Federico Caprotti
Biographic Data
| ID | 206248 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Federico Caprotti |
| GIVEN NAMES | Federico |
| FAMILY NAME | Caprotti |
| SIGNATURE | CAPROTTI F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Exeter |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5280-1016 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 55 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 536 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 54 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Geographies of Unreliable Power: Energy Insecurity and Everyday Life in a South African Informal Settlement
Unreliable energy infrastructure is a defining yet understudied dimension of everyday precarity in informal settlements. This paper examines how infrastructural unreliability shapes lived experiences of energy insecurity in Qandu Qandu, a largely off‐grid informal settlement in Cape Town, South Africa. Drawing on in‐depth qualitative research, we analyse how residents navigate hybrid energy configurations comprising illegal grid connections, sola…
Italian Fascism between Ideology and Spectacle
Who powers the off-grid city? Non-state actors, ethics, and the politics of solar infrastructure in Cape Town's informal settlements
Informal settlements are often sites where state engagement in service provision is minimal or absent. To address chronic energy poverty in these neighborhoods, a diverse range of non-state actors (including NGOs, donor agencies, research institutions, and others) actively develop and operate decentralized solar energy interventions. This paper examines two such interventions in Cape Town, South Africa, using a heterogeneous infrastructure config…
The ‘capability’ of South African energy governance to deliver urban sustainable transitions
Critical to the trajectory and outcome of urban sustainable energy transitions is the ability of government institutions to foster conditions for change and innovation. In this paper, a theoretical perspective combining state power and local governance capability is used as a lens to examine the transition of the energy system in South Africa based on semi-structured interviews with a range of relevant stakeholders, supplemented by analysis of pu…
The informality-energy innovation-finance nexus: Sustainable business models for microgrid-based off-grid urban energy access
This paper proposes the concept of the informality- energy innovation- finance nexus, as a theoretical framework to analyse micro-grid based urban off-grid energy access. The provision of energy access in urban informal set- tlements has received increased attention by scholars working on informality and energy in recent years. Recently, scholars have looked at the off-grid-urban informality nexus and have argued for the integration of off- grid …
Why does urban Artificial Intelligence (AI) matter for urban studies? Developing research directions in urban AI research
New digital technologies and systems are being extensively applied in urban contexts. These technologies and systems include algorithms, robotics, drones, Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) and autonomous systems that can collectively be labelled as Artificial Intelligence (AI). Critical debates have recognized that these various forms of AI do not merely layer onto existing urban infrastructures, forms of management and practices of everyday life. Instea…
The 15-minute city as paranoid urbanism: Ten critical reflections
The 15-minute city has emerged as a key urban development theme in recent years, and especially since the Covid-19 pandemic. It has also become a focus point for tensions and debates over future urban trajectories, including over the role of automobility as the key technology that defines the experience of the urban. While the 15-minute city has become a widely-used concept by proponents and detractors alike, it remains vaguely defined and heavil…
Beyond the Grid: The Micropolitics of Off‐Grid Energy in Qandu‐Qandu , South Africa
In this paper, we argue using smart technologies beyond the grid disrupts the access and use of existing energy sources, with profound impacts on everyday social life. We show how off‐grid smart energy solutions constitute their own politics when considering existing conceptualisations of urban infrastructures in geography and the social sciences. To expose its politics, or “micropolitics”, we consider how tensions occur at the interface between …
Smart and disruptive infrastructures: Re-building knowledge on the informal city
Smart urbanism is an established research area in geography and the social sciences. We draw on ‘worlding-provincialising’ strategies identified in an Urban Studies Special Issue from February 2021 to explore how smart infrastructures, a form of smart urbanism, disrupt representations of informality and urban development in new and productive ways. Focussing on the disruptive or troublesome implications of smart infrastructures reveals site-level…
Variegated Platform Urbanism: Social Credit and the City
The development of a digital social credit system in China has sparked debates around urban governance and citizenship performance. Although China's social credit system is portrayed as a single technical system, the article offers a new perspective on digital social credit focused on geographical variegation. We analyze how variegation is manifested through use of multiple data streams and a diverse range of aims operationalized in various socia…
Don't cook or iron with it”: Heterogeneities and coping strategies for accessing and using electricity in the informal settlements of Kampala, Uganda
Uganda has one of the highest energy access deficits in the world, so low-income households improvise to access electricity, often through heterogeneous infrastructure arrangements. This study investigated energy heterogeneity in Uganda's informal settlements, expressed through the coping strategies that households adopt to access and use electricity. The paper is based on fieldwork conducted in Nakulabye slum, Kampala over a period of two months…
The rise of AI urbanism in post-smart cities: A critical commentary on urban artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as an impactful feature of the life, planning and governance of 21st-century cities. Once confined to the realm of science fiction and small-scale technological experiments, AI is now all around us, in the shape of urban artificial intelligences including autonomous cars, robots, city brains and urban software agents. The aim of this article is to critically examine the nature of urbanism in the emergent a…
The socioenvironmental state and urban transitions: Eco-urbanism in China and the UK
Eco-urbanism encapsulates a range of approaches to the management of urbanisation processes and environmental imperatives in contexts of rapid industrial and economic change. The paper focuses on two eco-urban initiatives in China and the UK over a temporal lens stretching from the mid-2000s to the early 2020s, in order to critically engage with the question of how eco-urban projects develop and often undergo radical changes over time, as well as…
Beyond the smart city: A typology of platform urbanism
Platform urbanism has emerged in recent years as an area of research into the ways in which digital platforms are increasingly central to the governance, economy, experience, and understanding of the city. In the paper, we argue that platform urbanism is an evolution of the smart city, constituted by novel, digitally-enabled socio-technical assemblages that enable new forms of social, economic and political intermediation. We offer a typological …
Solar energy at the peri-urban frontier: An energy justice study of urban peripheries from Burkina Faso and South Africa
Most of the global population that lack access to electricity services live in sub-Saharan Africa. Peri-urban areas of large African cities, often characterized by the presence of informal settlements, exist in a kind of ‘scalar limbo,’ unable to benefit from either access to the city grid or from programs aimed at the electrification of rural areas. In addition, in those areas where lack of electricity access is common, energy poverty combined w…
Rethinking the off-grid city
There has been a resurgence in interest in the off-grid city in the Global South, and on how it functions as a collection of places, lived spaces, and dynamic infrastructural configurations. As scholars and practitioners working in the South African off-grid urban context, we identify four areas for further elaboration in off-grid urban research: 1.) redefining academic and practical understandings of the “grid”, ultimately moving to rethink its …
Emerging platform urbanism in China: Reconfigurations of data, citizenship and materialities
Platform urbanism increasingly defines the ways in which cities develop for the future. • Platform urbanism is one of the latest developments of the smart city. • Chinese platform urbanism challenges currently held notions of urban citizenship and urban lifestyles. • China's urban platforms show domestic as well as international patterns of mobility
Scales of governance: Translating multiscalar transitional pathways in South Africa’s energy landscape
In this paper, we argue for a multiscalar focus on the governance of energy policy and practice. This perspective reveals the translation of agendas and policies across scales stretching from the global to the local. We analyse South Africa’s energy landscape, which is influenced by: a highly complex and dynamic set of generation and production networks, policy strategies, multiple state and non-state actors, and the continuing impact of aparthei…
Platform urbanism and the Chinese smart city: The co-production and territorialisation of Hangzhou City Brain
The Smart City as Global Discourse: Storylines and Critical Junctures across 27 Cities
Despite its growing ubiquitous presence, the smart city continues to struggle for definitional clarity and practical import. In response, this study interrogates the smart city as global discourse network by examining a collection of key texts associated with cities worldwide. Using a list of 5,553 cities, a systematic webometric exercise was conducted to measure hit counts produced by searching for “smart city.” Consequently, 27 cities with the …
Spaces of visibility in the smart city: Flagship urban spaces and the smart urban imaginary
Smart urbanism is a currently popular and widespread way of conceptualising the future city. At the same time, the smart city is critiqued by several scholars as difficult to define, and as being almost invisible to the naked eye. The article explores two urban spaces through which the smart city is rendered visible, in two UK cities that are prominent sites for smart urban experimentation and development. Bristol’s Data Dome and Glasgow’s Operat…
Varieties of smart urbanism in the UK: Discursive logics, the state and local urban context
The paper analyses the varieties of smart urbanism to be found in the contemporary urban landscape in the UK . In so doing, it builds on and extends two currently dominant sets of critiques of the smart city: those that call into question its technocratic and top‐down modes of governance, and those that describe the smart city as an empty signifier. The paper makes sense of the UK 's variegated local smart urban practices by tracing the emergence…
Smart city as anti-planning in the UK
Critical commentaries have often treated the smart city as a potentially problematic 'top down' tendency within policy-making and urban planning, which appears to serve the interests of already powerful corporate and political actors. This article, however, positions the smart city as significant in its implicit rejection of the strong normativity of traditional technologies of planning, in favour of an ontology of efficiency and emergence. It ex…
Getting Londoners on two wheels: A comparative approach analysing London’s potential pathways to a cycling transition
Sustainable Cities in Asia
Critical research on eco-cities? A walk through the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City, China
Interrogating urban experiments
The notion of the “urban experiment” has become increasingly prevalent and popular as a guiding concept and trope used by both scholars and policymakers, as well as by corporate actors with a stake in the future of the city. In this paper, we critically engage with this emerging focus on “urban experiments”, and with its articulation through the associated concepts of “living labs”, “future labs”, “urban labs” and the like. A critical engagement …
Smart city as anti-planning in the UK
Critical commentaries have often treated the smart city as a potentially problematic 'top down' tendency within policy-making and urban planning, which appears to serve the interests of already powerful corporate and political actors. This article, however, positions the smart city as significant in its implicit rejection of the strong normativity of traditional technologies of planning, in favour of an ontology of efficiency and emergence. It ex…
Eco-urbanism and the Eco-city, or, Denying the Right to the City: Eco-urbanism and the Eco-city
This paper critically analyses the construction of eco-cities as technological fixes to concerns over climate change, Peak Oil, and other scenarios in the transition towards “green capitalism”. It argues for a critical engagement with new-build eco-city projects, first by highlighting the inequalities which mean that eco-cities will not benefit those who will be most impacted by climate change: the citizens of the world's least wealthy states. Se…
The cultural economy of cleantech: Environmental discourse and the emergence of a new technology sector
The paper analyses the discursive definition of the cleantech sector over the period 2000–10. It develops a dialogue between a cultural economy approach to sectoral development and recent research on the role of discourse in defining discursive arenas of environmental concern. The cleantech sector’s rapid emergence in less than a decade can be seen as an example of the development of the cultural economy of an economic sector, defined in part thr…
The rise of AI urbanism in post-smart cities: A critical commentary on urban artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as an impactful feature of the life, planning and governance of 21st-century cities. Once confined to the realm of science fiction and small-scale technological experiments, AI is now all around us, in the shape of urban artificial intelligences including autonomous cars, robots, city brains and urban software agents. The aim of this article is to critically examine the nature of urbanism in the emergent a…
Varieties of smart urbanism in the UK: Discursive logics, the state and local urban context
The paper analyses the varieties of smart urbanism to be found in the contemporary urban landscape in the UK . In so doing, it builds on and extends two currently dominant sets of critiques of the smart city: those that call into question its technocratic and top‐down modes of governance, and those that describe the smart city as an empty signifier. The paper makes sense of the UK 's variegated local smart urban practices by tracing the emergence…
Eco' For Whom? Envisioning Eco-urbanism in the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city, China
Eco-cities have attracted international attention from governments, corporations, academics and other actors seeking to use sustainable urban planning to reduce urban environmental impacts. China has devoted significant political will and economic resources to the development of new-build eco-city projects, reflecting the Chinese government's goals to build a 'harmonious society' in which environmental sustainability and social stability are mutu…
Spaces of visibility in the smart city: Flagship urban spaces and the smart urban imaginary
Smart urbanism is a currently popular and widespread way of conceptualising the future city. At the same time, the smart city is critiqued by several scholars as difficult to define, and as being almost invisible to the naked eye. The article explores two urban spaces through which the smart city is rendered visible, in two UK cities that are prominent sites for smart urban experimentation and development. Bristol’s Data Dome and Glasgow’s Operat…
Producing the ideal fascist landscape: Nature, materiality and the cinematic representation of land reclamation in the Pontine Marshes
Using previously unpublished material from the L'Unione Cinematografica Educativa (LUCE) archive and the Central State Archive in Rome, this article examines how film-making became part and parcel of the process of ‘taming’ nature in the Pontine Marshes under Mussolini's regime. Fascist authorities perceived the undisciplined and unproductive nature of the ‘death-inducing’ swamps as something that had to be extinguished from the face of Italy, to…
Destructive creation: Fascist urban planning, architecture and New Towns in the Pontine Marshes
Platform urbanism and the Chinese smart city: The co-production and territorialisation of Hangzhou City Brain
Malaria and technological networks: Medical geography in the Pontine Marshes, Italy, in the 1930s
This paper examines the struggle against malaria undertaken by the fascist regime in the Pontine Marshes, south of Rome, and relates it to discourses of domination of nature on the one hand, and modernization and civilization through technological networks such as health and medical networks on the other. The marshes''first nature' is described first of all, focusing on malaria and the difficulty of making an impact on marsh biology before the fa…
Why does urban Artificial Intelligence (AI) matter for urban studies? Developing research directions in urban AI research
New digital technologies and systems are being extensively applied in urban contexts. These technologies and systems include algorithms, robotics, drones, Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) and autonomous systems that can collectively be labelled as Artificial Intelligence (AI). Critical debates have recognized that these various forms of AI do not merely layer onto existing urban infrastructures, forms of management and practices of everyday life. Instea…
The Green Economy: Functional Domains and Theoretical Directions of Enquiry
The green economy is a highly complex construct in terms of its attempts to integrate economic, environmental, and social concerns, the wide range of actors involved, its material outcomes, and the forms of governance needed to regulate processes of economic greening. As such, it poses new empirical and theoretical challenges for social science research on socioenvironmental futures. This paper has two main aims. The first is to survey the emerge…
Making sense of the green economy
This special issue editorial explores potential research interfaces between human geography and the rapidly unfolding concept and practices of the “green economy”. The article outlines a range of critical issues about the green economy that are particularly pertinent and suited to geographical analysis. The first concerns questions around the construction of the green economy concept and critical questioning of current, largely hegemonic neoliber…
Rethinking the off-grid city
There has been a resurgence in interest in the off-grid city in the Global South, and on how it functions as a collection of places, lived spaces, and dynamic infrastructural configurations. As scholars and practitioners working in the South African off-grid urban context, we identify four areas for further elaboration in off-grid urban research: 1.) redefining academic and practical understandings of the “grid”, ultimately moving to rethink its …
Scipio Africanus: Film, Internal Colonization and Empire
This paper analyses the film Scipione l'Africano ( Scipio the African) (Gallone, 1937), relating it to the fascist land reclamation and internal colonization project in the Pontine Marshes as well as Italy's imperial ambitions in Africa. The film, dealing with the defeat of Hannibal by Roman military leader Scipio, posits clear parallels between the Roman empire and the fascist regime, and between Scipio and Mussolini. The paper argues that the f…
Internal colonisation, hegemony and coercion: Investigating migration to Southern Lazio, Italy, in the 1930s
Solar energy at the peri-urban frontier: An energy justice study of urban peripheries from Burkina Faso and South Africa
Most of the global population that lack access to electricity services live in sub-Saharan Africa. Peri-urban areas of large African cities, often characterized by the presence of informal settlements, exist in a kind of ‘scalar limbo,’ unable to benefit from either access to the city grid or from programs aimed at the electrification of rural areas. In addition, in those areas where lack of electricity access is common, energy poverty combined w…
Scales of governance: Translating multiscalar transitional pathways in South Africa’s energy landscape
In this paper, we argue for a multiscalar focus on the governance of energy policy and practice. This perspective reveals the translation of agendas and policies across scales stretching from the global to the local. We analyse South Africa’s energy landscape, which is influenced by: a highly complex and dynamic set of generation and production networks, policy strategies, multiple state and non-state actors, and the continuing impact of aparthei…
Visuality, Hybridity, and Colonialism: Imagining Ethiopia Through Colonial Aviation, 1935–1940
This article examines the discursive construction of visual imaginations of Italian East Africa through visual and textual materials associated with fascist colonial civil aviation from 1934 through 1940. Analysis of materials produced by Ala Littoria, the fascist regime's main airline, reveals discursive strands and themes that contributed to the deeply modern depiction of Ethiopia, Italian Somaliland, and Eritrea (the constituent colonies withi…
Air Empire: British imperial civil aviation 1919-39
Journal Article Air Empire: British imperial civil aviation 1919–39 Get access Air Empire: British imperial civil aviation 1919–39, by Gordon Pirie. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009. xii + 249 pp. £60 (hardback). ISBN 978 0 719 04111 2. Federico Caprotti Federico Caprotti University of Plymouth Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 110, Issue 438, January 2011, Pages 147–149,…
Social sustainability and residents' experiences in a new chinese eco-city
It's All a Question of Business’: Investment identities, networks and decision‐making in the cleantech economy
Cleantech has emerged in the last decade as a major new investment sector at the forefront of the green economy. It responds to the need for innovative technologies to combat the impact of global environmental, climate and resource trends. Focusing on the cleantech sector, this article explores the central importance of relationality within the financial domain of the green economy. The central aim of this article is to deepen understandings of t…
Information Management and Fascist Identity: Newsreels in fascist Italy
Recent research in the study of Italian fascism has emphasized the cultural manifestations of Mussolini's totalitarian regime. This specific field has of late generated a wide variety of interest a
Fetishising Violence, Marginalising the Human Dimension
Destructive creation: Fascist urban planning, architecture and New Towns in the Pontine Marshes
Malaria and technological networks: Medical geography in the Pontine Marshes, Italy, in the 1930s
This paper examines the struggle against malaria undertaken by the fascist regime in the Pontine Marshes, south of Rome, and relates it to discourses of domination of nature on the one hand, and modernization and civilization through technological networks such as health and medical networks on the other. The marshes''first nature' is described first of all, focusing on malaria and the difficulty of making an impact on marsh biology before the fa…
Technology and geographical imaginations: Representing aviation in 1930s Italy
This paper examines the geographical imaginations associated with aviation in fascist Italy, focusing on the representation of flight on the one hand, and on the other hand the role of propaganda flights organized by the regime in the 1930s. The representation and use of aviation in interwar Italy is explored in light of the concept of technological legitimation, based on an understanding of technological practice as a political and ideological i…
Internal colonisation, hegemony and coercion: Investigating migration to Southern Lazio, Italy, in the 1930s
Producing the ideal fascist landscape: Nature, materiality and the cinematic representation of land reclamation in the Pontine Marshes
Using previously unpublished material from the L'Unione Cinematografica Educativa (LUCE) archive and the Central State Archive in Rome, this article examines how film-making became part and parcel of the process of ‘taming’ nature in the Pontine Marshes under Mussolini's regime. Fascist authorities perceived the undisciplined and unproductive nature of the ‘death-inducing’ swamps as something that had to be extinguished from the face of Italy, to…
Financial crisis, activist states and (missed) opportunities
Purpose This article seeks to discuss three key issues raised by the recent financial crisis: the rise of “activist states”; a new focus on the geopolitical effects of finance; and possible future social implications of the rapid response to crisis. Design/methodology/approach The paper provides an analytical overview of three of the implications of the current crisis, and introduces the idea of the “activist state” in financial markets. Findings…
Scipio Africanus: Film, Internal Colonization and Empire
This paper analyses the film Scipione l'Africano ( Scipio the African) (Gallone, 1937), relating it to the fascist land reclamation and internal colonization project in the Pontine Marshes as well as Italy's imperial ambitions in Africa. The film, dealing with the defeat of Hannibal by Roman military leader Scipio, posits clear parallels between the Roman empire and the fascist regime, and between Scipio and Mussolini. The paper argues that the f…
Overcoming Distance and Space Through Technology: Record Aviation Linking Fascist Italy With South America
This article analyzes modern, discursive attempts to overcome distance and space through analyses of discourses focused on record aviation attempts in 1930s’ fascist Italy. Two particular flights are analyzed, both linking Italy with South America. The first analyzed flight is a 1937 seaplane distance record attempt; the second was a 1939 endeavor to establish regular, scheduled airmail services between Italy and Brazil. The flights are analyzed …
Profitability, Practicality and Ideology: Fascist Civil Aviation and the Short Life of Ala Littoria , 1934–1943
The history of the Italian fascist regime's main airline, Ala Littoria, is analyzed in this paper. Operated in 1934-40 throughout Italy, Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as in Italy's North and East African colonies, the airline's civil role progressively decreased in 1940-43 as aircraft and personnel were subsumed into the Italian air force. The carrier was the result of an amalgamation of smaller pre-existing airlines. Ala Littoria is cons…
The cultural economy of cleantech: Environmental discourse and the emergence of a new technology sector
The paper analyses the discursive definition of the cleantech sector over the period 2000–10. It develops a dialogue between a cultural economy approach to sectoral development and recent research on the role of discourse in defining discursive arenas of environmental concern. The cleantech sector’s rapid emergence in less than a decade can be seen as an example of the development of the cultural economy of an economic sector, defined in part thr…
Visuality, Hybridity, and Colonialism: Imagining Ethiopia Through Colonial Aviation, 1935–1940
This article examines the discursive construction of visual imaginations of Italian East Africa through visual and textual materials associated with fascist colonial civil aviation from 1934 through 1940. Analysis of materials produced by Ala Littoria, the fascist regime's main airline, reveals discursive strands and themes that contributed to the deeply modern depiction of Ethiopia, Italian Somaliland, and Eritrea (the constituent colonies withi…
Air Empire: British imperial civil aviation 1919-39
Journal Article Air Empire: British imperial civil aviation 1919–39 Get access Air Empire: British imperial civil aviation 1919–39, by Gordon Pirie. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009. xii + 249 pp. £60 (hardback). ISBN 978 0 719 04111 2. Federico Caprotti Federico Caprotti University of Plymouth Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 110, Issue 438, January 2011, Pages 147–149,…
Static imaginations and the possibilities of radical change: Reflecting on the Arab Spring
Peer Reviewed
Environment, Business and the Firm
From wind turbines and renewable energy landscapes to environmental talks at the UN summits in Copenhagen (2009) and Cancún (2010), there is growing interest in the links between business and the environment. Much geographical work has critically focused on state-environment links, while economic geographers have attempted to theorize the emergence of markets and economies, in part through understanding the economy through a relational, cultural …
Critical research on eco-cities? A walk through the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City, China
Thermal Eco-cities: Green Building and Urban Thermal Metabolism
Eco-city projects are becoming increasingly prevalent throughout the globe and are often marketed as 'new' urban environments focused on achieving sustainable urban living while promoting environmental-economic transitions towards a low-carbon technological and industrial base. The article argues for the need to consider the thermal aspects of urban metabolism, while at the same time focusing on the link between individual buildings and eco-city …
Making sense of the green economy
This special issue editorial explores potential research interfaces between human geography and the rapidly unfolding concept and practices of the “green economy”. The article outlines a range of critical issues about the green economy that are particularly pertinent and suited to geographical analysis. The first concerns questions around the construction of the green economy concept and critical questioning of current, largely hegemonic neoliber…
It's All a Question of Business’: Investment identities, networks and decision‐making in the cleantech economy
Cleantech has emerged in the last decade as a major new investment sector at the forefront of the green economy. It responds to the need for innovative technologies to combat the impact of global environmental, climate and resource trends. Focusing on the cleantech sector, this article explores the central importance of relationality within the financial domain of the green economy. The central aim of this article is to deepen understandings of t…
Eco-urbanism and the Eco-city, or, Denying the Right to the City: Eco-urbanism and the Eco-city
This paper critically analyses the construction of eco-cities as technological fixes to concerns over climate change, Peak Oil, and other scenarios in the transition towards “green capitalism”. It argues for a critical engagement with new-build eco-city projects, first by highlighting the inequalities which mean that eco-cities will not benefit those who will be most impacted by climate change: the citizens of the world's least wealthy states. Se…
The Green Economy: Functional Domains and Theoretical Directions of Enquiry
The green economy is a highly complex construct in terms of its attempts to integrate economic, environmental, and social concerns, the wide range of actors involved, its material outcomes, and the forms of governance needed to regulate processes of economic greening. As such, it poses new empirical and theoretical challenges for social science research on socioenvironmental futures. This paper has two main aims. The first is to survey the emerge…
The invisible war on nature: The Abyssinian war (1935-1936) in newsreels and documentaries in Fascist Italy
This contribution to the special issue focuses on newsreels and documentaries that were produced concerning the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-1936), commonly known as the Abyssinian War. It aims to contextualise LUCE's filmic production on the war, so as to create a framework in which the institute can be understood not only as being part of a wider politics of propaganda in Fascist Italy, but as an example of a modern socio-technical organisa…
Golden sun, green economy: Market security and the US/EU-China ‘solar trade war’
China's solar manufacturing and R&D industry has developed rapidly since 2000: by 2010, 40% of the world's solar panels were manufactured in China. This has occurred as a result of strategic government economic planning, which has included concerns about energy security, energy diversity, and about the stimulation of a renewables-based green economy. The growth of China's solar industry has been marked since 2011 by what has come to be termed a “…
Eco' For Whom? Envisioning Eco-urbanism in the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city, China
Eco-cities have attracted international attention from governments, corporations, academics and other actors seeking to use sustainable urban planning to reduce urban environmental impacts. China has devoted significant political will and economic resources to the development of new-build eco-city projects, reflecting the Chinese government's goals to build a 'harmonious society' in which environmental sustainability and social stability are mutu…
Political science (43 works) · Sociology (40 works) · Economics (26 works) · Geography (26 works) · Engineering (25 works) · Politics (23 works) · Law (20 works) · Smart Cities and Technologies (17 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Law (16 works)