Smart Integrated Ecological Approach for Geelong, Australia

Elkadi, HA

Abstract

Regeneration of many cities is essential to enable their sustainable re-development but importantly to maintain their viability and creativity in this global and rapidly changing world. Most cities face major ecological challenges that require immediate intervention for their future survival. The predominant focus of current sustainable cities projects is concentrated upon the challenges of natural adaptation and mitigation practices these burgeoning metropolises present.


Smart Cities is one of those terms, like sustainable, resilient, carbon free, post carbon cities that mean different things to different people. Smart could mean fashionable, stylish, and chic as much as intelligent clever and shrewd. This article argues that Intelligence is the ability of a city to vary its state or actions in response to varying situations and past experience, in other term, develops a self-organising characteristics; one of the principles of ecological systems.


Regeneration initiatives provide opportunities for new approaches to urban development in regional Australian cities. There is a need for innovative re-think beyond terms, like sustainable, resilient, carbon free, post carbon cities that mean different things to different people. The paper discusses the development of Vision II, a regeneration project for the City of Geelong. The paper highlights the need for new ways to theorize, contextualize, and practice the design of future smart interventions in Australian cities.


The realities of climate changes on the other hand, led to the urgency to channel our thinking into a new direction, one that is capable to engage our people, one that is capable of extracting hope from the structures of fear that underpins an obsolete mitigation agenda and outdated governance structures. Impacts of climate change is also one of the causes of the shift in city agenda that also include the general decline of infrastructure, conspicuous resource depletion, and the emergence of ecology as a new paradigm in urban studies. This paper challenges the capacity of a number of cities to deal with ecological stress adversities and the ability to bounce back and maintain well-being for their inhabitants. The presentation provides a broad critical analysis of the contemporary ecological challenges. The paper, through a study of an applied project directed by the author in Geelong, considers various strategies and guidelines that have formed regenerating existing urban forms and relationships.


Keywords: regeneration, sustainability, post carbon, smart interventions, climate change

Citation

Elkadi, H. Smart Integrated Ecological Approach for Geelong, Australia. Presented at 24th International Conference on Urban Planning, Regional Development and Information Society, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: 24th International Conference on Urban Planning, Regional Development and Information Society
• Conference Location: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
• End Date: Apr 4, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Apr 4, 2020
• Publication Date: Apr 4, 2019
• Deposit Date: Apr 15, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 15, 2019
• Book Title: Is This the Real World? Perfect Smart Cities vs. Real Emotional Cities. Proceedings of REAL CORP 2019, 24th International Conference on Urban Development, Regional Planning and Information Society
• ISBN: 9783950417371-(print);-9783950417364-(CD)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.48494/REALCORP2019.2029
• Publisher URL: https://archive.corp.at/cdrom2019/en/papers.html
• Related Public URLs: https://archive.corp.at/cdrom2019/papers2019/CORP2019_29.pdf
• Additional Information: Additional Information : Acknowledgement: Victoria state Government, City of Geelong, Deakin University, and Committee for Geelong; Event Type : Conference; Funders : Victoria State Government, Australia;Department of Business and Innovation, Victoria State Government; Projects : Geelong VISION 2;1234