Data, processes, public space and urban design. UCM Master’s Degree in Smart Cities (Madrid, 21 January 2025)
On 21 January I was invited to give a lecture at the Master in Smart Cities and Sustainability of the Complutense University (UCM) on how data and processes can help to design a public space that improves both the urban experience and the climate footprint of cities as a whole. The urban problem Before the …...
Colin Ellard. Psychogeography. Places Of The Heart
I bought Colin Ellard’s ‘Psychogeography . Places Of The Heart’ in Cálamo, my favourite bookshop in Zaragoza. For those unfamiliar with the term, let’s clarify that psychogeography is concerned with understanding how our surroundings influence us, and its importance for the discipline of urban design increases...
Daniel Susskind. A World Without Work
From a refreshing trip to Scotland this summer I brought back, among other things, a visit to two great bookshops: the indescribable Leakey in the northern city of Inverness and the Topping & Company bookshop in Edinburgh. Consequence: a good handful of books in the suitcase as a pastime and intellectual fuel with which to …...
Spatial entropy to design the 15 minute city
The concept of Spatial Entropy casts some light into the relationship between urban design and thermodinamycs, something that has been intriguing me for some time. Basically, what I realized was that cities, as any other set of matter in our Universe, should obbey the 2nd Law of Thermodinamics. I had a thread there I could …...
Making the most of data: supporting data stewardship in local ecosystems
On Tuesday, 23rd May 2023, I chair the webinar “Making the most of data: supporting data stewardship in local ecosystems” at Eurocities. This session is part of the activity of the Data Working Group withing Eurocities’ Digital Forum . Data stewardship is a figure recognized by the European Data Governance Act and the...
Digitizing Government Ecosystems. De Klik Met De Burger. March, 28th 2023. Mechelen (Belgium)
On March, 28th 2023 I was invited as a keynote speaker at the De Klik Met De Burger event in Mechelen (Belgium) to speak about Digitizing Government Ecosystems. I was also able to present the work we’ve done during the last 15 years to position Zaragoza as one of Europe’s most innovative & sustainable cities. …...
Kevin Lynch. The Image Of The City
By Daniel Sarasa. Kevin Lynch’s “The Image of the City” is a seminal work in urban design that founded in practice a new field of work and study such as the geography of perception -or behavioural geography-. In his work, Kevin Lynch tries to comprehend and design the visible layer of the city through the …...
Democratic co-production of sustainable public services. Rome. Dec, 14th 2022
Democratic co-production of sustainable public services is an event related to the Interlink project. We focus on new ways of delivering public goods and services, in particular regarding what concerns democratic an feasible co-production of public services. The discussion will be centered on how to promote sustainable development and...
Governance of the Data Space for Smart Cities and Communities. Eurocities Digital Society Forum. 5-7 Oct 2022 (Madrid)
As chairs of Eurocities Data Working Group, on Oct, 6th we moderated the pannel “WG Data: Preparations for a data space for smart communities – Multistakeholder data governance”, during the Eurocities Digital Society Forum held in Madrid. The aim of the session was to prepare the member cities to the inminent start of...
We need a “Hubble” of cities
Scientific progress is coming from unexpected directions. Mathematics, biology, and astrophysics promise to bring new theoretical tools to advance in how cities work. Social networks, Internet of Things, and big data are sending much of the information about flows between humans and between humans and objects at local and distant scales. But, in screening the universe of cities, our observation artifacts are maybe too narrow and rudimentary.
