Mapping international networks for urban research: cities, data and clouds

Henriques, Diogo Pereira (2017) Mapping international networks for urban research: cities, data and clouds. In: RSA Annual Conference 2017 - Great Regional Awakenings: New Directions, 4th - 7th June 2017, Dublin, Ireland.

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Abstract

Today urbanisation is facing complex challenges, such as environmental, economic, and social changes, and this is also influencing theorists, researchers, and practitioners to understand cities as complex systems (Batty 2013, Jacobs 2001). Furthermore, the possibilities of data to measure, model, manage, and foresee complex urban systems are promising: more than 90% of all the data in the world was generated by people and/or things since 2011, thus augmenting the advantages for interdisciplinary research (Dragland 2013). As such, there is a momentum to share urban data among local communities, public sector organisations, universities, and transnational ICT corporations, for research collaborations through international networks.

How are inter-disciplinary networks of researchers generating and sharing data and knowledge on urban systems today? How can this study help us to predict and foresee new models for future research collaborations? In this paper, we survey current trends for knowledge sharing, and we explore the potential role of visual mapping and data visualisation to develop new models for future research networks.

As considerable economic fault-lines are re-emerging between and within national economies, both in Europe and worldwide, we study how international networks for urban (inter-disciplinary) research have contributed to imagine, model, manage, and foresee new directions for a changing society. We defend the urgent need of ‘blue sky thinking’ within academia and public sector organisations, in order to parallel the exponential growth of transnational ICT corporations, which seem to be currently dominating infrastructures (and possibilities) for future social and economic networks of knowledge sharing for the 21st century.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Subjects:	K100 Architecture K400 Planning (Urban, Rural and Regional) L900 Others in Social studies
Department:	Faculties > Engineering and Environment > Architecture and Built Environment
Depositing User:	Paul Burns
Date Deposited:	23 Aug 2017 15:48
Last Modified:	12 Oct 2019 11:48
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/31654

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