A presentation by Reiner Grundmann entitled 'Science and Technology Studies (STS), smart cities and the UNCTAD report' to promote discussion.

1. STS, smart cities, and the
UNCTAD report
Reiner Grundmann

2. Cities as socio-technical systems
• Large technical systems (LTS)
– consist of a capital-intensive infrastructure, a broad
range of technical components and technologies and
a variety of actors and institutions, spanning a
geographical area (Tom Hughes, B Joerges)
– Water, electricity, gas, railways, automobility,
telephony…
• Cities are places of intersecting LTS
• Governance and institutions (system builders?)
• Technological momentum and lock-in

3. Themes in UNCTAD report
• Urban sprawl, density, lock-in
• Transport
– Low-tech solutions
• Energy
– RE, smart grids, de-centralisation
• Waste
– 3 Rs
• Water
– Centralized governance
• Regulation & planning
– Citizen participation
• Peri-urbanisation
– Urban farming & gardening

4. The Breakthrough Institute, 2015
My comment:
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.de/2015/04/are-we-all-ecomodernists-now.html

5. • Precursor: Hartwell Group
– A new course for climate policy (2010)
• Ecomodernist manifesto synthesizes
technological optimism with deep ecology
thoughts
– Both hold that societies are on a trajectory to
achieving peak material production during this
century, and peak population.
– Energy and services will still grow but the effects
on nature will be minimized.

6. The task of ecomodernization:
• decouple economic and technological
development from its side effects
• main issues are material flows and impacts,
such as species extinction, or pollution.
• virtues of density
– Energy (fossil fuels or nuclear energy)
– Population (urban environments are more
beneficial for wildlife than suburban sprawl)

7. Specific items for discussion
• Sustainability/carbon indicators
• Low/high-tech solutions (cost?)
• Density and the goldilocks
• De/centralisation