On Manchesterism, the real defence trade-off, and the Makerfield by-election. Read the latest in HopeWorks: A Progressive Reader. open.substack.com/pub/thisisho...

CASA Professor Michael Batty was interviewed by Hala Lahlou and Sushmita Ravi from Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia on the evolving role of Building Information Modelling (BIM). ▶️ Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/65XzPo6p350hCh2PDRmsWQ

🚨 👩‍🎓 👨‍🎓 📚 PHD OPPORTUNITY! Fully-funded 3 year UCL PhD at @casaucl.bsky.social. Start in October 2026 or February 2027. Deadline to apply is Weds 1 July 23:59 BST. Please share widely! www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/cas...

Sense, Deploy, Communicate: Connected Environments MSc Show 2026 From 17 July – 02 August, explore the final projects of students graduating from the Connected Environments MSc at UCL East. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/events/2026/jul/sense-deploy-communicate-connected-environments-msc-show-2026

🚨 👩‍🎓 👨‍🎓 📚 PHD OPPORTUNITY! Fully-funded 3 year UCL PhD at @casaucl.bsky.social. Start in October 2026 or February 2027. Deadline to apply is Weds 1 July 23:59 BST. Please share widely! www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/cas...

🚨 👩‍🎓 👨‍🎓 📚 PHD OPPORTUNITY! Fully-funded 3 year UCL PhD at @casaucl.bsky.social. Start in October 2026 or February 2027. Deadline to apply is Weds 1 July 23:59 BST. Please share widely! www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/cas...

Sense, Deploy, Communicate: Connected Environments MSc Show 2026 From 17 July – 02 August, explore the final projects of students graduating from the Connected Environments MSc at UCL East. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/events/2026/jul/sense-deploy-communicate-connected-environments-msc-show-2026

🚨 👩‍🎓 👨‍🎓 📚 Fully-funded 3 year UCL PhD coming up at @casaucl.bsky.social: the Joel Dearden Scholarship. Start in October 2026 or February 2027. Home students only. 👉 Please share widely! 👉 Deadline for pre-applications is 1 July. Please look out for the advert - we’ll post it shortly.

✍️ Now hiring! ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowships at @casaucl.bsky.social as part of the UBEL DTP 2026 postdoc programme. 🗓️ Pre-registration deadline: Monday 18 May 2026 23:59 UK time. 🗓️ Full deadline: Monday 1 June 2026, 23:59 UK time. 👉 Apply here: ubel-dtp.ac.uk/postdoctoral...

Why do patients travel further for healthcare, even when a hospital is nearby? A new study from a team including CASA’s Michael Batty and Chen Zhong shows that over 80% of patients bypass their nearest hospital. Read the article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44360-026-00100-6

We're pleased to welcome César Marín-Flores, a PhD student at Aalto University working under the supervision of Dr Henrikki Tenkanen, who is currently joining us as a visiting researcher. César’s research focuses on urban mobility, and the environmental impacts of everyday travel.

The number of luxury, detached homes in England and Wales owned through offshore companies has fallen dramatically in the last decade, likely as a result of a Government transparency drive, finds Dr Jonathan Bourne @casaucl.bsky.social @thebartlettucl.bsky.social

We're happy to announce our final Complexity Economics seminars for this academic year (all online as well as in person). We start on 29 April with Neave O'Clery @casaucl.bsky.social on Deciphering the global production network from cross-border firm transactions. www.inet.ox.ac.uk/events/decip...

And @casaucl.bsky.social has a new home! Goodbye 90TCR and hello Maple House

In an article published in Science Direct, CASA's Claude Lynch, Gerard Casey, Esra Suel and Adam Dennett ask: Is transport modelling ‘a bit of a racket’? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590198226000412

Congratulations to CASA Professor Neave O'Clery for her appointment to the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) Vienna as external faculty! Home to many CASA alumni, the independent non-profit research institute researches global systems by analysing large-scale data & complex networks. https://csh.ac.at/

@casaucl.bsky.social’s Thomas Murat kicking things off in his #AAG26 session about simulating bus-mobility.

Wed 18 March: The CASA Seminar Series Inter-city Migration and its Differential Impacts on Urban Population Age Structure Evolution: A Big Data Empirical Study of Wuhan, China with Xiu Yang, CASA Find out more: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/events/2026/mar/casa-seminar-series-2025-26

Your fiddeling about with Boids for agent based modelling and it turns into an Aquarium where the fish tell the time.. 🐠🕐 Aqua Clock is now incoming to iOS and Android. #ios #android #time #clock #aquarium #fishtank #fish #app #indiedev #newapp via @casaucl.bsky.social

Full house for today’s UCL Economic Geography Network seminar with Zara Shabrina - a superb talk on modelling Jakarta as a sinking city

Join us today for March's Economic Geography Network Seminar. Multimodal Geo-AI for modelling Jakarta as a sinking city with Dr Zahratu Shabrina 🗓️ 13:00, Thu 12 March 📍 CASA Seminar Room 106/107 https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/events/2026/mar/economic-geography-network-seminar-series

Energy neutral water pump - doing a bit of prototyping at @casaucl.bsky.social for a project with Mac at Nuna Studio - pump works great at a height of 7m. Good to see the spreadsheet theory working in practice. Next up, test rig to run it for a week.

Dr Sarah Wise is leading a project funded by @nihr.bsky.social to model how heatwaves and flooding could disrupt the UK's blood supply. The team includes UCL Advanced Research Computing and the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction @thebartlettucl.bsky.social. 🔗 www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/new...

Come and work with CASA: UCL and Alleyn’s School are coming together through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership. We're seeking a Digital Twin Integration Specialist (Research Fellow/Research Assistant), to be based at Alleyn's in Dulwich, south London. Learn more & apply: https://tinyurl.com/jkt6x7rs

Congratulations to CASA Research Fellow, Clara Peiret-García, on receiving a @sdruk.bsky.social Fellowship! Her project will combine smart mobility data with surveys to understand diverse travel patterns, using HASP and GeoDS to support fair post‑pandemic transport planning. https://bit.ly/4co5e4m

We are saddened to share the passing of Professor Michael Collins, a respected member of The Bartlett community. His contributions to planning research, education and practice leave a lasting legacy. Read more: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/news/2026/feb/memoriam-professor-michael-collins

CASA PhD student Matthew Whearty and researchers Roberto Murcio and Joana Barros examine new passenger rail projects in Greater London, finding no significant social deprivation effects within a 15‑minute walk and raising wider questions about social outcomes. Read more: https://bit.ly/4qwIiDA

Today, UCL turns 200. 🎉 For two centuries, our community has opened doors, challenged convention and pushed the boundaries of knowledge across every discipline. Thank you to everyone who’s been part of the UCL story, here’s to the next century. ✨ #UCL200 #LoveUCL

At each annual conference we have an early career plenary lecture and in Belfast this May that lecture will be given by Dr Ruth Neville @ruthneville20.bsky.social a research fellow in computational social science at @casaucl.bsky.social. Abstract submission deadline is Friday tinyurl.com/9szbc49y

If you're applying for our Connected Environments MSc, don't miss the UCL East Postgraduate Open Evening, featuring a specialist space tour of the Connected Environments Lab. 📍 UCL East, Marshgate 🗓️ 17:00 - 19:30, Wednesday 25 February Register now: bit.ly/3O0VBPb

Great write-up by John 👇 CASA postdoc Mateo Seré co-authored this paper. We are stoked it’s out in AER!

🚨🎓📚 I am super-excited to be joining the Economic Geography editorial board. Many thanks to the editors for having me! www.tandfonline.com/journals/rec... Follow EG here: @econgeog-journal.bsky.social Please send us your papers :)

CASA Profs Max Nathan and Neave O'Clery, PhD student Bohao Su and Research Fellow Laura Mazzarino were at the recent Geography of Innovation conference in Budapest. The team presented work on migration, global supply chains, innovation networks and models for industrial diversification.

CASA's Ruth Neville has been announced as one of ten 2026 UCL Policy Fellows, co‑delivering projects for local needs. Ruth is among six Local Authority Policy Fellows, supporting policy development at Newham Council through population trend analysis. Find out more: https://tinyurl.com/cj7aenwa

Today in the CASA Seminar Series: Sophie Flinders and Chris Hayes (Common Wealth) analyse privatisation of essential services and ask: Who Owns Britain? 🗓️ 16:00, Wed 28 Jan 📍 CASA Seminar Room, 90 Tottenham Court Road https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/events/2026/jan/casa-seminar-series-2025-26

Congratulations to Professor Neave O'Clery on being awarded a grant from the ReCIPE programme, a CEPR initiative funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, for her project, 'Does economic entanglement reduce the risk of escalation from economic to military interstate conflict?'.

🎭 Are creative industries quietly remodeling cities? 🌃 In England and Wales, the association between creative activity and neighborhood gentrification is modest yet highly context-dependent—though evidently strong in large cities like London. 🔗 Read more at doi.org/10.1080/0013... #EconGeography

Professor Max Nathan/the UCL Economic Geography Group have been awarded the UCL Grassroots Research Culture Seed Fund 2025/26, which funds locally led projects to improve UCL's research culture. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/research/news/2025/dec/ucl-grassroots-research-culture-seed-fund-202526-recipients

The CASA Connected Environments Lab, led by Prof Duncan Wilson & Prof Steven Gray, has built an IoT Bus Tracker for the shuttle service between Stratford Station & UCL East, designed and operated by students. https://studentsunionucl.org/articles/ucl-east-shuttle-bus-your-journey-just-got-easier

The CASA Seminar Series is back! Jonathan Bourne, THE 3TC AI A Decade of OCOD: Analysing ten years offshore owned residential property in England & Wales 🗓️ 16:00-17:00, 14 January 📍 CASA Seminar Room, 90 Tottenham Court Road https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/events/2026/jan/casa-seminar-series-2025-26

And a lot of our researchers publish their research and teaching code to GitHub too! (Think we need a dedicated page to point to all the resources!)

CASA is now closed for the festive break, reopening for 2026 on Monday 05 January. We'd like to thank all of our students and staff for all your hard work and commitment in 2025. Wishing a merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all our students, staff, friends and alumni!

CASA recently held a virtual open day for prospective master's students, providing an insight into our innovative programmes and committed staff. Check out the video to recap: https://bit.ly/3Y2xTDW Find out more about our master's programmes: https://bit.ly/3KT2Ya8 #UCL #Bartlett #CASA #MSc

The CUPUM 2025 book is now published 📚 'Digital-Era Urban Transformations' examines how AI, big data and urban sensing are reshaping cities. Co-edited by three CASA researchers, with two chapters from the department. Read more: https://bit.ly/3Y2z0DG

CASA kicked off our famous annual Christmas party earlier this week with a trip to V&A East Storehouse. 😍

Funded by @uclgrandchallenges.bsky.social and Historic England, CASA Assoc Prof @huanfa.bsky.social has been working with @warmwelcomeuk.bsky.social to improve access to Warm Welcome Spaces. A new dashboard maps 5,500+ UK spaces, showing proximity boosts awareness for vulnerable groups.

Just published in Nature Cities, a study led by recent CASA PhD graduate Andrew Renninger advances our understanding of urban inequality by focusing on experienced socioeconomic segregation, or daily encounters between individuals of differing socio-economic groups. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

CASA staff Philyoung Jeong and Dr Duncan Smith have published a new working paper on accessibility to cycle routes in London, examining new cycling indicators for tracking cycle network development, gaps in the network and challenges faced by vulnerable cyclists. discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10...

Most US cities have rings of isolation in suburban areas and segregated pockets of near the urban core, shaped by race, wealth, and proximity to downtown, finds a new study of 383 American cities, led by Andrew Renninger @casaucl.bsky.social @thebartlettucl.bsky.social

Mark Tewdwr-Jones, Professor of Cities & Regions, gave a plenary talk this week at ISOCARP61, the World Planning Congress in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His talk, ‘Urban Futures: Visioning the Planning of Places through Innovation’, examined the potential role of planning to make a difference in places.