Urban Research Festival (01)

The Henry Halloran Trust (http://sydney.edu.au/halloran/), has been established at the University of Sydney through the generous gift of Warren Halloran is attempting to fill this research gap by sponsoring a number of urban research projects. The Urban Research Festival will highlight some of these projects and will have two roles:

1. Hear from one the researchers who has been recently funded by the Trust – A/P Marcus Foth, Director of the Urban Informatics Lab at QUT;

2. Listen to four research teams pitch their research proposals (a maximum of 5 minutes per pitch) in an attempt to secure the last Blue sky research project grant from the Trust for 2014;

• Lian Loke talk about Sustainable Bodies and Urban Playgrounds
• Claudine Moutou talk about RateIT: Crowd sourced real-time app to improve the land-use transport feedback cycle
• Rod Simpson talk about An Urban Liveability Index- an Open data Open Mind project
• Lee Stickells talk about Best Practice Bottom Up: urban governance, do-it yourself urbanism, and digital technology;

A/P Foth’s talk: From Smart City to Smart Citizens

Large, global corporations in the technology sector have started to package and sell the ‘Smart City’ vision as a centralized service delivery platform – primarily based on five technology trends: broadband connectivity; smart, personal devices; big data; urban interfaces and sensor networks; and cloud computing. However, an increasing number of scholars and commentators warn of another ‘IT bubble’ emerging. They argue that the top-down deployment of these large and proprietary technology platforms will fail without a thorough understanding of the socio-cultural nuances of how people work, live, play across different environments, and how they employ social media and mobile devices to interact and engage.