Ilektra Papadaki

Bio: Ilektra Papadaki is an academic researcher from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The author has contributed to research in topics: Smart growth & Sustainability. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 2 publications receiving 11 citations.

Smart and Resilient Urban Futures for Sustainability in the Post COVID-19 Era: A Review of Policy Responses on Urban Mobility

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has put lifestyles in question, changed daily routines, and limited citizen freedoms that seemed inalienable before. A human activity that has been greatly affected since the beginning of the health crisis is mobility. Focusing on mobility, we aim to discuss the transformational impact that the pandemic brought to this specific urban domain, especially with regards to the promotion of sustainability, the smart growth agenda, and the acceleration towards the smart city paradigm. We collect 60 initial policy responses related to urban mobility from cities around the world and analyze them based on the challenge they aim to address, the exact principles of smart growth and sustainable mobility that they encapsulate, as well as the level of ICT penetration. Our findings suggest that emerging strategies, although mainly temporary, are transformational, in line with the principles of smart growth and sustainable development. Most policy responses adopted during the first months of the pandemic, however, fail to leverage advancements made in the field of smart cities, and to adopt off-the-shelf solutions such as monitoring, alerting, and operations management.

Digital Transformation of City Ecosystems: Platforms Shaping Engagement and Externalities across Vertical Markets

Abstract: The paper focuses on the design of urban digital transformation strategies. It builds upon the lessons learned from the Digital Cities Challenge initiative, developed by the European Commission, de...

The European commission

Abstract: 2 1 The innovative transport systems and the CityMobil project 10 1.1 The research questions 10 2 The state of art in the field of automatic transport systems 12 2.1 Case studies and demand studies for innovative transport systems 12 3 The design and implementation of surveys 14 3.1 Definition of experimental design 14 3.2 Questionnaire design and delivery 16 3.3 First analyses on the collected sample 18 4 Calibration of Logit Multionomial demand models 21 4.1 Methodology 21 4.2 Calibration of the “full” model. 22 4.3 Calibration of the “final” model 24 4.4 The demand analysis through the final Multinomial Logit model 25 5 The analysis of interaction between the demand and socioeconomic attributes 31 5.1 Methodology 31 5.2 Application of Mixed Logit models to the demand 31 5.3 Analysis of the interactions between demand and socioeconomic attributes through Mixed Logit models 32 5.4 Mixed Logit model and interaction between age and the demand for the CTS 38 5.5 Demand analysis with Mixed Logit model 39 6 Final analyses and conclusions 45 6.1 Comparison between the results of the analyses 45 6.2 Conclusions 48 6.3 Answers to the research questions and future developments 52

City of bits: space, place and the infobahn

Abstract: O ne of the continuing challenges of the information revo lution of the past few decades is that the important "stuff" of the technology is beyond the capabilities of our human senses. We can't see the bits in our computers or the electrons that represent them. We can write our thoughts and translate those thoughts into software code, but we can only imagine the logic flows, branches, and data movements that occur as that code is converted to electrons and executed. We send all these electrons into networks, where the electrons that represent the code are chunked into packets, disassembled and assembled, causing our thoughts to visit places and follow routes that our physical bodies could never go. We call this imaginary world "virtual," as though the label makes it real. We create analogs to what our senses can deal with. We talk about files and architectures and highways, pages and webs, all of which we sort of understand in the real world, thus giving us Slippery handles on the virtual. The truth is scary: our physical bodies are irrelevant in the virtual world. William Mitchell, Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT, spends 225 pages trying to relate the two worlds, but early on he tells us that he knows better by showing us the famous New Yorker cartoon of two dogs in front of a personal computer saying, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog"...or if you're tall or short, young or old, strong or sick...all of which are crucial in the physical world. In many ways, what Mitchell is doing in this book is important. Creating analogs from the unknown to the known helps us manage the acceptance of the new technology. Mitchell shows these comparisons explicitly in his section headings; e.g., "Schoolhouses/Virtual Campuses," "Galleries/Virtual Museums," "Tangible Goods/Intellectual Property." These analogs not only help us better understand and accept the novel and unknown, but the analogies help us apply the new in ways that far extend the capabilities of the old. So, in our virtual museum in one time and place, we are able to see paintings that physically exist in galleries tens of thousands of miles apart, without the burden of crowds or jet lag. The virtual campus can bring to the most remote schoolhouse the best lessons of the best teachers, regardless of where or when those lessons were physically articulated. But extending the old capabilities can be either a way station to or a side track away from the ultimate benefits of the virtual world. The technology to let go of our physical selves is ready, but our society is not. Our past, built on what our senses can tell us, is an anchor keeping us stuck in the harbor of known, preventing us from sailing into the sea of unknown. Looking at birds for thousands of years got us only Icarus. It was not poor ships that kept Vikings and Phoenicians close to shore; it was fear of the dragons on the maps where the known seas ended. Again, Mitchell knows this and hints about it a bit. For example, in his discussion of Bookstores/Bit Stores, he talks about the old world of the large urban newspaper: "When the Chicago Tribune Tower was constructed, it stood as the proudly visible center of a vast collection and distribution system and as an emblem of the power of the press. Every day the news flowed in and the printed papers flowed out to the surrounding metropolis. But on the infobahn, where every node is potentially both a publication and a consumption point, such centralized concentrations of activity will be supplanted by millions of dispersed fragments." Mitchell thus hints at hut doesn't mention the long-envisioned world of Xanadu described by Ted Nelson, arguably the father of hypertext, a real break with the linear flow of the printing press paradigm, possible only in cyberspace.

Next City: Learning from Cities during COVID-19 to Tackle Climate Change

Abstract: Fundamental principles of modern cities and urban planning are challenged during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the advantages of large city size, high density, mass transport, free use of public space, unrestricted individual mobility in cities. These principles shaped the development of cities and metropolitan areas for more than a century, but currently, there are signs that they have turned from advantage to liability. Cities Public authorities and private organisations responded to the COVID-19 crisis with a variety of policies and business practices. These countermeasures codify a valuable experience and can offer lessons about how cities can tackle another grand challenge, this of climate change. Do the measures taken during the COVID-19 crisis represent a temporal adjustment to the current health crisis? Or do they open new ways towards a new type of urban development more effective in times of environmental and health crises? We address these questions through literature review and three case studies that review policies and practices for the transformation of city ecosystems mostly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic: (a) the central business district, (b) the transport ecosystem, and (c) the tourism–hospitality ecosystem. We assess whether the measures implemented in these ecosystems shape new policy and planning models for higher readiness of cities towards grand challenges, and how, based on this experience, cities should be organized to tackle the grand challenge of environmental sustainability and climate change.

Smart and Resilient Urban Futures for Sustainability in the Post COVID-19 Era: A Review of Policy Responses on Urban Mobility

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has put lifestyles in question, changed daily routines, and limited citizen freedoms that seemed inalienable before. A human activity that has been greatly affected since the beginning of the health crisis is mobility. Focusing on mobility, we aim to discuss the transformational impact that the pandemic brought to this specific urban domain, especially with regards to the promotion of sustainability, the smart growth agenda, and the acceleration towards the smart city paradigm. We collect 60 initial policy responses related to urban mobility from cities around the world and analyze them based on the challenge they aim to address, the exact principles of smart growth and sustainable mobility that they encapsulate, as well as the level of ICT penetration. Our findings suggest that emerging strategies, although mainly temporary, are transformational, in line with the principles of smart growth and sustainable development. Most policy responses adopted during the first months of the pandemic, however, fail to leverage advancements made in the field of smart cities, and to adopt off-the-shelf solutions such as monitoring, alerting, and operations management.