In the 1950s Jacques Lacan developed a set-up with a concave mirror and a plane mirror, based on which he described the nature of human identification. He also formulated ideas on how psychoanalysis, qua clinical practice, responds to identification. In this paper Lacan's schema of the two mirrors is described in detail and the theoretical line of reasoning he aimed to articulate with aid of th...

Sustainability transitions pose novel challenges to cities that go beyond traditional planning and urban development policies. Such transitions require broader engagement, empowerment, and breakthrough strategies which enable, facilitate, and direct social innovation processes towards adaptive and innovative urban futures. The transition approach offers a set of principles, a framework, instrum...

The world is entering a new era, where Internet-of-Things (IoT), smart homes, and smart cities will play an important role in meeting the so-called big challenges. In the near future, it is foreseen that the majority of the world's population will live their lives in smart homes and in smart cities. To deal with these challenges, to support a sustainable urban development, and to improve the qu...

Over 50% of world‟s population presently resides in cities, and this number is expected to rise to ~70% by 2050. Increasing urbanization problems including population growth, urban sprawl, land use change, unemployment, and environmental degradation, have markedly impacted urban residents‟ Quality of Life (QOL). Therefore, urban sustainability and its measurement have gained increasing attentio...

Sustainability has become a very prominent element in the day-to-day debate on urban policy and the expression of that policy in urban planning decisions. The heritage of this interest lies in the steady evolution of ideas concerning the environmental and ecological impact of economic development. Beginning perhaps with the work of the Club of Rome but accelerating sharply with the insights of ...

Sustainability as a predominant paradigm of 21st century adopted as the best approach to tackle the issues which threat the environment and people’s well-being. As cities in the world are places in which most of the population in the world settles, the best way of ensuring sustainability would be by observing a set of rules and regulations. There are various sets of urban regulations, rating sy...

the rapid rate of population growth in developing countries leads to imbalances development in various urban levels. the trend of urban sustainability is declined due to these imbalances. this declination increases concerns of urban planners to improve the sustainability of urban environments. being aware of sustainability level of urban intervention areas before doing any action is inevitable....

Global smart spaces are intended to provide their inhabitants with context-aware access to pervasive services and information relevant to large geographical areas. Transportation is one obvious domain for such global smart spaces since applications can be built to exploit the variety of sensor-rich systems that have been deployed to support urban traffic control and highway management as well a...

An urban energy transition is needed to address the two global environmental challenges of urbanisation and increasing carbon emissions. Urban energy landscapes represent the spatial patterns of urban energy systems which are visible in the built environment. Spatial regularities in the way systems of energy provision and use are organised are manifest in urban energy landscapes. Energy uses ma...