"Crowdsourcing urban sustainability governance" project. Open initial seminar @ Centre for Sustainable Development – CDO, Ghent University

CROWD_USG. Crowdsourcing urban sustainability governance.

Speaker: Chiara Certomà

June 15^th, 2.30 pm

CDO, Seminar Room, Poel 16, 9000, Ghent

CROWD_USG is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie research project exploring how ICT-people interactions are transforming the governance of urban sustainability.

In the global imaginary cities are increasingly depicted as the appropriate loci for tackling with a number of interrelated and complex issues – ranging from protecting the environment, to incubating innovation and granting social justice. The socio-technological networks, which progressively emerged for addressing the related tasks, are now significantly changing the traditional forms of urban governance. In these contexts, technologies are often presented as both facilitators and drivers of changes.

Nevertheless, the assumption that broadening technological access will lead to people’s empowerment and make participation effective is questionable.  CROWD_USG project investigates under what conditions crowdsourcing (i.e. any open call format toward collective solution seeking by a large network of users) can actually turn governance processes into open and shared opportunities for advancing socio-environmental sustainability in the city.

This seminar will present the background, motivations, scope and expected results of the project, by exploring current scientific production and forefront applications of participatory ICTs toward urban sustainability. Theoretical and methodological approach will be open for discussion with colleagues, in reference to the case of Ghent.

Info: https://crowdusg.net/open-initial-seminar-centre-for-sustainable-development-cdo-ghent-university/