Learning as imitation or mimesis: how ‘smart’ is machine learning for its planning controllers?

The idea to be explored in this contribution is that to understand change as society evolves is useless without Learning that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing and may look 'smart' but is likely to be unwise. This in turn requires an understanding of why the label 'knowledge economy' came into substantial usage by opinion-formers at about the same time. Thus a first wave of injunctions in favour of 'Learning' by governments and corporate leaders occurred about 30 years ago. The change in question was led by information technology and the production and consumption practices it entailed. In a second wave of 'Learning from Leaders', especially how to be 'Smart', the lesson quickly became 'Learning from Losers'. Here some of the most-vaunted - for example - 'smart' visions for various functions nevertheless failed to deliver. Perhaps the greatest failure to learn has been the sight and sound of 'Flailing by Failing' from Science Policy 'led' governments in response to the SARS2-Covid-19 pandemic when the lessons of at least moderate success involved 'Learning from Life' after being prepared by previous experience.

Callous Optimism: On Some Wishful Thinking ‘Blowbacks’ Undermining SDG Spatial Policy

Established students and studies of sustainable urban planning and broader regional varieties of spatial evolution have been seized with ambitions to ‘make the world a better place’. To criticise that ambition would be more than churlish, except that it tends to betray a certain ‘cognitive dissonance’. For what they wish to ‘make better’ was already in a bad, even ‘parlous state’ by the aspirations of their predecessor students, studies, and tellingly, actions. Of course, there are exceptions. Some urban actions seem to have ‘worked’ historically. Barcelona’s Eixample by Ildefons, Haussmann’s questionably motivated but now widely admired re-design of Paris, and Vienna’s Ringstrasse vilified by early modernist Adolf Loos, mentor of Richard Neutra, originator of the domestic International Style. These were a mixed bag of architects, by turns municipal, militaristic, and radical, albeit thwarted in Neutra’s case by McCarthyite blacklisting of his Elysian Fields 3300 dwelling public housing project at Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles. Clearly, the top-down tendency persists in the image of the ‘heroic architect’ that can still be found. As well as much-vaunted ‘starchitecture’, it also persists in the failed imagery of ‘garden bridges’, ‘urban Vessels’, ‘smart cities’ and London’s ‘urban mound fiasco’. This article acts as a corrective advocating more collective than individualistic crafting of ‘solutions’ constructed upon wishful thinking if not callous optimism in efforts at mitigation of global heating. The article consists of a brief account of ‘seeing like a city’ rather than a ‘sovereign state’ in sustainability policy-pledging and its origins. It then combs through some five exemplars—from green city planning to ambient heating, food waste, plastic waste and water eutrophication—of ‘callously optimistic’ wishful thinking in SDG proposals for urban and regional climate change moderation. Modest new communicative governance methodology is proposed in the cause of SDG policy learning.

Open Innovation, Soft Branding and Green Influencers: Critiquing 'Fast Fashion' and 'Overtourism&rsquo

This paper explores digital reality replication for cultural consumption and green-digital open-system innovation, along with responsible, sustainable practices fashioned in a post-COVID-19 era. We address these after the dystopian effects of lockdown on global tourism and, in particular, the looming crisis of unsustainable 'overtourism'. The aim of this paper is to disclose problems and policies related to moderating consumption to more sustainable levels. The scope of the article tackles three fields: urban re-branding, fast fashion, and overtourism. Each problem area is analysed against the background of digital surveillance in the attention economy with the aid of a conceptual model. Accordingly, the principal objectives of this paper are to analyse key sustainability problem sources, evolutionary processes, and policy responses. The paper's originality and value lie in its recognition of tractable problem engagement through conceptual and practicable methods. This contribution also explores other consumption modes that tourists appreciate, namely, retail activity and its unsustainable 'fast fashion';obsession. Finally, the paper analyses urban soft branding, the third tourism attractor within the niche touristic activity of the creative-cultural and gastronomic kind, which also features impulses that affect the perpetuation of unsustainable touristic practices. Thus, this contribution also assesses various studies on tourism futures that exploit digital media to assist in conserving both natural and cultural environments. Accordingly, we first narrate the soft re-branding of an 'Art City';as a 'Fashion City';and consider the example of green-digital innovation in the cultural milieu of Florence, Italy, in light of criticism of the unsustainability of 'fast fashion';. We consider which actions are envisioned or advised in the similarly 'over-touristed';city of Venice. In a different vein, we consider whether the mobilisation of 'pop celebrity' performers such as audience engagers or influencers works for sustainable intervention through an assessment of the cultural interventions of Madonna in Lisbon. Finally, we anatomise 'green';politics and policies for creative-cultural cities with the support of digital media to influence sustainable actions to moderate or, alternatively, revitalise polluted, congested, or otherwise over-touristed city centres. The greening of central Paris, Barcelona, Milan, and London offer a a series of examples of this type of moderation and revitalisation.

Future Shift for 'Big Things’: From Starchitecture via Agritecture to Parkitecture

This article analyses three recent shifts in what called the geography of 'Big Things’, meaning the contemporary functions and adaptability of modern city centre architecture. We periodise the three styles conventionally into the fashionable 'Starchitecture’of the 1990s, the repurposed 'Agritecture’of the 2000s and the parodising 'Parkitecture’of the 2010s. Starchitecture was the form of new architecture coinciding with the rise of neo-liberalism in its brief era of global urban competitiveness prevalent in the 1990s. After the Great Financial Crash of 2007–2008, the market for high-rise emblems of iconic, thrusting, skyscrapers and giant downtown and suburban shopping malls waned and online shopping and working from home destroyed the main rental values of the CBD. In some illustrious cases, 'Agritecture’caused re-purposed office blocks and other CBD accompaniments to be re-purposed as settings for high-rise urban farming, especially aquaponics and hydroponic horticulture. Now, COVID-19 has further undermined traditional CBD property markets, causing some administrations to decide to bulldoze their 'deadmalls’and replace them with urban prairie landscapes, inviting the designation 'Parkitecture’for the bucolic results. This paper presents an account of these transitions with reference to questions raised by urban cultural scholars such as Jane M. Jacobs and Jean Gottmann to figure out answers in time and space to questions their work poses.

After the Contagion. Ghost City Centres: Closed “Smart” or Open Greener?

This paper has three main objectives. It traces the “closed” urban model of city development, critiques it at length, showing how it has led to an unsustainable dead-end, represented in post-Covid-19 “ghost town” status for many central cities, and proposes a new “open” model of city design. This is avowedly an unsegregated and non-segmented utilisation of now often abandoned city-centre space in “open” forms favouring urban prairie, or more formalised urban parklands, interspersed with so-called “agritecture” in redundant high-rise buildings, shopping malls and parking lots. It favours sustainable theme-park models of family entertainment “experiences” all supported by sustainable hospitality, integrated mixed land uses and sustainable transportation. Consideration is given to likely financial resource issues but the dearth of current commercial investment opportunities from the old carbonised urban model, alongside public policy and consumer support for urban greening, are concluded to form a propitious post-coronavirus context for furthering the vision.