TRACK 16: NETWORKS AND DATA

Are metropolitan-oriented major infrastructure networks adequate and aligned with growing environmental pressures and raising calls for just and sustainable urban regions? Planning activities are increasingly destabilised when not ontologically questioned by the environmental turmoil and its different facets. Large-scale infrastructure systems have long been framed as resource-efficient socio-technical arrangements of service provision. However, their material and energy footprint and the dynamics of growth of resource-intensive practices they have often supported have largely been neglected. Can the LTS (Large Technical Systems)-urbanism and the thermo-industrial nexus it encapsulates be somewhat overcome? Is one such transformation a shared concern or a new form of geographical divide? Recent examples like the road projects assessment in Wales, where a vast number of infrastructure projects have been halted or abandoned due to their contribution to environmental degradations, shed light on possible new infrastructural trajectories, hence transforming planning practices in the face of climate pressures.

At a larger level, the activity of planning of/for urban/regional infrastructures thus seems to be torn between potentially incompatible transitions and objectives, i.e. the quest for sufficiency and resource-sensitive approaches on the one hand and continuously growing, supply-driven, material-intensive and carbon-heavy infrastructural developments on the other one. There is a vivid need to equip reflections on what ecological networks and a redistributive sufficiency-oriented ecological planning of infrastructures can be, which coalesces environmental and justice concerns and considers the level of material and social interdependences between territories.

Concomitantly to these raising issues, and possibly in contradiction with them, continuous advances in digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have had enormous impacts on the evolution of socio-spatial systems and on planning practices. How is such a transformation shifting the type of problems addressed by planning (only those subject to digitalisation and quantification) and the type of urban order that it entails? This questions how digitalisation may create the new broad geographical and social divide and pushes to challenge the so-called promise of smart infrastructural systems that are supposed to improve resource efficiency, to grasp their variegated contributions to tackle or even to contribute to environmental and social transformations.

This track welcomes critical contributions on substantive and processual issues and socio-technical approaches, such as (but not limited to): 

• Ecological expertise in planning practices (presence, implications)
• Sufficiency-oriented infrastructure networks 
• Urban justice, urban sustainability, and urban networks
• Planning support methods, technologies, systems
• Conflicts around digital technologies in urban planning
• Articulation between digital and ecological perspectives in planning
• Alternative forms of planning for socio-technical systems and their governance (grass-rooted, demand-oriented, resource-sensitive, etc.)
• Infrastructural violence, inequalities of access to networks and planning
• Big geospatial data for planning (open, social, volunteered, sensors, infrastructures, platforms)
• Urban and regional models (multi-dimensional representations, digital twins, Virtual/Augmented reality, simulation, impact assessment, forecasting, what-if, etc.)
• Artificial intelligence in spatial planning and governance
• Innovative technologies for smart urban and territorial systems (in transport, energy, nature, agriculture, tourism, housing, industry, etc.)
• Diffusion of digital technologies in spatial planning and governance research, education, and practice 
• Social appropriation of digital technologies in urban and regional systems.

1. Nataliia Yehorchenkova - The Game-Changing Role Of AI In Urban Development Decision-Making: Trends And Future Perspectives
2. Marie Josefine Hintz - AI In Urban Climate Change Mitigation - Systematic Mapping Of Urban Planning Impact Areas
3. Jiah Lee - Anticipating Future Demographic Shifts: Ai-Enhanced Population Projection Methodology
4. Minju Kim - Utilizing Artificial Intelligence For Declining City Classification And Policy Application: Suggestions For Revising South Korea's Urban Planning Guidelines
5. Joanne Tippett - Big QED: Thinking Together With AI To Learn From Big Qualitative Engagement Data

1. Saebom Song - Openness As Smartness? Sociotechnical Evolution And Imaginaries Of Open Data Initiative And Smart City In The Republic Of Korea
2. Qianhui He - Reflection And Prospects On Data Sources, Management, And Application In Chinese Smart Cities From The Perspective Of Platform Urbanism
3. Jochen Monstadt - How Data Centers Have Come To Matter: Governing The Spatial And Environmental Footprint Of The “Digital Gateway To Europe”
4. Gayatri Singh - World Bank’s City Planning Labs Global: Towards Municipal Spatial Data Infrastructure And Ecosystem Capacity For Smarter Cities
5. Burcu Soygüzeloğlu - Insights Into Urban Spatial Dynamics Around Marmaray Stations In Istanbul, Türkiye: Evidence From Location-Based Social Network Data
6. Fabio Bayro Kaiser - Enhancing Transparency In Urbanisation Dynamics: Leveraging Open Big Earth Data For Monitoring Variegated Urban Expansion Impacts

1. Mihyun Kim - Urban Digital Observatory: Socio-Spatial Informatics Model For Collective Urban Experiences, Knowledge Share And Decision-Making
2. Burak Belli - Socio-Spatial Determinants Of Digital Transformation In Istanbul
3. Arjama Mukherjee - An Open-Source And Digital Approach To Urban Complexity
4. Catherine Vandermeulen - The Open Source Option For Experiencing Urban Simulations In Hamburg
5. Aharon Gutman Meirav, et al - Social Digital Twin: A view from the urban south

1. Michele Campagna - Local Residents’ Grassroots Spatial Planning And Design: Findings Of A Geodesign Study In The Coastal Quartu (Italy)
2. Martin Bangratz - Bit By Bit: Pathways Of Grassroots Digital City-Making
3. Anna M Hersperger - Digital Permeation Of Land-Use Planning And Regulation Practices: The Issue Of Standardization
4. Denis Maragno - Mapping Climate Impacts Physical And Social Vulnerability To Support Adaptation Planning Prioritization: A Spatial Analysis Across Three Cities On Different Continents (London, Boston, Sydney)
5. Tong Chen - Refining Urban Accessibility Measurement Through Street View Imagery: A Pedestrian-Centric Approach
6. Haoyang He - Citywalk Preference: An Expanded Measurement For Informing Data-Driven Urban Planning Based On Social Media Analytics

1. Junyao He - How Can Social Networking Sites Empower The Grassroots In Urban Planning
2. Yeonsu Hamm - Social Media Facilitated Neighborliness In Single-Person Households Among Youths
3. Dongni Zhang - The Role Of Social Media In Urban Management And Heritage Preservation
4. Carolina Pacchi - Hybrid Spaces And Planning: Exploring Just City Debates In The Digital Era

1. Zhehao Song - Digital Analysis And Modeling Of Network Structures For Residential Historic Areas In China
2. Rachele Vanessa Gatto - Unveiling The Network Structure Of Tourism Systems: Territorial Information Structures  Supporting Strategic Tourism Planning
3. Jinhee Park - Compact Network For Sustainable Metropolitan Seoul: A Case Study Of Pangyo Techno-Valley
4. Shoshana Goldstein - Digitalizing Red Tape: The Path To Inclusive Planning And Urban Citizenship For India’s Interstate Migrants
5. Jinyi Hu - The Platformization Of The Territory: The Taobao-Driven Morphological Evolution Of The Greater Bay Area Of China.
6. Heysham Nourhan - Understanding Environmental Data Flow In The UK: A Multi-Stakeholder Network Analysis

1. Melissa Barrientos - Uncovering The Dislocated Structure Behind Peri-Urban Areas In Traditional Cities.
2. Merve Deniz Tak - A Rapid Response Algorithm: Parametric Design For Temporary Housing Areas
3. Yujiao Wang - Deep Learning-Driven Morphological Dataset And Analysis Methods Of Chinese University Campuses
4. Dalit Shach-Pinsly - Qualitative And Quantitative Analyses Of Middle-Class Mass Housing
5. Mariana Diniz - From Types To Regions: A GIS Tool For Spatial Analysis Based On The Classic Framework Of Morphological Regions
6. Yaara Rosner-Manor - Using A “Pattern Language” Approach As A Gis Measurement Framework To Understand The Internal Order Of Self-Emergent Built Environments – The Case Of The Bedouin Villages In The Negev/Naqab, Israel.
7. Ge Wan - Spatial Network Characteristics of Shrinking Areas in Shanghai Metropolitan Area: An Urban-Rural Population Flow Network Analysis