This introductory textbook with a global scope aims to train students of geography, sustainability, and urban and environmental studies to re-imagine and transform cities to meet climate, biodiversity, and sustainability challenges. A dedicated team of authors critically examine the relationships between nature and urban areas, sharing an inspiring account of how nature helps us re-think our cities and their futures. Prior to this textbook, literature for courses covering urban nature was ...

Smart cities promise to generate economic, social and environmental value through the seamless connection of urban services and infrastructure by digital technologies. However, there is scant evidence of how these activities can enhance social well-being and contribute to just and equitable communities.Smart and Sustainable Cities? Pipedreams, Practicalities and Possibilities provides one of the first examinations of how smart cities relate to environmental and social issues. It ad...

This book explores how the concept or urban experimentation is being used to reshape practices of knowledge production in urban debates about resilience, climate change governance, and socio-technical transitions.With contributions from leading scholars, and case studies from the Global North and South, from small to large scale cities, this book suggests that urban experiments offer novel modes of engagement, governance, and politics that both challenge and complement conventional...

In the twenty-first century, educators around the world are being told that they need to transform education systems to adapt young people for the challenges of a global digital knowledge economy. Too rarely, however, do we ask whether this future vision is robust, achievable or even desirable, whether alternative futures might be in development, and what other possible futures might demand of education.Drawing on ten years of research into educational innovation and socio-technica...

This new book explores how the professions responsible for enhancing the built environment's sustainability seek to deliver this new agenda, offering multi-perspective case studies and discussion to argue for a rethinking of the role of urban development professional.Showing how sustainability is rapidly becoming the norm for practitioners, the authors consider new types of professional knowledge, relationships between planning systems and property development, links between public...

This book traces the theoretical explanation for clusters back to the work of classical economists and their more modern disciples, who saw economic development as a process involving serious imbalances in the exploitation of resources. Initially, natural resource endowments explained the formation of nineteenth and early twentieth-century industrial districts. Today, geographical concentrations of scientific and creative knowledge are the key resource. But these require a support system, ...

Smart people make a smart city. This volume presents a collection of papers on the concept of smartness, smart development and the international practices in the field. There are five key topic areas: the conceptual, smart economy, smart specialisation, smart city and public governance. The concept of a smart social system is grounded on comparative analysis of competing concepts such as intelligence, knowledge driven, digital, learning, networked, innovative, agile and sustainable.

In a world of growing complexity and dwindling resources, the relationship between technology and sustainability is a pressing issue of concern at the highest levels. This book improves our understanding by examining the ways that people, technology and governance shape each other with implications for sustainability. It is the first book to link technology studies and governance research to this problem.Contributions from leading environmental social scientists are included, with ...

Digital technologies are a key feature of contemporary education. Schools, colleges and universities operate along high-tech lines, while alternate forms of online education have emerged to challenge the dominance of traditional institutions. According to many experts, the rapid digitization of education over the past ten years has undoubtedly been a ‘good thing’.Is Technology Good For Education? offers a critical counterpoint to this received wisdom, challenging some of t...

With transitions to more sustainable ways of living already underway, this book examines how we understand the underlying dynamics of the transitions that are unfolding. Without this understanding, we enter the future in a state of informed bewilderment.Every day we are bombarded by reports about ecosystem breakdown, social conflict, economic stagnation and a crisis of identity. There is mounting evidence that deeper transitions are underway that suggest we may be entering another ...

This open access book explores the impact of Covid-19 on universities, and how students, staff, faculty and academic leaders have adapted to and dealt with the impact of the pandemic. Drawing on experiences from Britain, Australia and Sweden, it showcases how Covid has challenged routines and procedures in universities, and thrown them into a disarray of ever-changing events and short-term adaptations. The authors pay particular attention to how students, staff, faculty, and leaders have c...

The Creative City is a clarion call for imaginative action in developing and running urban life. It shows how to think, plan and act creatively in addressing urban issues, with remarkable examples of innovation and regeneration from around the world. This revised edition of Charles Landry's highly influential text has been updated with a new, extensive overview.