Since the late 1990s, city councils have become increasingly aware of the potential for information technologies (ICTs) to improve the management of cities and as an instrument for economic and social policy. This has resulted in a wave of urban ICT strategies and policies, such as the adoption of ICTs within the city administration itself, projects that facilitate access to ICTs by weaker social groups and policies to improve the urban electronic infrastructure. By comparing eight cities - Barcelona, Cape Town, Eindhoven, Johnnesburg, Manchester, Tampere, the Hague and Venice - this book examines a range of innovative urban e-governance strategies and develops a framework of analysis that permits a common approach. Throughout the book, a distinction is made between access policies (aimed at improving access to ICTs for all citizens), content policies (directed to improve the use of ICTs in the city administration and semi-public domains) and infrastructure policies (to improve the provision of broadband infrastructure). For each of the cities, e-strategies and policies are critically reviewed and compared. The book reveals that urban e-strategies have evolved from an internal and technology-centred orientation to a more outward-looking approach.
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There is a clear demand for collaborative, knowledge sharing tools for urban resilienceprojects. Climatescan is an interactive, web-based map application for international knowledge exchange on ‘blue-green’ projects around the globe. The tool was applied during the Adaptation Futures & The Water Institute of Southern Africa (WISA)conferences, June 2018, in Cape Town. The use of climatescan by different stakeholders during the event led to recommendations for a better application of the web-based map in Africa and around the world.
The project Decolonising Education: from Teachers to Leading Learners (DETeLL) aims to develop a multi-site approach for interventions towards inclusion and decolonisation in order to change the hierarchical nature of higher education in the Netherlands. DETeLL identifies the model of the ‘traditional teacher’ as embodying the structural exclusions and discriminations built into the classroom and proposes the figure of a ‘Leading Learner’ as a first step towards a radical change in the educational system. In collaboration with the education departments in the Theatre and Dance Academy at ArtEZ, the post-doc will build up a research and teaching programme that engages with students and teachers in the faculty to create a prototype of an inclusive and diverse educational practice. RELEVANCE: Education should be the critical space in which changes occur in order to shape best possible futures. In DETeLL’s acceptation, decolonisation refers to a complete change in the way of thinking and behaving. It does not refer only to the urgency of dealing with historical colonial legacies embedded in society, but also to the subversion of the deeply oppressive colonial culture that (also unconsciously) regulates public and private living, whether this is related to gender, race, class or sexuality issues. RESULTS: 1) Create a theory and practice-based scientific base-line of decolonisation and art education; 2) Provide a definition of ‘Artist educator as Leading Learner’ following a practice- based methodology of intervention; 3) Design and Pilot a new teaching programme for theatre education at ArtEZ to be then upscaled to all educational departments in a follow-up project); 4) Produce a strong interdisciplinary and international output plan: 3 academic publications, 2 conferences, 4 expert group workshops. NETWORK: ArtEZ; University of Amsterdam (UvA); Ghent University; UCHRI; Hildesheim University; Cape Town University. The partners will serve as steering committee through planned expert group meetings.
