New Pressures on Cities and Regions
- Opening Plenary Session (Ross DeVol, Milken Institute, USA)
- Plenary 2 (Jamie Peck, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada)
- Plenary 3 (Federico Cugurullo,Trinity College Dublin, Ireland – Early Career Plenary Speaker
) - Panel Session (Stephen Hilton, Bristol Futures, UK)
- Panel Session (Bridget Rosewell, Volterra Partners, UK)
- Panel Session (Ron Martin, University of Cambridge, UK)
- Panel Session (Mia Gray, University of Cambridge, UK)
- Panel Session (Rowland Atkinson, The University of Sheffield, UK)
Opening Plenary Session
Ross DeVol, Milken Institute, USA
Ross DeVol is the chief research officer at the Milken Institute. He oversees research on international, national and subnational growth performance; access to capital and its role in economic growth and job creation; and health-related topics. Since joining the Institute, DeVol has put his group in the national limelight with groundbreaking research on technology and its impact on regional and national economies, and on the economic and human consequences of chronic disease. DeVol has authored numerous reports in the Institute’s primary research areas. He specializes in the effects of research and development activities, international trade, human capital and labor-force skills training, entrepreneurship, early-stage financing, and quality-of-place issues on the geographic distribution of economic activity. His “Best-Performing Cities: Where America’s Jobs Are Created,” was first published in 2004 and regularly updated since. It reveals which cities are creating jobs and economic opportunity and describes the factors determining long-term success. In “A Matter of Degrees: The Effect of Educational Attainment on Regional Economic Prosperity,” he and colleagues demonstrated the high returns to investment in higher education and the research spillovers that universities facilitate. His recent work involves global economic and financial market conditions. DeVol is ranked among the “Super Stars” of Think Tank Scholars by International Economy magazine and regularly appears on national television and radio programs, including CNN’s “Moneyline,” “Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo,” “Bloomberg West,” “Fox Business News” and CNBC. He is frequently quoted in print media, such as the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Investor’s Business Daily, the Los Angeles Times, Forbes, the Economist, Time and others.
Website: www.milkeninstitute.org/about/our-team/view/3
Plenary 2
Jamie Peck, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada
Jamie Peck is Canada Research Chair in Urban & Regional Political Economy and Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia, Canada. With long-term research interests in urban restructuring, the political economy of neoliberalism, labor studies, the politics of policy formation and mobility, and socioeconomic governance, his recent books include Fast policy: experimental statecraft at the thresholds of neoliberalism (2015, with Nik Theodore), Constructions of neoliberal reason (2010), and the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Economic Geography (2012, coedited with Trevor Barnes & Eric Sheppard). Jamie Peck has been the recipient of Guggenheim and Harkness fellowships, and the Royal Geographical Society’s Back Award for his contributions to economic geography. He is the managing editor of the journal Environment and Planning A, and has coordinated the Summer Institute in Economic Geography since its inception in 2003.
Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/persons/jamie-peck
Plenary 3
Federico Cugurullo,Trinity College Dublin, Ireland – Early Career Plenary Speaker
Federico Cugurullo is Assistant Professor in Smart and Sustainable Urbanism at Trinity College Dublin. His research is positioned at the intersection of urban geography, political philosophy and experimental urbanism, and explores how ideas of sustainability are cultivated and implemented across geographical spaces, with a focus on projects for eco-cities and smart cities.
Federico has done extensive empirical research in the Middle East and Southeast Asia where he has investigated the sustainability performance of supposedly experimental cities such as Masdar City in Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong. His work has been used by the United Nations and the United Kingdom’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to foresee future urban challenges and develop preventive policies.
Building upon empirical grounds, Federico’s main theoretical aspiration (also the subject of his forthcoming book) is the development of urban equations for a sustainable urbanism. Other theoretical contributions include the concept of urban eco-modernisation, and the theory of de-composed urbanism and Frankenstein cities which will be introduced in this conference.
Before joining Trinity College Dublin, Federico held positions at the University of Manchester, King’s College London and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Panel Session
Stephen Hilton, Bristol Futures, UK
Stephen Hilton is passionate about using digital technology to create a society that is creative, smart, green, connected, open and inclusive. As Director of Bristol Futures, an award winning department of Bristol City Council, he leads on smart cities, environmental sustainability, urban resilience and international strategy. Over the past 5 years, Stephen has created a high profile team that has achieved many successes for Bristol for example, securing the title of European Green Capital 2015; becoming the first UK Rockefeller Global 100 Resilient City and an official designation as a UK Future City Demonstrator. Bristol Futures has delivered multi-million pound investment in a smart city demonstrator programme ranging from driverless cars to smart meters to open data and from Knowle West in South Bristol to Guangzhou in South China – where Bristol City Council won the International Innovation Prize for our citizen-focused smart cities work. Stephen is commercially minded and managed the early work to develop Bristol Energy, the council’s city energy company and Bristol is Open, a joint venture research company between the city council and the University of Bristol. Stephen is a member of the senior leadership team of Bristol is Open, acting as Director of City Experimentation. Stephen is proud to have co-created Playable Cities – working with Watershed to create a distinctively Bristol approach to creating digital experiences that better link citizens to the city through play. Previously, Stephen set up Connecting Bristol and became interested in Smart Cities through work on technology and democracy. He worked with Oxford and Napier Universities to evaluate the national impact of e-Democracy, winning a personal award as Government Innovator of the Year for this work.
Panel Session
Bridget Rosewell, Volterra Partners, UK
Bridget Rosewell is an experienced director, policy maker and economist, with a track record in advising public and private sector clients on key strategic issues. She is a Commissioner for the National Infrastructure Commission, a founder and Senior Adviser of Volterra Partners, and a non-executive director of Network Rail and of Atom Bank. She was Chief Economic Adviser to the Greater London Authority from 2002 to 2012, responsible for all transport and economic impact analysis. Her book, ‘Reinventing London’ was published in 2014.
She was appointed OBE in July 2013 and is also a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
She has worked extensively on cities, infrastructure and finance, advising on projects in road and rail and on major property developments and regeneration. She has been a member of Commissions looking at the future of public services, City Finance, London Finance, North East Economy, the City Growth Commission and London Infrastructure Commission.
Website: www.bridgetrosewell.com
Panel Session
Ron Martin, University of Cambridge, UK
Professor Ron Martin is Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Cambridge. His main research interests include the geographies of labour markets; regional development and competitiveness; the geographies of money and finance; geographical economics; and evolutionary economic geography. He has published some 35 books and monographs, and 200 articles, on these and related themes.
Website: www.geog.cam.ac.uk/people/martin
Panel Session
Mia Gray, University of Cambridge, UK
Mia’s first interest is in labour markets and the social and organisational dynamics of work. She is interested in how labour markets are shaped, structured and regulated. She works at the intersection of political economy, and economic and labour geographies. Her research explores processes of labour market change, geographies of organised labour, immigrant workers, skill formation and diffusion of knowledge, and social networks in the workplace. In particular, She is interested in how categories of social difference like gender, race, age, and class relate to how labour is rewarded, valued and regulated.
Website: www.geog.cam.ac.uk/people/gray
Panel Session
Rowland Atkinson, The University of Sheffield, UK
My work crosses the boundaries of urban studies, sociology, geography and criminology. My doctoral research looked at household displacement resulting from the gentrification of London neighbourhoods using interview and census data to look at the scale of the flows and the impacts on people. These interests, in social problems and urban life, have continued to fuel my research interests. My work seeks to look at what are often hidden issues and the causes of different forms of exclusion and inequality.
From 1997 I worked at the Department of Urban Studies, University of Glasgow, where I worked on issues of social exclusion and area effects (the compounding force of disadvantage faced by poorer residents in poorer areas). It was here that I also took interest in the rise of gated communities in the UK, leading the first UK study and beginning to further consider the role of the middle-classes and higher income households in shaping social outcomes more broadly across the city. While my work on gentrification had viewed middle-class neighbourhood choices as a problem for working-class and poorer households I was now interested in much higher income groups and how choices to self-segregate and seek out secure home zones might begin to impact on British urbanism.
From 2005 I directed the Housing and Community Research Unit, University of Tasmania, Australia, where a very different urban context and issues of indigenous health and housing influenced my thinking. My work continued to focus on issues of gentrification, public housing and strategies of social mixing to create more sustainable communities and I led initiatives designed to generate more interest in these issues from policy-makers nationally.
From 2009 I moved back to the UK to the University of York where I became Reader in Urban Studies and Criminology and my work became more focused on questions of social harm and crime in urban contexts. Since moving to the University of Sheffield in 2014 I continue to work on urban social problems including the role of the super-rich in residential life in the UK, gentrification, community trauma/violence and social vulnerability.
As Chair in Inclusive Societies I work both within USP and across the Faculty of Social Sciences and welcome contact from community leaders, policymakers and others interested in addressing these challenges. I am a member of the editorial advisory board for the journal Housing, Theory and Society and previously an editor of Housing Studies.
Website: www.sheffield.ac.uk/usp/staff/rowland_atkinson