urbanApi: Urban planning tools and intelligence for integrated urban governance

Project details

Full project title: urbanApi - Urban planning tools and intelligence for integrated urban governance

Duration: September 2011- August 2012

Funder: European Commission (FP7 DG INFSO, 2011 - 2014)

Project leader for SPE: David Ludlow

Other UWE Bristol researcher: Zaheer Khan

Research partners/collaborators:

Coordinator: Dr. Joachim Rix, Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics

Research partners City partners
  • AIT, Vienna
  • Geoville, Innsbruck
  • UWE, Bristol
  • AEW, Rome
  • Vienna
  • Bologna
  • Vitoria Gasteiz
  • Sofia

Project summary

Effective governance of the cities and city regions of Europe today is fundamentally undermined by urban complexity, whereby the high degree of interconnectedness and multiple interactions between socio-economic and environmental factors in a territorial context create major barriers to the effective implementation of sustainable urban development.

The proactive governance of cities and the delivery of more sustainable compact cities offer substantial opportunity for the application of enhanced intelligence in urban management, to produce an effective basis for assessment of urban complexity, and decision-making support.

ICT enabled urban governance offers a huge potential to simultaneously achieve effective management of the complexity of the city, and engage citizens in defining their urban futures.

ICT enabled innovations can enhance public engagement and allow a wider audience to simultaneously contribute to the political debate. In particular, the convergence of broadband with ICT-enabled innovations (e.g. especially user driven applications based on social networking and mobile technologies) is transforming the way people use the Internet to communicate and interact.

ICTs are seen as enablers of more and better participation (e-Participation), and democracy (e-Democracy) and more inclusive societies (inclusive e-Governance and e-Inclusion), extending beyond enhanced service delivery, to facilitate and enhance interactions between actors.

Project contact

For further information, please contact Associate Professor David Ludlow.

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