The Serviced City

The Interactive City

The Socially Integrated City

How can provision of key urban services and facilities be secured in competitively oriented cities? Starting from theoretical perspectives the session will confront their practical  and policy implications in the context of  potentially successful 21^st century cities. Practitioner contributions which will clarify how the difficulties faced in effectively providing the serviced city are being addressed.

The debate about cities, interactions and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has been framed around two key sets of issues. First, the rise of ICT has been uneven and presents a new form of inequality viewed by many as a new threat on the social cohesion of cities. Second, the very future of cities, based on face-to-face contact, seems under threat if indeed ICT keep making distance ever more irrelevant.

What kinds of cohesion do cities (and different city populations) actually need?  Is spatial segregation a threat to securing these, or functional for urban success. How can desirable sorts of cohesion - consistent with openness, diversity and flexibility - actually be encouraged or enabled in different kinds of city

The Safe and Secure City

The Distinctive City

The Communal City

A  key issue for urban resurgence seems to  be that of how safety and security are to be secured (and what the consequences are of failing to achieve this in particular ways), in cities which are presumed to be becoming increasingly competitive, 'flexible', diverse and unequal.

Distinctiveness is argued to be critical to the success for particular cities, but how many places are capable of achieving this? How can  cities develop distinctive neighborhoods, occupations, and industries, so as to provide residents with amenities and enable them to compete within the global economy

How can effective governance and citizenship be achieved in cities whose success is linked to increasing diversity, mobility and change in their populations  and economic bases ? 

The Sustainable City

The Beautiful or Designed City

The Habitable City

How can knowledge effectively be applied to promoting policy action for sustainability? What do urban policy makers and researchers need to do to achieve this ?. What lessons can be learned from exchange of experience between cities in Northern and Southern contexts in relation to sustainability issues?

Beyond the question of what can be considered beautiful is that of the role of beauty and urban design in a “good” city.  What are the contributions of design to liveability?  To economic success? To social coherence?  Does design matter in any of these ways

One of the central tensions in the resurgent city seems to be between an emphasis on order (to make the city 'work' efficiently and safely) and on forms of disorder (as spurs to innovation etc.).  This theme session, will  explore this tension - and ways of moving beyond it - in relation to questions of livability, as conceived of at an individual level and by 'planners'