50957The Barcelona Provincial Council has just published a book (< strong>Rethinking urban policies. Notes for the urban agenda ) with the results and content developed in the course Rethinking urban policies 30 years later organized by the Menéndez Pelayo International University Consortium of Barcelona as part of its 2010 Autumn Courses, directed by Josep M. Montaner (Professor of Architectural Theory. Higher Technical School of Architecture of Barcelona (ETSAB) – Polytechnic University of Catalonia) and Joan Subirats (Professor of Political Science. Autonomous University of Barcelona), and coordinated by Xavier Boneta and Maria Herrero, from the Department of Studies and Prospective of the Barcelona Provincial Council. The book looks like this:

We are going through a period of a certain lack of definition regarding urban reality and its evolution, with cities that, in their renewed territorial dimension, concentrate and intensify the problems and opportunities posed by the already evident change of times in which we live.

This volume offers new perspectives on the urban reality capable of capturing that complexity and points out new perspectives that seek to respond to the challenges of more comprehensiveness, of greater recognition of the different spheres of government that operate on the city and that advocate a greater social perspective in the realization of its future. It constitutes a collective work that provides a set of reflections and proposals to build a new urban agenda.

Almost two years have passed since a course that brought together Imanol Zubero, Zaida Muxí, Moritz Lennert, Gemma Galdón, Alan Harding or Malcolm Burns, to name just a few of the speakers. In the part that was my turn, it involved a good documentation effort to prepare that debate session based on audiovisual pieces related to different urban management themes, and it was also a good opportunity to focus some of the reflections that Since then I have matured related to the role of technologies in the urban agenda of the coming years. Back then, smart cities were just a wave that could be seen coming in the distance, and then I decided to put my feet on the ground on how far to trust urban technologies.

I leave here the text that I wrote and that has been published with the title Emerging Technologies in urban functioning. Promises and limits for urban sustainability. I have developed a large part of the ideas in this text later on the blog through different posts, but the good thing about having that writing for formats beyond the blog helps to create a more coherent and finished speech.

Emerging technologies in urban functioning. Promises and limits for urban sustainability

You may also like: