8th Urban China Forum: Smart City and Info Universe, Day 2

Urbanization in China is accompanied by a proliferation of urban data. Contemporary metropolitans produce countless information and data, which are then captured and utilized to inform the urban policies. In the recent years, local authorities have planned for the development of digital industrial parks and have promoted policies in favor of the growth of the tech sector. Envisioning cities to be served by the data they generate, innovative entrepreneurship emerge to provide data-driven urban governance and planning solutions.

The 8th Urban China, titled “Smart City and Info Universe,” aims to analyze the impact of urban big data on global urbanization, and to shed lights on the future development of smart cities in China. By bringing together researchers and practitioners across disciplines, the Forum intends to facilitate the discussion of critical issues with regard to the topic of smart cities.

Dean Curran is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Calgary. He has previous degrees in economics, the philosophy of the social sciences, and a PhD in sociology. His research areas include risk, economic sociology, social theory, and inequalities. He has publications in the British Journal of Sociology, Economy and Society, Antipode, Theory, Culture, and Society, Urban Studies the, European Journal of Social Theory and a (2016) book with Palgrave Macmillan, Risk, Power and Inequality in the 21st Century.

Alan Smart is a Professor Emeritus in the Dept. of Anthropology and Archaeology at University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada. PhD in Social Anthropology from University of Toronto (1986). Research interests include political economy, housing, urban anthropology, anthropology of law, borders, zoonotic diseases, smart cities and posthumanism. He has conducted field research in Hong Kong, China and Canada. He is the author of Making Room: Squatter Clearance in Hong Kong, The Shek Kip Mei Myth, and Posthumanism: Anthropological Perspectives (co-author Josephine Smart).

Tuo Sun is a product designer, computational designer and multi-disciplinary researcher. Sun is currently working at a Chinese internet technology company as a product architect of digital twin space and full lifecycle management. Sun started his career in digital transformation of regional planning by implementing 3D-GIS solutions at the Southern California Association of Government. He has worked at China Academy of Urban Planning and Design as an urban designer, MIT Media Lab as a research assistant, Alibaba Cloud as a computer graphic data engineer, Huawei 2012 Lab as a product engineer.

Tao Yang is the Executive Director of the Future City Lab, China Academy of Urban Planning and Design. Previously, he served as the director of the Beijing Institute of Architecture Design and Associate Researcher at the Planning Management Centre of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. He led several key national projects, such as the BIM based Management Platform of the Digital Planning and Construction for Xiong’an, the urban design of Beijing New Sub-center, and the Platforms of the City Information Modeling of Suzhou. He is the author of 3 academic books and more than 100 papers. He won the Golden Prize of China Association for Geospatial Information Society.

Xinyue Ye is Harold Adams Endowed Professor on Interdisciplinary Built Environment Science Research, Associate Professor of Stellar Faculty Provost Target Hire for Urban Computing at Texas A&M University, where he directs Urban Data Science Lab. His research focuses on geospatial artificial intelligence, big data, smart cities, and urban computing. The applications of his research could be found in various domains, such as economic development, disaster response, transportation and land use, public health, and urban crime. He is one of the top 10 young scientists named by The World Geospatial Developers Conference 2021.

Day1
(EDT/New York) Nov 6, 9:00 – 11:30
(CST/Beijing) Nov 6, 21:00 – 23:30

Day2
(EST/New York) Nov 7, 9:00 – 11:30
(CST/Beijing) Nov 7, 22:00 – 24:30

Register Here

This forum is organized by Urban China Network of Columbia GSAPP and co-sponsored by the M.S. Urban Planning program within Columbia GSAPP, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and Overseas Student Services Corp.