Infrastructuring time in smart urbanism and urban transitions
The agenda set by climate change is urgent and accelerating, and cities are at the forefront to respond to climate change effects, to harness the resources for sustainable transitions and to adopt long-term policies and strategies for viable urban futures by 2030-2050. At the same time, existing networked data infrastructures allow the everyday management of cities (e.g. mobility, energy, water) and also interact with the efforts to achieve the climate targets. Yet, most recent scientific evidence shows that the sustainability efforts are jeopardised by existing infrastructures and a further effort is needed already by 2030 to stop irreversible damage from climate change. Subsequently, cities need to revise their climate plans, anticipating their actions and aligning their sustainability goals to the new scenarios. The tensions between the urgent agenda of climate change, the testing of sustainable urban futures and the actual ICT infrastructures already in place for urban management produce multiple temporal interferences that influence the paths towards sustainability. Through INFRATIME, I will develop an innovative approach to understand the combined temporality and rhythm of urban transitions and smart urbanism. In so doing, I intend to offer relevant insights to better re-temporalize urban transformations to the climate change agenda. The partnership between the University of Bologna (IT) as Beneficiary and the University of Tokyo (JP) as Third Country organisation, including the planned inter-sectoral secondment in Nordregio (SE), will offer the ideal platform to pursue the research objectives. The Fellowship will thus ensure international, intersectoral and interdisciplinary training and supervision at the highest standards, allowing me to deliver scientific excellence, to increase my employability across academic and non-academic sectors in a European and global context, and ultimately achieve a leading position in the field of sustainable smart urbanism.