Urban Systems Collaborative - 2013 program
Colin Harrison
The USC begins its 2013 program this Friday, January 18th, ar 12:30pm EST with a Webinar session lead lead by Nicholas de Monchaux of the UC Berkeley coolegeof Environmental Design, and me, Colin Harrison, until recently of the IBM Corporation. We are two of the members of the Core Group. Unlike most of the Webinars, this will not be a presentation, but more of a discussion on the candidate theme for our major 2013 conference. For short I have called this "Smart Cities as a Design Problem", where "Design" includes but is not limited to urban design, but frames a Smart City in terms of general design principles such as useability, accessibility, discoverability, and so forth. This is the first of a number of discussions to develop an agenda for the 2013 conference.
To join this Webinar please go to www.join.me/openplans for any visual material we share and to 888 426 6840, passcode 8362524.
Other forthcoming Webinars are:
- February 1, 2013 Sean Ahearn, Hunter College - Planning Gonave Island, Haiti
- February 15, 2013 <to be re-scheduled>
- March 1, 2013 Hanna Niemi-Hugaerts, Forum Virium - City SDK
- March 15, 2013 Christian Clauss, IBM - City Protocol
The 2013 conference is tentatively scheduled for September 2013 at Imperial College, London with David Gann and John Polak as our hosts. I am also hoping that as in 2012 we can hold a smaller conference in the late spring of 2013.
During 2011 and 2012 the Core Group has been very conscious that the USC's programs and execution have been severely limited by the small amount of time that the Core Group members have had available. I am hoping personally to make an improvement on this as I will be retiring from IBM on Tuesday January 15, 2013. This should enable me to spend a good fraction of a day per week on getting USC more engaged in the drama of developing 21st century cities. Please note my new professional email address (ColinGeor...@gmail.com). I will be retaining an emeritus relationship with IBM and this, together with a number of scientific and non-profit organizations, seems likely to keep me fairly busy.
Regards, colin