Monthly Archives: August 2016

RSA Winter Conference 2016. New Pressures on Cities and Regions

In light of ongoing demand, the deadline for abstract submission and registration for the RSA Winter Conference in London has been extended until Monday, 12th September 2016.

If you are still unsure about attending the conference, you can find more information about the conference themes, speakers and special sessions here.

The Call for Papers is available here.

To register and submit your abstract please click here.

Identities and the Cities: Urban Transformations, Transition and Change in Urban Image Construction

Urban image construction is a reflection, expression and constitutive factor of local identity formation and dynamics. Cities simultaneously localize identities and connect them with wider global signs of utility, function and symbolic order. Elasticity of the label identity accommodates everything that surrounds us as presence or absence, persistence or change. As a theatrical scenery, cities change after each act, sometimes with discrete adaptations, sometimes with radical interventions. If the scenery is composed of streets, parks, roads, museums, monuments, shopping malls and buildings connected through the intricate network of the perpetual and cumulative actions of its inhabitants, every adaptation and intervention affects its multi-dimensional identities. Changes in urban visual identities unfold as a form of public art feeding from the immense potential of social imaginary significations accommodated by a time’s perception of stability, structure and continuity. Urban change is itself a production of meaning, interpretation and identity making practices.

As the chaotic canvases of cities are being stretched over a framework of identity, its further exploration seems more than appropriate. Amidst the incredibly rapid urban growth crowding more than half of the world population in towns and cities, the questions are only going to keep multiplying. How are city identities made and re-made, used and abused, imagined and narrated, politicised and communicated, expressed and projected, imposed and marketed? And above all, how do they thrive within the dynamic interpolation of the nexus of local-global, centre-periphery, urban – suburban, old and new. As out-dated as these dichotomies may sound, in many places their daily life is far from over. As old cities became new capitals and new capitals struggle for more capital, the challenges of maintaining public-driven collective identities in the face of cultural fragmentation and diversification, coupled with consumer-attractiveness is turning them into urban palimpsests. Urban environments reflect the human needs and values. In an increasingly globalized world, the human beings are becoming more citizens of the world than citizens of the cities. The increasing mobility of the new pilgrims of globalization creates more of the same in the logic of universalized urban functionality. Within this logic, the cities are now in the position to re-evaluate their impact on the world and shape their future in a manner that assumes a wider responsibility that evades a localized mentality. Urban local identities are becoming increasingly thin and rely strongly on negotiating a local specificity with universalized functionality and global responsibility. An increasing need for uniqueness and distinctiveness foster site-specificity aimed at placing a particular urban identity within a global economic hierarchy. Public art became essential for affirming distinctive local urban identities in a universe of serialization and commodification.

As the research on cultural identities of the city is becoming more abundant, this panel aims at adopting a wide-lens inter-disciplinary approach, while focusing on various processes affecting identities in the urban context in its global-regional-national-local interplay.

If interested in participating, please send a maximum 300 words abstract together with the details of your affiliation until 9th of September 2016 at application@euroacademia.eu

For full details of the conference and on-line application please see:
http://euroacademia.eu/conference/fifth-forum-critical-studies/

Risk Reduction for Resilient Cities

The conference will be held on November 3 – November 4, 2016 at the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest, Romania.

The event is part of national research project “Urban blocks in central protected area in multiple hazard approach – assessment, mapping and strategies for risk mitigation. Case study: Bucharest destructured zone by razing occuring in the communist period” (URBASRISK), financed by UEFISCDI, a public body under the authority of Romanian Ministry of Education and Scientific Research.

Participants will find out the latest discoveries in research and build collaborations with researchers abroad. They will experience beautiful Bucharest. The 2016 conference offers due recognition to great achievements of individuals and institutions in the production, promotion, and use of the research.

Abstracts submission deadline: September 15, 2016

See details and registration here….

17th annual International LiDAR Mapping Forum (ILMF)

The 17th annual International LiDAR Mapping Forum (ILMF), taking place in Denver, Colorado, USA, February 13-15, 2017, has announced a Call for Papers and invites interested parties to submit their abstracts by September 1, 2016 online here.

ILMF is a technical conference and exhibition focused on surveying and mapping technologies including aerial, mobile and bathymetric lidar as well as other emerging remote sensing technologies including UAV/UAS. Other technologies include topo/bathymetric solutions, Geiger-mode and single photon lidar, multi and hyperspectral imaging. Data processing content addresses latest innovations to solve for big data, data fusion, data integrity and data interoperability.

  • Topics include asset management, infrastructure inspection and maintenance for utilities, process & power, coastal zone mapping and surveying, emergency and disaster response, land and natural resource management, urban modeling and construction.
    We invite abstracts addressing the following topics. Case studies and recent project examples presented by owner/operators are encouraged.
  • Data acquisition – airborne, mobile and bathymetric lidar
  • Developments in lidar including Single Photon, FLASH and Geiger-mode. Comparisons of lidar technologies.
  • Applications/Integration of lidar, photogrammetry, survey data and dense image matching
  • LIDAR point clouds & large data sets including automated feature extraction
  • UAV/UAS developments & applications; comparisons of manned versus sUAS
  • Emerging technologies in remote sensing and mapping
  • Data fusion and processing technologies
  • Engineering collaboration systems and cloud-hosted data management
  • Developments in point data classification and GIS modeling
  • Mobile mapping and survey
  • Systems integration
  • Industry issues

The ILMF Advisory Board will review each abstract and the final program will be announced in November. Case studies and recent project examples presented by owner/operators are encouraged. Vendor product presentations are welcomed in the Product Preview section of the program and will not be accepted for the main program.