Aim of the Conference

Innovation is at the heart of the European Union’s Europe 2020 strategy.

As part of this strategy the EU wants to turn the Union into a genuine Innovation Union. The EU’s ambition is to develop the Union into a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy. As Peter Hall has demonstrated in his monumental book “Cities in Civilisation”, historically cities have been and are always like to remain the seedbeds where major social and economic transformations in our societies are initiated and developed. Oftentimes these transformations are induced by developments in the domains of science and technology. But as Hall has emphasized, although “the force of technological change sets the challenges which society has to face”, the impact of technological change is by no means mechanistic. Rather “technology in its headlong march also creates choices and opportunities; and faced with those, urban societies can and must decide for themselves the way they want to go. As so often before, technological progress is paradoxically villain and hero: on the one hand destroying jobs and firms and entire industries and ways of life; on the other, creating vast new economic opportunities and solving intractable problems of urban society. But the way we use it will depend on us” (Hall 1998: 987-988).

Therefore we decided to organise the 2013 EURA Conference around the theme Cities as Seedbeds for Innovation.

 

 

 

EURA 2013 Conference

University of Twente
School of Management and Governance / IGS
PO Box 217
7500 AE Enschede
The Netherlands

Email info@eura2013.org
Phone +31 53 489 3423