UCL Urban Laboratory

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.

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. 

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.

We are delighted to announce that the Dean of UCL Engineering, Professor Anthony Finklestein, has confirmed the Faculty’s co-sponsorship of the Urban Laboratory. Dr Sarah Bell, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, and a member of the Urban Laboratory's steering committee, comments: "This sponsorship demonstrates UCL Engineering’s commitment to interdisciplinary approaches to understanding and influencing the forces that are shaping cities. Research agendas around ‘smart’ and ‘connected’ cities provide a particular point of focus for Engineering and the Urban Lab, bringing together critical, creative and technical approaches".

UCL Estates Division are preparing a feasibility study for UCL's bid to develop a campus in Stratford and an academic team is working on strategy. The site is within the Greater Carpenters Neighbourhood, east of the Olympic Park. The proposals are expected to be considered by the Mayor and the Cabinet of Newham in mid-2012 and a decision made by them and by UCL on whether to proceed to a next stage.

In June 2010, UCL Urban Laboratory hosted a roundtable titled ‘Beyond the return of the slum’ in honour of Professor Alan Gilbert’s retirement. A special feature, co-edited by UCL  Urban Laboratory Co-Director Dr. Pushpa Arabindoo, has now been published in the CITY Journal featuring papers presented at this session alongside new contributors. Articles can be accessed here: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ccit20/15/6.

Dr Claire Colomb, Urban Laboratory Steering Committee member, has published a new book on Berlin. Entitled 'Staging the New Berlin, Place Marketing and the Politics of Reinvention Post-1989', it explores the politics of place marketing and the process of urban reinvention in Berlin between 1989 and 2011. 

A report by Dr Matthew Ingleby of UCL Urban Laboratory's one-day research workshop exploring relationships betweeninsects and cities across the arts and sciences. Insect City was convened by DrMatthew Beaumont(UCL English Department) and Dr Ben Campkin (UCL Urban Laboratory) and held on25th October 2011 at the UCL Grant Museum of Zoology and Arup Phase2 Gallery.

Aditya Mohanty, a PhD student from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, has been awarded a Commonwealth Split-Site Doctoral Scholarship to spend a year (2011-12) at the UCL Urban Laboratory/Department of Geography under the supervision of Dr. Pushpa Arabindoo. His research examines the politics of governance amongst civil society organisations in Delhi.