Maker City: A Practical Guide for Reinventing Our Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Peter Hirshberg, Dale Dougherty, and Marcia Kadanoff: “Maker City, or the Maker City Playbook is a comprehensive set of case studies and how-to information useful for city leaders, civic innovators, nonprofits, and others engaged in urban economic development. The Maker City Playbook is committed to going beyond stories to find patterns and discern promising practices to help city leaders make even more informed decisions.

  • Chapter 1: Introduction and a Call to Action
  • Chapter 2: The Maker movement and Cities
  • Chapter 3: The Maker City as Open Ecosystem
  • Chapter 4: Education and Learning in the Maker City
  • Chapter 5: Workforce Development in the Maker City
  • Chapter 6: Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chain inside the Maker City
  • Chapter 7: Real Estate Matters in the Maker City
  • Chapter 8: Civic Engagement in the Maker City
  • Chapter 9: The Future of the Maker City

Maker City Project is a collaboration between the Kauffman Foundation, the Gray Area for the Arts, and Maker Media. Read for free here: https://makercitybook.com/“

Emotional States: Sites and spaces of affective governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Eleanor Jupp, Jessica Pykett, and Fiona M. Smith: “What is the political allure, value and currency of emotions within contemporary cultures of governance? What does it mean to govern more humanely? Since the emergence of an emotional turn in human geography over the last decade, the notion that our emotions matter in understanding an array of social practices, spatial formations and aspects of everyday life is no longer seen as controversial. This book brings recent developments in emotional geography into dialogue with social policy concerns and contemporary issues of governance. It sets the intellectual scene for research into the geographical dimensions of the emotionalized states of the citizen, policy maker and public service worker, and highlights new research on the emotional forms of governance which now characterise public life.

An international range of empirical field studies are used to examine issues of regulation, modification, governance and potential manipulation of emotional affects, professional and personal identities and political technologies. Contributors provide analysis of the role of emotional entanglements in policy strategy, policy implementation, service delivery, citizenship and participation as well as considering the emotional nature of the research process itself. It will be of interest to researchers and students within social policy, human geography, politics and related disciplines….(More)”

The Future of Drone Use: Opportunities and Threats from Ethical and Legal Perspectives

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Bart Custers: “Given the popularity of drones and the fact that they are easy and cheap to buy, it is generally expected that the ubiquity of drones will significantly increase within the next few years. This raises questions as to what is technologically feasible (now and in the future), what is acceptable from an ethical point of view and what is allowed from a legal point of view. Drone technology is to some extent already available and to some extent still in development. The aim and scope of this book is to map the opportunities and threats associated with the use of drones and to discuss the ethical and legal issues of the use of drones.
This book provides an overview of current drone technologies and applications and of what to expect in the next few years. The question of how to regulate the use of drones in the future is addressed, by considering conditions and contents of future drone legislation and by analyzing issues surrounding privacy and safeguards that can be taken. As such, this book is valuable to scholars in several disciplines, such as law, ethics, sociology, politics and public administration, as well as to practitioners and others who may be confronted with the use of drones in their work, such as professionals working in the military, law enforcement, disaster management and infrastructure management. Individuals and businesses with a specific interest in drone use may also find in the nineteen contributions contained in this volume unexpected perspectives on this new field of research and innovation….(More)”

Enriching Urban Spaces with Ambient Computing, the Internet of Things, and Smart City Design

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Shin’ichi Konomi and George Roussos: “In recent years, the presence of ubiquitous computing has increasingly integrated into the lives of people in modern society. As these technologies become more pervasive, new opportunities open for making citizens’ environments more comfortable, convenient, and efficient.

Enriching Urban Spaces with Ambient Computing, the Internet of Things, and Smart City Design is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly material on the interaction between people and computing systems in contemporary society, showcasing how ubiquitous computing influences and shapes urban environments. Highlighting the impacts of these emerging technologies from an interdisciplinary perspective, this book is ideally designed for professionals, researchers, academicians, and practitioners interested in the influential state of pervasive computing within urban contexts….(Table of Contents and List of Contributors)”.

Nudging Health

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by I. Glenn Cohen, Holly Fernandez Lynch, and Christopher T. Robertson: “Behavioral nudges are everywhere: calorie counts on menus, automated text reminders to encourage medication adherence, a reminder bell when a driver’s seatbelt isn’t fastened. Designed to help people make better health choices, these reminders have become so commonplace that they often go unnoticed. In Nudging Health, forty-five experts in behavioral science and health policy from across academia, government, and private industry come together to explore whether and how these tools are effective in improving health outcomes.

Behavioral science has swept the fields of economics and law through the study of nudges, cognitive biases, and decisional heuristics—but it has only recently begun to impact the conversation on health care.Nudging Health wrestles with some of the thorny philosophical issues, legal limits, and conceptual questions raised by behavioral science as applied to health law and policy. The volume frames the fundamental issues surrounding health nudges by addressing ethical questions. Does cost-sharing for health expenditures cause patients to make poor decisions? Is it right to make it difficult for people to opt out of having their organs harvested for donation when they die? Are behavioral nudges paternalistic? The contributors examine specific applications of behavioral science, including efforts to address health care costs, improve vaccination rates, and encourage better decision-making by physicians. They wrestle with questions regarding the doctor-patient relationship and defaults in healthcare while engaging with larger, timely questions of healthcare reform.

Nudging Health is the first multi-voiced assessment of behavioral economics and health law to span such a wide array of issues—from the Affordable Care Act to prescription drugs….(More)”

The Fix: How Nations Survive and Thrive in a World in Decline

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Knowledge – Is Knowledge Power?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Marian Adolf and Nico Stehr: “As we move through our modern world, the phenomenon we call knowledge is always involved. Whether we talk of know-how, technology, innovation, politics or education, it is the concept of knowledge that ties them all together. But despite its ubiquity as a modern trope we seldom encounter knowledge in itself. How is it produced, where does it reside, and who owns it? Is knowledge always beneficial, will we know all there is to know at some point in the future, and does knowledge really equal power? This book pursues an original approach to this concept that seems to define so many aspects of modern societies. It explores the topic from a distinctly sociological perspective, and traces the many ways that knowledge is woven into the very fabric of modern society….(More)”

Sustainable Smart Cities: Creating Spaces for Technological, Social and Business Development

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Peris-Ortiz, Marta, Bennett, Dag, and Pérez-Bustamante Yábar, Diana: “This volume provides the most current research on smart cities. Specifically, it focuses on the economic development and sustainability of smart cities and examines how to transform older industrial cities into sustainable smart cities.  It aims to identify the role of the following elements in the creation and management of smart cities:

  • Citizen participation and empowerment
  • Value creation mechanisms
  • Public administration
  • Quality of life and sustainability
  • Democracy
  • ICT
  • Private initiatives and entrepreneurship

Regardless of their size, all cities are ultimately agglomerations of people and institutions. Agglomeration economies make it possible to attain minimum efficiencies of scale in the organization and delivery of services. However, the economic benefits do not constitute the main advantage of a city. A city’s status rests on three dimensions: (1) political impetus, which is the result of citizens’ participation and the public administration’s agenda; (2) applications derived from technological advances (especially in ICT); and (3) cooperation between public and private initiatives in business development and entrepreneurship. These three dimensions determine which resources are necessary to create smart cities. But a smart city, ideal in the way it channels and resolves technological, social and economic-growth issues, requires many additional elements to function at a high-performance level, such as culture (an environment that empowers and engages citizens) and physical infrastructure designed to foster competition and collaboration, encourage new ideas and actions, and set the stage for new business creation. …(More)”.

Participatory Budgeting in the United States: A Guide for Local Governments

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Victoria Gordon, Jeffery L. Osgood, Jr., Daniel Boden: “Although citizen engagement is a core public service value, few public administrators receive training on how to share leadership with people outside the government.Participatory Budgeting in the United States serves as a primer for those looking to understand a classic example of participatory governance, engaging local citizens in examining budgetary constraints and priorities before making recommendations to local government. Utilizing case studies and an original set of interviews with community members, elected officials, and city employees, this book provides a rare window onto the participatory budgeting process through the words and experiences of the very individuals involved. The central themes that emerge from these fascinating and detailed cases focus on three core areas: creating the participatory budgeting infrastructure; increasing citizen participation in participatory budgeting; and assessing and increasing the impact of participatory budgeting. This book provides students, local government elected officials, practitioners, and citizens with a comprehensive understanding of participatory budgeting and straightforward guidelines to enhance the process of civic engagement and democratic values in local communities….(More)”

Seeing Cities Through Big Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Thakuriah, Piyushimita (Vonu), Tilahun, Nebiyou, and Zellner, Moira: “… introduces the latest thinking on the use of Big Data in the context of urban systems, including  research and insights on human behavior, urban dynamics, resource use, sustainability and spatial disparities, where it promises improved planning, management and governance in the urban sectors (e.g., transportation, energy, smart cities, crime, housing, urban and regional economies, public health, public engagement, urban governance and political systems), as well as Big Data’s utility in decision-making, and development of indicators to monitor economic and social activity, and for urban sustainability, transparency, livability, social inclusion, place-making, accessibility and resilience…(More)”