UCL Urban Laboratory

The UCL Urban Laboratory is delighted to present its annual report for 2011-2012. Its content reflects the hard work and dedication of many people across UCL, as well as a growing range of partnerships beyond the academy. The projects featured evidence an array of critical, experimental and rigorous research and teaching activity within the university, and a wide range of productive collaborations with other communities. 

Urban Laboratory researcher Louis Moreno presented an introductory talk on Professor David Harvey's work prior to a lecture by David Harvey, hosted by the Masters in Research course in Art Theory and Philosophy at Central Saint Martins, on June 25 at 6.00 pm.

Regner Ramos, a UCL Urban Laboratory and Bartlett School of Architecture doctoral candidate, has launched a Call for Interviewees, to have conversations with users of two mobile apps called Mappiness and Grindr. His research focuses on the apps’ spatial qualities and their effect on users’ identities. Mappiness and Grindr users are sought out to participate in a short, confidential interview, to get a wider scope on the way the apps are used, how they relate to urban space, and how their users construct virtual personas. In the case of Grindr, the research also explores how Grindr-users perceive their sexual identity/orientation in relation to urban spaces. 

The UCL Development Planning Unit has officially announced the launch of the dpusummerLab 2013 workshop series, directed by Urban Laboratory co-director, Camillo Boano.

UCL Urban Laboratory co-director Pushpa Arabindoo was invited to speak at The New Asian Middle Class signature conference organised by Asia House, London. Seeking to examine the demographic upheavals taking place across Asian emerging economies, the event held on 04 April 2013 comprised two panels: The Demographic Dividend and Urbanisation Unleashed. Pushpa's presentation on Mobility and Infrastructure focussed on the challenges of moving the middle class in urban India. These panels involved a discussion amongst experts from practice, think-tanks and research consultancies, academia, private sector investors as well as state representatives.

On 26 April UCL Urban Laboratory launched Urban Pamphleteer, a new series of publications that confront key contemporary urban questions from diverse perspectives. Written in a direct and accessible tone, these pamphlets draw on the history of radical pamphleteering to instigate change.

UCL and the London Borough of Newham (LBN) have announced that their negotiations regarding a possible UCL-led redevelopment of the Carpenters Estate, adjacent to the Olympic Park, have ended without agreement. It has not been possible for both parties to agree commercial terms. However, both UCL and LBN have indicated that they will continue to work together to explore other site options for a UCL-led development in Stratford. 

Margit Mayer gave the UCL Urban Laboratory Annual Lecture in October 2012 on 'The Urban Question Under Conditions of Globalization'. An article based on this talk is published in volume 17, issue 1 of CITY journal. 

Drawing on the extensive resources of the UCL Development Planning Unit in collaboration with local partners in various host cities, DPU summerLab leverages the reality of the city as a laboratory for developing socially responsive design measures that provoke, stimulate, strategize, and reconsider the role of designers in promoting spatial justice. During August and September 2012, the DPU summerLabs were held in Zurich and in Rome. 

Recognising that gender has long been an established framework in feminist architectural discourse, Brent Pilkey, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and Rachel Scicluna, Faculty of Health and Social Care, The Open University, recently facilitated ‘Sexuality at Home’, a two day event which focused on sexuality and all things domestic. The film event and conference - held 10 and 11 December 2012 – looked at the spatiality of the themes across varied disciplines from anthropology to visual culture. The conference, the first of its kind, reached maximum capacity six weeks in advance and drew attention from scholars both locally and internationally. With three short films, a full length feature film, eight paper presentations, two keynote lectures (architect Aaron Betsky being one) and a queer domestic performance the second evening, the events showcased creative and on-going humanities and social-science based research that investigates the ways in which sexual subjectivity relates to and plays out in the everyday space of home.

At the end of January the first class of a new Development Planning Unit Junior Professionals Programme met in Bangkok along with Dr. Camillo Boano, director of the MSc Building and Urban Design and Development (BUDD), and various members of the Asian Coalition of Housing Rights (ACHR), and Community Architects Network (CAN). The partnership and initiative dates back to 2010 following the first of a series of field trips to Bangkok between the BUDD and MSc Urban Development Planning courses. Under the Junior Professional Programme, six DPU Alumni were awarded 6-month paid internships to work in several countries throughout Southeast Asia. These ex-students will experience on-the-job-training supporting the advancement and use of methodologies and tools in community-driven development, specifically working with organisations and community members. To kick off, the group worked with Somsook Boonyabancha (ACHR), Supawut Boonmahathanakorn and Chawanad Luansang (CAN coordinators) through a few days of induction, conversations and training before moving on to start their work in the areas of mapping, planning, design, management, recovery and rehabilitation of housing, land and settlement. For more information please see www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/dpu/news/internshipsasia

'Future Proofing Cities: Risks and opportunities for inclusive urban growth in developing countries', a groundbreaking report produced by UCL Developing Planning Unit (DPU) in collaboration with Atkins and DFID was launched last week and received wide media coverage.

Urban Lab Steering Committee member and Bartlett School of Planning academic Michael Edwards participated in this week's  crucial Examination in Public (EiP) on the Mayor’s Revised Early Minor Alterations to the London Plan. The debate was particularly focused on the Mayor’s switch of emphasis, away from housing those in the greatest need (who may be able to afford social housing rent but not “affordable rent” at 65-80% of local market rents) towards those higher up the income scale. Read Michael's blog for his account of what happened and for links to the official documents.

On 12 November, speakers from The Bartlett Schools of Architecture, Planning, and the Development Planning Unit came together to share cross disciplinary perspectives on the ethics of contemporary regeneration practice and the meaning of regeneration as a research field today. Speakers each used one image to present their own perspective on regeneration in ten minutes. Footage of each speaker's presentation can be found below. 

UCL Behaviour Change Month
November 2012

What shapes human behaviour? What stands in the way of long-term, positive behaviour change? How can research inform the design of effective interventions to change behaviour? Where should we most effectively intervene at the macro or the micro level? How do we measure behaviour change?

The UCL Urban Laboratory has won a joint bid for funding from the European Commission’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency to participate in an international network of urban laboratories. 

Results of Urban Reasoning survey linked to AHRC funded Creative City Limits project now online.

Urban Constellations, a new Urban Laboratory book edited by Matthew Gandy, is now available. For more information and to purchase the book please visit the jovis website.

New UCL Urban Laboratory pamphlet considering the urban and cultural impact of the new era of austerity.

This new book, edited by Hilary Powell and Isaac Marrero-Guillamón, brings together a body of work that has emerged in response to the arrival of the Olympics in East London.

Urban Lab Steering Committee member Matthew Gandy explores the interdisciplinary terrain of ‘queer ecology’ in Society and Space (Volume 30 Issue 4), using the example of an urban cemetery in North London as an empirical and conceptual starting point. Though the term ‘queer ecology’ has cropped up a few times it has yet to be addressed directly in order to consider how the seemingly disparate fields of queer theory and urban ecology might benefit from closer interaction. It will be suggested that the theoretical synthesis represented by queer ecology serves to expand the conceptual and material scope of both fields: queer theory is revealed to have only a partially developed engagement with urban nature whilst critical strands of urban ecology such as urban political ecology have yet to connect in a systematic way with queer theory, posthumanism, or new conceptions of complexity emerging from within the science of ecology itself. It is concluded that queer ecology may enrich our understanding of both urban materiality and the role of metaphors in urban theory. In particular, the idea of queer ecology illuminates the possibility for site-specific ‘heterotopic alliances’ in the contemporary city. 

UCL Urban Laboratory statement on UCL's proposition to develop a university quarter in Stratford. 

Call for papers for two day conference exploring issues relating to the history of urban and suburban housing from the mid-19th century to the present day. 

4th Annual Workshop for PhD students in urban-related disciplines. 25 & 26th March 2013.

Stadtkolloquium, in conjunction with UCL’s Urban Laboratory, is pleased to announce its annual 2-day work shop for PhD research students in urban-related disciplines. The workshop will provide an open, informal and intimate space to collaborate and discuss progress amongst peers with regard to topical, theoretical, practical or methodological concerns. We therefore welcome contributions from students at all stages of the dissertation process.

UCL Urban Laboratory academics and students, endorsed by The Bartlett’s Development Planning Unit staff, have written the following open letter to UCL Council regarding the UCL Stratford Proposition. The letter will be considered at the Council’s meeting on Wednesday 28th November 2012.