Against the backdrop of multiple ongoing crises in European cities related to socio-spatial injustice, inequality and exclusion, we argue for a smart right to the city. There is an urgent need for a thorough account of the entrepreneurial mode of technocapitalist smart urbanism. While much of both affirmative and critical research on Smart City developments equate or even reduce smartness to digital infrastructures, we put actual smartness—in the sense of social justice and sustainability—at centre stage. This paper builds on a fundamental structural critique of (1) the entrepreneurial city (Harvey) and (2) the capitalist city (Lefebvre). Drawing upon Lefebvre’s right to the city as a normative framework, we use Smart City developments in the city of Graz as an illustration of our argument. Considering strategies of waste and mobility management, we reflect on how they operate as spatial and technical fixes—fixing the limits of capitalism’s growth. By serving specific corporate interests, these technocapitalist strategies yet fail to address the underlying structural causes of pressing urban problems and increasing inequalities. With Lefebvre’s ongoing relevant argument for the importance of use value of urban infrastructures as well as his claim that appropriation and participation are essential, we discuss common rights to the city: His framework allows us to envision sustainable and just—actually smart—alternatives: alternatives to technocapitalist entrepreneurial urbanisation. In this respect, a smart right to the city is oriented towards the everyday needs of all inhabitants.

Der Trend zur Urbanisierung und Verdichtung von Wohnraum in Kombination mit der globalen Erwärmung zeigt immer deutlichere Auswirkungen auf das Stadtklima. Zur Reduktion der Belastungen für die Stadtbevölkerung sind gebäudegebundene Begrünungsformen eine wirksame Strategie. Vor allem die Verlagerung der Vegetation auf die bisher kaum genutzte Dachebene hat das Potenzial, negative Auswirkungen der Flächenversieglung und Flächenkonkurrenz auszugleichen, da intensive Dachbegrünungen vielfältige soziale, ökologische und ökonomische Vorteile haben. Da diese in der täglichen Planungs- und Wohnbaupraxis noch unzureichend genutzt werden, wurde in der Stadt Graz ein transformativer Kommunikations- und Lernprozess initiiert, der unter den beteiligten Akteuren nachhaltige Handlungsänderungen anregen soll. Dazu wurde auf Basis einer qualitativen Potenzialanalyse eine Dialogplattform ins Leben gerufen, die im Rahmen von interaktiven Workshop-Formaten relevante Stakeholder vernetzt hat. Dabei konnten Vorbehalte ausgeräumt, Erfahrungen ausgetauscht und Synergieeffekte ausgelotet werden. Durch die gemeinsame Konzeption von Demonstrationsprojekten soll das Erfahren, Experimentieren und Reflektieren mit innovativen Dachbegrünungen weiter angeregt werden. Dieser kontinuierliche Aushandlungs- und Lernprozess soll dazu beitragen, dass sich Dachgärten als wirksamer Lösungsansatz für die sozial-ökologischen Herausforderungen des modernen Wohn- und Städtebaus etablieren und weitere Nachhaltigkeitstransformationen gefördert werden.

To facilitate a sustainable energy transition, the housing sector needs to be considered as a whole. Consequently, buildings as well as spatial structures have to be sustainable. Buildings, new and existing, need to be energy efficient, low carbon, considering diverse demands, while also providing a healthy indoor environment and a high quality of life. Spatial structures have to be efficient through compact development, supporting the transition to a post fossil society and mobility regime, that also provide high quality public spaces. In a transdisciplinary approach, strategies and policies, relevant for the case of Graz, Austria, were analyzed. Challenges and potential solution approaches were identified in a theory discussion, considering spatial development and construction aspects. A resulting set of measures to support the necessary sustainability transition is evaluated and iteratively enhanced by qualitative expert interviews with relevant stakeholders, i.e., researchers, practitioners and the administration. The aim of this research is to come up with a set of policy recommendations for decision makers. First results of this work in progress are already available and presented in this paper.

The creation of building and facility models is a tedious and complicated task. Existing CAD models are typically not well suited since they contain too much or not enough detail; the manual modeling approach does not scale; different views on the same model are needed, and different levels of detail and abstraction; and finally, conventional modeling tools are inappropriate for models with many internal parameter dependencies. As a solution to this problem we propose a combination of a procedural approach with shape grammars. The model is created in a top-down manner; high-level changeability and re-usability are much less of a problem; and it can be interactively evaluated to provide different views at runtime. We present some insights on the relation between imperative and declarative grammar descriptions, and show a detailed case study with facility surveillance as a practical application.

http://www.cgv.tugraz.at/cityfit ABSTRACT: Many approaches for automatic 3D city reconstruction exist, but they are still missing an important feature: detailed facades. The goal of the CityFit project is to reconstruct the facades of 80% of the buildings in the city of Graz fully automatically. The challenge is to establish a complete workflow, ranging from acquisition of images and LIDAR data over 2D/3D feature detection and recognition to the generation of lean polygonal facade models. The desired detail level is to represent all significant facade elements larger than 50 cm by explicit polygonal geometry. All geometry shall also carry descriptive annotations (semantic enrichment). This paper presents an outline of the workflow, important design decisions, and the current state of the project. First results were obtained by case studies of facade analysis followed by manual reconstruction. This gave important hints how to structure grammars for automatic reconstruction.

This paper proposes a time slotted distributed protocol to enhance transmissions in ad-hoc networks. This is achieved by employing the well known cooperative virtual multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technique. A general protocol for N cooperating nodes is presented and evaluated considering bit error rate (BER), signal to noise ratio (SNR) and delay as target metrics. We show in particular that there is a trade off between performance, complexity and delay. Interestingly, reliable multimedia transmission can be achieved with reasonable delay constraints, as required in many telehealth applications.

In this paper we give a detailed state-of-the-art review for the design and implementation of embedded wireless ad-hoc systems as they are applied for multimedia data transmission. More precisely, this paper focuses on eHealth applications with specific quality of service (QoS) constraints which have to be treated differently compared to other, already standardized systems. Different techniques to secure as well as enhance the reliability of the transmission will be discussed. Furthermore, we present the design of an embedded interactive system for distributed multimedia processing for telehealth. In this interactive home care system, speech recognition is used to enable easy user control. Additionally, the system consists of several wireless network cameras to perform full indoor patient surveillance.

In this paper we give ad etailed state-of-the-art revie wf or the design and implementation of embedded wireless ad-hoc systems as the ya re applied for multi- media data transmission. More precisely ,t his paper focuses on eHealth applications with specific quality of service (QoS) constraints which have to be treated differently compared to other ,a lready standardized systems. Different techniques to secure as well as enhance the reliability of the transmission will be discussed. Furthermore, we present the design of an embedded interactive system for dis- tributed multimedia processing for telehealth. In this interactive home care system, speech recognition is used to enable easy user control. Additionally ,t he system con- sists of several wireless network cameras to perform full indoor patient surveillance. 1