We are pleased to announce more details on the keynote address for the 2017 INSS Conference by our speaker, David Ludlow, Associate Professor European Smart Cities at the University of the West of England Bristol (see bio below).

Title: Defining Smart City Governance – Architectures of Co-creation and Integration

Abstract: The dynamic of social and technological innovation is defining a new smart city governance, responding to the complex challenges of urban planning and simultaneously disrupting the governance model in fundamental ways. The background to this concerns effective integrated urban governance, that has proved to be a major challenge, and indeed a challenge too great for expert resolution alone. Accordingly, top-down expertise has increasingly sought the assistance of all stakeholders in a coalition of open governance that strives to respond effectively to the societal challenges of our time. The question for urban governance is extended from concerns to create a more integrated management of the territory, which has dominated the governance agenda for a generation, to a new emphasis on the means by which more participatory engagement can be achieved.

In this new landscape of integrated and participatory, open and co-created urban governance, opportunities to harness innovative social and technology solutions, derived directly from bottom-up engagement in the community, are driving expectations of a more effective policy implementation supported by the new legitimacy of the stakeholder coalition and community political capital. The interplay of social and technological innovation has the potential to transform the governance of our cities, as citizens are demanding more active engagement in the planning of their communities and the visioning of the future city. Technological innovation is providing new means of community engagement facilitating participation in planning as well as creating the potentials for the definition and delivery of more integrated solutions. The presentation will offer some of insights into the experience of European research and innovation projects concerning these dynamics of smart city governance, that is driving forward the agenda defining a new architecture for smart city governance.

Bio: David Ludlow is an urban planner with substantial practice based experience in government agencies and consultancy in UK, and more recently in an academic environment. He is advisor to DG Connect and DG Research (European Commission), and JPI Urban Europe on the EU Smart Cities Programme,He is also member of the EU Expert Group on the Urban Environment, providing scientific and technical expertise to DG Environment for the European Sustainable Cities Project, and related projects for other Directorates General of the European Commission. David is project director  for a number of EU funded smart city governance projects including Smarticpate (Horizon 2020), URBIS and urbanAPI (both FP7 Smart Cities Programme), as well as the British Council funded Smart Mobility Cities in collaboration with Taylor’s University, Kuala Lumpur.

All of this work in various ways focuses upon the development of ICT enabled tools, methodologies and intelligence to support integrated and participatory urban governance. Beyond this he has been responsible for the development and implementation of more than 50 major EU funded research projects, as well as publications of pan European significance. Research experience and expertise gained through ESPON (FOCI, ATTREG, SeGI), European Sustainable Cities Project (DG Environment); LIFE Programme – (DG Environment); Thematic Strategy on Urban Management (JRC Ispra); European Common Indicators Project (DG Environment).