
Urban Climate Conference
Organized by TAU City Center with The Center for Water Sensitive Cities in Israel, TAU Water Research Center and Karen Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund.
For municipalities and organizations that promote and affect our public and private places in cities and regions, in open areas and the built environment.
23 May 2019 | Tel Aviv University.
City Center at Tel Aviv University and colleagues from other academic and public bodies will hold a joint research workshop in May 2019 with the aim of deepening knowledge and application in urban nature and space: city structure, heat, air, shade and vegetation.
Background
The conference will present for the first time a large research project carried out in Israel. The research effort, which spanned years and combined a variety of fields, leads to theoretical and applied conclusions. The recommendations for implementing the models in municipalities, local councils, and regional collaborations are an important step in creating cities that are sensitive to nature, shade, water and climate.
The planning principles that will make cities a worthy place must be based on deep knowledge: return to traditional planning, connect with nature in the smart city, and harness technology to solve problems. Plan regional supply chains, reduce ecological footprint, and increase the likelihood of human encounter in public spaces.
Researchers, municipalities, councils and planning offices, landscape planners, drainage and infrastructure engineers, and colleagues engaged in nature, water, plants and air sensitive planning are invited to join.
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Program
09:30-10:00 Gathering
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10:00-10:10 Convergence Openings: Data integration
Dr. Ronit Furian, "City Center" – Research center for cities and urbanism, Tel Aviv University
10:10-10:30 Forecasting urban warming in Israel by 2060
Prof. Pinchas Alpert
10:30-10:50 International Networks as an Accelerator for Urban Climate Change Preparedness – A Case Study Tel Aviv-Yafo
Dr. Orly Ronen
10:50-11:10 A method for assessing the climate quality of open public spaces in Tel Aviv
Dr. Pninit Cohen
11:10-11:30 The use of vegetation and shading as a tool for cooling the city – the accumulated experience in different cities and climatic zones in Israel, field measurements and computerized simulations
Dr. Limor Shashua
11:30-12:20 The Impact of Urban Morphology on the City's Climate: Presenting the Local Climate Zone Method for Analyzing and Understanding Urban Heat Islands, demonstration in Beer Sheva and Tel Aviv
Prof. Oded Pochter and Prof. Yitzhak Omer – Research with the students:
Annemarie Beitaga, Omer Ben-Nun, Moshe Mendelmilech, Noa Mendelmilch
12:20-12:30 Conclusion and discussion – towards recommendations for implementing the models in local authorities.
Dr. Ronit Furian: Sensitivity to nature and regional belonging
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The event will be held in Hebrew.
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International Conference on Smart Cities:
Potentials, Prospects and Discontents
12-14 September 2017 | Tel Aviv University
The smartification of cities implies an integration of the real and virtual worlds by means of AI (Artificial Intelligence) artifacts that imitate and simulate cognitive capabilities such as learning and rational decision making. These have the potential to revolutionize the dynamics and structure of cities and the lives of those who inhabit them. There is therefore great enthusiasm that ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and IoT (Internet of Things) – with their big data and data mining methodologies – will make the control, planning and governance of cities more efficient, just, sustainable and resilient than ever before, and will thus solve chronic urban problems such as traffic jams, environmental pollution and the like. At the same time, there is also skepticism that over-efficient urban planning and control have the potential to transform our cities into an Orwellian nightmare.
In addition, smart cities are also currently discussed in the context of CTC (Complexity Theories of Cities) – a domain of research that applies the various theories of complexity as a means to study and model the dynamics of cities. What is still missing in the general smart cities discourse as well as in the context of CTC concerns the implications to urban dynamics; namely, a response to questions such as: How can smart artifacts that partly imitate learning and rational decision-making affect the various urban processes? How to model such a real-virtual city? What is an ‘urban agent’ in such a context? Can the ‘things’ of IoT be considered agents?
City Center’s ‘International Conference on Smart Cities: Potentials, Prospects and Discontents’ will comparatively discuss these and other questions and aspects of smart cities, and will thus explicate their potentials, prospects and discontents in general and in the specific reality of Israeli society.
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Program
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Sept. 12, Tue. 16:30-19:00 @ Senate Building | Jaglom Auditorium
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16:30-17:00 Gathering
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Opening session | Chair: Juval Portugali
17:00-17:15 Raanan Rein – TAU Vice President: Greetings
17:15-17:30 Juval Portugali – Smart cities: Potentials, prospects and discontents – an overview
17:30-18:15 Michael Batty – What is the smart city? A question that has no answer
18:15-19:00 Shulamit Volkov – Metropolitan Jews: Smart minorities in smart (and not-so-smart) cities
Sept. 13, Wed. 9:00-18:00 @ Porter Building | Auditorium
AI and big data (1) | Chair: Itzhak Omer
09:00-09:45 Charles Catlett – Smart cities: The lesson from the Array of Things project in Chicago
09:45-10:30 Tova Milo – Crowd-powered data management
10:30-11:15 Sarah Wise – Delivering the future: Using data and modelling to facilitate freight in the city
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AI and big data (2) | Chair: Tal Svoray
11:45-12:30 Daniel Deutch – Towards big data provenance
12:30-13:15 Joachim Meyer – Future cities and the human side of automation
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13:15-14:15 Lunch
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Round table | Chair: Ophir Paz-Pines
14:15-15:45 Panel – The map and its territory
David Alon – Eshkol Negev Mizrahi
Michal Dvir – Haifa
Yaron Felus – Survey of Israel (Mapi)
Moti Leist – Bat-Yam
Ariel Sella – Capsula Studio (TAU and PMO’s Fuel Choices and Smart Mobility Initiative)
Qasem Slalha – Tel Aviv
Ronit Purian – Smart cities evaluation: Define success
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Students presentations | Chair: Hadas Saaroni
16:15-16:40 Jonathan Dortheimer – The misunderstanding of open source in architecture
16:40-17:05 Talia Kaufmann – A global ranking of cities by accessibility to services
17:05-17:30 Yonatan Shaham, Nir Fulman – In search of behavioral heuristics: From agent-based to game-based urban modeling
17:30-17:55 Eyal Feder – Understanding smart cities from the people up
Sept. 14, Thu. 9:00-18:00 @ Porter Building | Auditorium
Transportation | Chair: Michael Batty
09:00-09:45 Tal Raviv, Michal Tzur – New methods for small parcels delivery
09:45-10:30 Itzhak Benenson, Andrey Shabalov, Eran Ben Elia – SMART-PT: Towards a smart adaptive public transport
10:30-11:15 Assaf Biderman – Senseable cities
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Smartification and cities design | Chair: Sara Encarnação
11:45-12:30 Juval Portugali, Hermann Haken – The smartification of cities: An information adaptation perspective
12:30-13:15 Egbert Stolk – The smartification of urban design
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13:15-14:15 Lunch
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Urban governance | Chair: Yodan Rofe
14:15-15:00 Sara Encarnação – Information as the new oil: The smart cities dilemma
15:00-15:45 Orli Ronen – Towards a new urban agenda, Habitat III: From public participation to civic engagement
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Closing session | Chair: Juval Portugali
16:15-17:00 Efrat Blumenfeld-Lieberthal – Mapping the smart cities discourse
17:00-17:45 Joseph Klafter – TAU President: Concluding notes

A Celebratory Conference on the
Metropolitan Perception in Israel
02 June 2016 | Tel Aviv University
The Institute for Local Government at Tel Aviv University and City Center will hold a special seminar on the metropolitan concept in Israel, with the participation of heads of authorities and leading experts from academia and the public sector.
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The conference will deal with one of the burning questions in Israeli urbanism - how should we treat the metropolis? The conference will be attended by leading mayors - Mr. Ron Huldai, Mayor of Tel Aviv, Mr. Nir Barkat, Mayor of Jerusalem, and other mayors from around the Gush Dan metropolis, alongside leading experts from academia and the public sector.
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Click here for the conference program (in Hebrew) >
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Photo credit: Image by Nadya from Pixabay