The too-smart city
bostonglobe.comThe smart city has become a buzzword in urban planning and university engineering departments, and a topic of breathless coverage in science and business magazines. But as political leaders, engineers, and environmentalists join the smart-city bandwagon, a growing chorus of thinkers from social sciences, architecture, urban planning, and design are starting to sound a note of caution. Though they share enthusiasm for what a smart city could do, they also point out that smart-city programs couldâwith little public oversightâput us on track to an oversanitized, high-surveillance, serendipity-free urban future that not everyone thinks is ideal.
Good article with great insights on some of the problems I have with the mainstream idea of smart cities and the role of technologies in urban living.
“Should not we reconsider the term 'smart cities'? If we speak about people in the center of the complex systems, 'smart cities' can be replaced with 'wise cities.' Wisdom refers to the rich history of human experience and culture. So let’s embrace the complexity of the world instead of imagining a technologically perfect future machine.”
—Someone from the audience at Social Cities of Tomorrow conference in Amsterdam.(from Shareable)
Smart Cities get their own operating systems, their own apps, and their own needs are solved.
Read more »>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15109403
Ciudades a escala humana: Member of the Advisory Board of UrbanIxD
ciudadesaescalahumana.orgI am happy to share I have joined the Advisory Board of UrbanIxD, a EU funded project “that will build a research network around the domain of data-rich urban environments,focusing on human activities, experiences and behaviours”.
This means an amazing chance to contribute to its objectives and to interact with a great lineup of professionals with much more experience and background than me on these topics. The most promising feature of the project, and this is why probably my contribution makes sense and why I understood the potential of this project from the very first days I got to know it, is that there is a strong focus on reflection about the role of technology in everyday life and human interaction. This research framework makes sense when there is a growing split between different approaches to smart cities and related technologies and the lack of cross-sectoral dialogue in the different knowledge fields of urban technologies. This is due to different scale and perspective approaches to understand cities or a dialogue of the deaf in which human interaction, behaviour and needs re usually cornered in the mainstream celebratory discourses that have become a standard. In this sense, the project is an opportunity to look into hybrid cities from a bottom-up pespective and community intelligence.
Barcelona Hosts Smart City Expo
In 2050, 75% of the world population will live in an urban environment. The constant population growth will require an urgent reflection on how these spaces will absorb and facilitate the life of their inhabitants. Fira de Barcelona’s new event, Smart City Expo & World Congress, which will be held from 29 November to 2 December, responds to each of the challenges that will arise with this scenario and redefines current cities. The congress will be the meeting point for sector professionals, heads of public administrations and experts, who will give the keys to understanding the workings and development of cities of the future, known as smart cities.
The concept ‘Smart City’ refers to cities that, seeking to increase the quality of life of their inhabitants, develop technological improvements in order to create urban environments that are not only more liveable but also more efficient in the management of available resources, whether they be energy, water or air quality. This need has led to high tech companies from different fields providing large cities with new technological applications, which also means a new business opportunity.
Speakers include, amongst others:
- Carlo Ratti - MIT SENSEable City Lab
- Adam Greenfield - Urbanscale
- Neil Gershenfeld - MIT Center for Bits & Atoms
- Vicente Guallard - Ayuntamiento de Barcelona
- Michael Braungart - EUR
- Enric Ruiz-Geli - Cloud 9
- Gunter Pauli - ZERI Foundation
Smart City Expo & World Congress
29 November - 2 December 2011
