Tag: Smolyan

+CityxChange was present in the 55th World Planning Congress in Jakarta/Bogor, Indonesia which was held by one of our partner organisations, ISOCARP. 

The main topic of the World Planning Congress was ‘Beyond the Metropolis’. In five intensive days, from the 9th-13th of September 2019, topics related to a rapid urbanisation as a result of a globalising economy in metropolitan areas have been treated. Divided in seven different tracks, where ‘Smart futures and sustainability’ was one of them, issues related to urban planning and development strategies to promote liveability, well-being, sustainability, innovation and responsive governance for their dwellers, were tackled. 

+CityxChange attracted the attention of many academics and professionals working in the field, while being represented in the ISOCARP booth with its own stand alone banner. In addition to this, an introduction to +CityxChange was given by the project manager of our partner organisation, Tjark Gall, during the plennary session of ISOCARP Institute. 

Powerhouse Brattørkaia, one of our demonstration areas which is also the biggest new energy-block in Norway, has officially been launched on the 30^th of August, 2019.

On the 30^th of August, +CityxChange, celebrated the official opening of Powerhouse Brattørkaia (Trondhein) which is the biggest new positive energy block in Norway. It will generate more energy in its operational phase than it consumes through the production of building materials, construction, operation and disposal of the building. For Powerhouse Brattørkaia, form follows environment, while optimal use of solar energy determines the building’s exciting and iconic architecture. Solar energy, other sources of renewable energy, and an extremely low energy consumption ensure that this becomes an energy-positive building.

The official opening attracted participants from private, public, university and research organisations. Several partners in this huge project, such as +CityxChange, ZEN, IOTA, Trønder Energi, etc., participated with stands open for all public.

Among the other groups engaged in festival were young people working in climate -related issues – Klimabrølet Trondheim – Climate Roar. Entra CEO Sonja Horn and Secretary of the Department of Commerce Torbjørn Røe officially connected the powerhouse, with smoke and el-guitar solo effects to celebrate the grand opening.

Stalls with activities for different age groups were made available. Among others, an electric car, electric boat and an electric bus that can be charged with solar cells from Powerhouse, were showcased.

Click here to learn more about Powerhouse projects.

From governance in ‘Campus development’ to governance in ‘Smart cities’ – Savis Gohari

On the 21^st of June, 2019, our new colleague, Savis Gohari, gave a presentation on governance processes on smart city initiatives, linking in this way her PhD research (Governance in the planning and decision-making process: The co-location case of university campuses in Trondheim, Norway) to +CityxChange project.  

Accordingly, the research objective was to analyse ‘governance structures’, i.e. the way actors stand in a network and interact with each other across levels, together with ‘governance processes’, i.e. the interrelation between actors’ attributes (such as interests, resource, power and roles) at different levels and rounds of decision-making. Part of the empirical research was conducted in one of the +CityxChange Demonstration Areas in Trondheim, namely, Campus Gløshaugen. Citizen participation is one of the main pillars upon which +CityxChange is based on. However, participatory processes remain a complex task, especially when trying to transit to new forms of policy-making in a smart city context.

Savis’ discussion on how to govern ‘smart cities’ pointed out that the formal mechanisms of transitioning to sustainability are ill equipped to address and conform with the political and power dimensions in smart cities. Furthermore, there is no determined blueprint for sustainability transitions and the existing governance systems hitherto have been inefficient and implicated in unsustainability.

During her work as a postdoc which is directly linked to research on citizen participatory processes for +CityxChange, Savis will try to conceptualise the co-creative governance and the dynamic interplay between power relations in the face of conflict of interests. Thereby, she aims to go beyond the traditional division of governance network between private, public and academia to investigate the political structure underpinning the functionality of governance.

Click here to download the presentation.

After the first kick-off meeting at the project launch in Trondheim in November 2018, +CityxChange partners from LHCs, FCs and supporting organizations got together again on April 2-4 for the PED Cities Workshop.

The three-day workshop – one day organised by +CityxChange project coordinators and the second two by JPI Urban Europe – was hosted in Vienna and took place in the once forgotten warehouse which has now turned into an inspiring creativity factory, the Nordbahnhalle.

The first day of the workshop was designed as a Learning Workshop for +CityxChange partners to engage in discussions, share experiences, gain more knowledge on technical issues related to the project and understand where do we all stand in the overall project development. After the word of welcome from NTNU, a series of workshops led by work package leaders took place. The first workshop was lead by Future Analytics Consulting and issues related to city Key Performance Indicators, standardized ways to share KPI data, data governance and challenges of FCs in terms of indicators, were discussed.

Interesting results were drawn from the LHC/FC activities & demo projects workshop, were divided into thematic discussion groups, cities and partners exchanged their knowledge on PEB definitions and boundary conditions, regulatory and planning challenges, data sharing, etc. The whole discussion was led by Han Vandevyvere, included some examples of fuck-up nights and policy recommendations by similar projects to ours.

Within the last workshop, ISOCARP’s objective was to develop strong narratives about +CityxChange in each city through storytelling. After a short introduction on why storytelling is important, what are important constituents of stories and how to tell them, each group had to come up with their own storytelling version. We had an interesting presentation and later on discussion with representatives from The Energy Centre of Vienna, Nikolaus Summer and Petra Schöfmann, who presented their experiences with Positive Energy Blocks and Districts, as well as the Smart City Vienna strategy and city-industry-research cooperation in Vienna.

The second day of our stay in Vienna was led by JPI Urban Europe and was part of their workshop programme on Positive Energy Districts and Neighbourhoods (PED). Cities, R&I institutions, industry and citizens in the programme implementation came together to interact and have a solid understanding of cities’ experiences and strategies on how to manage energy transition to contribute to a more sustainable urban development.

The last day gave participants the occasion to go on a study visit to the brownfield urban development of former Vienna northwest railway station and discuss the urban development process with representatives of the City of Vienna.