The Urban Health and Wellbeing programme‘s International Programme Office is recruiting a Communications Officer, based in Xiamen, China.
The UHWB programme is a 10 year, global interdisciplinary science programme to promote research on urban health in changing urban environments.
Deadline for Applications: August 26, 2016
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The Global Land Project is pleased to announce the opening of their call for sessions for the Global Land Project Open Science Meeting, “Land system science: understanding realities and developing solutions”, which will take place from 24 to 27 October 2016 in Beijing, China.
The Global Land Project (GLP) is an interdisciplinary community of science and practice fostering the study of land systems and the co-design of solutions for global sustainability. It represents the largest international research network in this field. Continue reading
The rapid urbanization of China is an event unparalleled in human history. Fueled by a near-continuous rural-to-urban migration, the country’s urban population has leaped from a mere 18% in 1978 to 54% in 2013. The effects of this process are evident in a variety of ways; for example: satellite images of the Earth at night have revealed the intense increase in the illumination of China, indicating the fervent expansion of urban built-up areas. Traveling through the country exposes one to the uninterrupted urban/suburban landscapes of the many urban agglomeration clusters, such as the Yangtze River Delta (Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou), the Pearl River Delta (Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong), and the Bohai Sea Region (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei). Remote sensing images reveal the alarming rate at which agricultural land is being subsumed by this wave of growth.
Olivia Bina, University of Lisbon, Portugal & Andrea Ricci, The Institute of Studies for the Integration of Systems, ItalyWe have demonstrated that we can build meta- and mega-cities, and move seamlessly into city-regions and clusters. We exhibit the capability for spontaneous and/or planned urbanisation. We can build super-tall and ultra-dense. We expand horizontally, reclaiming waterfronts with abandon, and vertically downwards as we explore the endless opportunities that lie underground. We confront new macro-scale challenges with nano-scale techno-scientific solutions, as we embrace the era of the ‘smart’ (Caprotti 2015).
Thus, we create problems of unprecedented complexity, at a speed and scale that place governments and governance mechanisms primarily in reactive (no matter how ‘strategic’), rather than anticipatory decision modes. We tend to discuss and frame the problems and their solutions in politically and ideologically unproblematic terms, preferring to search for means (how to solve problems), rather than question the ends (why is this a problem, indeed, what is the problem?) (Caprotti 2015a ; Ideas At The House 2013). In the words of Specht (2015b): “We are making and remaking our cities over and over without perhaps stopping to ask how or why.”
The International Social Science Council (ISSC) calls for applications from outstanding early career social scientists around the world to become World Social Science Fellows and participate in a seminar on Big Data in an Urban Context from November 30 to December 4, 2015 in Xiamen, China.
Deadline for Submission is August 24, 2015 at 00:00 GMT.