen- led practices.
She studies how citizens create alternative ways of producing knowledge— particularly when they are excluded or marginalised from large-scale institutions.
This has included collaborations with electronics repairers, citizen scientists, and urban farmers.
She specialises in using creative, inventive, and participatory methods, and her work often takes the form of inter- and trans-disciplinary collaborations. She is also a co-author of the CreaTures Framework.
Clara Mancini
Clara Mancini is Professor of Animal–Computer Interaction at The Open University’s School of Computing and Communications and founding head of the Animal–Computer Interaction (ACI) Laboratory, whose mission is researching and designing interactive systems for and with animals.
Her work aims to advance animal welfare and justice through animal-centred technologies that can monitor animals with minimal interference, and afford them environmental control, experiential enrichment, and enhanced societal status.
Founding member of the ACI International Steering Committee and co-founder of the ACI International Conference, Clara has published and lectured extensively on the theory, methodology, and ethics of animal-centred research and design.
Alison Powell
Alison Powell is Associate Professor in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and directs the MSc stream in Data & Society.
Alison's research concerns democratic accountability, epistemic justice and knowledge politics in technology development. Recent projects include the JUST AI Network, supported by the AHRC and the Ada Lovelace Institute, which opened up new areas for data and AI research in the UK, and the book Undoing. Optimization: Civic Action and Smart Cities (Yale University Press, 2021), which argued for a new ethics of 'smart cities'.
Using social scientific, creative and participatory methods, Alison's work investigates rights, ethics and value in technology design, while also seeking alternatives to dominant techno-systemic framings of the future.
Alex Taylor
Alex Taylor is a Reader in Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. With a fascination for the entanglements between social life and machines, his research ranges from empirical studies of technology in everyday life to speculative design interventions. He draws on feminist technoscience to ask questions about the roles human–machine composites play in forms of knowing and being, and how they open up possibilities for fundamental transformations in society.
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