Marianna Cavada

Manchester Metropolitan University | MMU · Manchester School of Architecture

@Smart cities’ embrace technologically based solutions as an enabler of efficient, affordable and more sustainable urban living in times of resource scarcity, persistent austerity and high-tech innovations. However, cities’ evermore complex systems are, albeit unwittingly, causing mismanagement, future uncertainty and lack of transparency to exacer...

This position chapter explains the importance of designing policies for smart cities. This chapter aims to provoke discussions that will allow further understanding of the smart cities policy agenda. It is inevitable for various smart cities actors to agree on ways to implement change in smartness. This is because of the different views on developi...

This paper describes a novel method combining speculative design with walking workshops to reveal the ethical and social challenges of connected technology in public spaces for policymaking. In the digitally hyper-connected society, digital technologies such as sensors, the Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial intelligence (AI) enable people, a...

Cities are impacted both by the way we live in them and by policy which is implemented on different scales in city living. Cities and broader urban areas are highly impacted by human behaviour and the unprecedented challenges they face; this indicates that a siloed urban policy approach cannot support city policy because its impact is felt across m...

Health is a priority in cities; especially large cities and following the COVID-19 outbreak more than any other time in history, we need to be smart in developing visions and making decisions for creating healthy living in cities.

This chapter explains the meaning of the term “Urban Engineering” by describing the relationship of the two terms – urban and engineering (Cavada et al. 2022). It discusses how the two terms converge and the ways urban engineering can provide beneficial solutions to design future urban transformations. This chapter also relates urban engineering to...

Past and current urban systems evolved supposedly to provide organised solutions to resolve specific problems, yet when these problems are viewed through lenses shaped by their sectoral constraints it becomes evident that a monolithic view can also be part of the problem. For example, designing transport initiatives only viewed through a transport...

Cities are impacted both by the way we live in them and by policy which is implemented on different scales in city living. Cities and broader urban areas are highly impacted by human behaviour and the unprecedented challenges they face; this indicates that a siloed urban policy approach cannot support city policy because its impact is felt across m...

How are smart cities governed? This chapter describes the design process for an open and transparent method to govern smart cities. This four-step methodology describes the essential steps into democratic decision-making across the city communities. These steps are Data Assessment, Dissemination, Evaluation, and Smart Design. In each step, a smart...

Smart cities carry the burden of utilizing technologies to support city life during and beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. More than ever, true smartness needs to address the broader health implications of the shared urban space. Especially highly populated cities tend to suffer more from the consequences of Covid-19 than rural areas. Without a doubt, t...

Much has been written about the benefits of green infrastructure, but securing the resources necessary for its development and long-term maintenance is often difficult. This article’s premise is that, in general, people and organisations will take action to provide those resources when they can see value accruing to them; therefore narratives of va...

The term ‘smart cities’ is contested: its interpretation is becoming ever broader, often to accommodate commercial interests. Since cities are made up of individuals, all of whom are guided by their own world views and attitudes, the residual question is not ‘what should we do?’ but ‘how should we do it and how should we encourage and enable everyo...

Smart city (SC) has emerged during the last 2 decades to a broad scientific domain and a dominant industrial market, which attract an interdisciplinary attention. All the scientific fields -from the information and communications technologies (ICT) to the economics and environmental studies or even the humanities- and all the industries -from the I...

In preparation for a call for proposals, a workshop was held with representatives from the Institution of Civil Engineers’ (ICE) Research, Development and Innovation towards Engineering Excellence Panel, academia, Innovate UK, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Highways England and the consulting industry. The overarching theme...

‘Smart Cities’ forms part of the ‘Liveable Cities’ research project, a five year programme grant (2012 – 2017) whose vision is to transform the engineering of cities to deliver global and societal wellbeing within the context of low-carbon living and resource security. This little book explores what is actually meant by smart (cities). More importa...

This data article presents the UK City LIFE1 data set for the city of Birmingham, UK. UK City LIFE1 is a new, comprehensive and holistic method for measuring the livable sustainability performance of UK cities. The Birmingham data set comprises 346 indicators structured simultaneously (1) within a four-tier, outcome-based framework in order to aid...

The idea of 'smart cities' was initially introduced by corporations to provide technological solutions to overcome contemporary challenges. The semantics for smart cities' lacks a coherent vision and the use of technology therein is currently under scrutiny for its 'liveability' qualities. Therefore, the conception (and then design) of infrastructu...

Based on the Smart Model Assessment Resilient Tool (S.M.A.R.T.), a multi-criteria decision analysis model, evaluates criteria of smart cities. A mix of theoretical and empirical research to identify the initiatives that cities developed in their smart agendas.

Recently, much of the literature on sharing in cities has focused on the sharing economy, in which people use online platforms to share underutilized assets in the marketplace. This view of sharing is too narrow for cities, as it neglects the myriad of ways, reasons, and scales in which citizens share in urban environments. Research presented here...

The UK economy has moved away from traditional large-scale and standardised manufacturing processes (Fordism) towards a more service-based economy and smaller-scale and more specialised manufacturing (post-Fordism). A more variegated, smaller-scale and specialised economy seems to fit better with more flexible provision of critical infrastructures....

Cities are contemporary metropolises that concentrate human and social activity; engineered to support and develop the physical environment and the people within it, Smart cities, we are led to believe, are the immediate future, where smartness is perceived as a characterisation of advancements or digitalisation, in government, mobility and sustain...

Cities are contemporary metropolises that concentrate human and social activity; engineered to support and develop the physical environment and the people within it, Smart cities, we are led to believe, are the immediate future, where smartness is perceived as a characterisation of advancements or digitalisation, in government, mobility and sustain...