NETWORK CONFERENCE OF SPA-CE.NET 2018: NOVEMBER 22-23, BRATISLAVA

Network Conference of Spa-ce.net

“From Smart Cities to Smart Regions in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe” 22nd-23rd November 2018, Bratislava, Slovakia

Societal development in the EU, including its economic development, is closely connected with the transformation from an industrial to a post-industrial knowledge-based society. This transformation can be seen across all spheres of societal life, starting with the production sectors – agriculture, industry, services – via leisure-time activities and tourism, ending with the shift from government to governance.

Not only because the majority of inhabitants is nowadays living in the cities, but first of all because of concentration of economic, social and cultural activities in urban areas,  the cities and urban regions are crucial for this development and represent the driving force for innovation based economy capitalising the knowledge and innovation. To fulfil this role, cities and urban regions have to attract and to create proper environment for the creative class, for knowledge based economic activities (research as well as enterprises), for the development and spread of innovations. They have to be smart and their smartness became to be one of their crucial competitive advantage.

The smart city concept has been developed and implemented in several cities of the EU – in the capital cities of the EU member states as well as medium and small cities. Smart development concepts are only rarely developed for regional systems or even urban regions, although growing intensity of interactions between cities and their periphery as well as growing complexity of urban socio-ecosystems cause fuzzification of urban borders and lead to the process of growing together between the core city and its suburban area.

Smart strategy is not smart if it does not reflect the fact that sustainability, efficiency and competitiveness depend more and more on the use of potential of cooperation between the core city and its gravitational area. It means that a smart strategy should give a clear definition of the position of the city in this space. This should be mirrored in the strategy looking for smart use of complementarities, synergies, for joint values, interests and cooperation potentials, but in the same time looking for the possibilities for a smart use of competitive advantages.

Thematic scope of the conference:

  1. Need for new quality of interactions in urban regions in the context of global changes (e.g. digitalization, economic development, climate change)
  2. Potential of smart concepts to reflect demand on new quality of development in urban regions
  3. Smart approaches to urban regions’ sustainable development management

Alongside the representatives of the member institutions of the Spa-ce.net network and other interested researchers, PhD candidates undertaking research on one of the named topics are also invited to submit papers. The authors should send a 100-words abstract, indicating which of the three mentioned topics their paper most closely addresses.

The application documents must be sent by October, 8th 2018. Please send your application form by email to matej.jasso@stuba.sk and a.korzhenevych@ioer.de. The selection and notification of participants is expected by the October, 15th 2018.

Spa-ce.net-Call for Papers 2018

Registration Form 2018

Organised by

Spa-ce.net – Network of Spatial Planning and Research Institutes in Central and Eastern Europe

Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development, Dresden, Germany

SPECTRA CE EU at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava