Richard Tuffs, Director of PLACES partner ERRIN, presented two ongoing reports to the Conference in Tartu, Estonia. The first on Proto-models seeks to develop models of cities of scientific culture. It examines both typologies of science cities and cities of scientific culture and the PLACES community is invited to look at the draft report and offer their comments and expertise. The second report deals with obstacles to cities becoming a city of scientific culture and suggests that the main barriers are limited resources, lack of coordination and no clear policy drivers or locus of decision making.

Indeed, science communication can be seen as nomadic and this lack of one clear responsibility may hamper cities moving towards a true scientific culture. This second report has an associated survey and the PLACES community is invited to provide answers to the survey which will add rigor to the final results and recommendations of the report due in June 2013 at the 3rd PLACES Conference in Torino, Italy.

Download the two reports and survey here:

www.openplaces.eu/places/updates/blog/80669