Every day, in every street, thousands of voluntary and involuntary acts facilitate (or hinder) life. The attitude of care and the awareness of sharing a common space are, in all cases, the most relevant aspects of these stories. I do not know if they are intelligent behaviors, but they are relevant. Including these key ideas in the design of technological solutions for urban functions is essential so that these solutions are user-oriented, are proportionate to the actual scope and reach that technological solutions can offer, are understandable and have a useful urban function. Including these types of features in technological projects implemented in cities would help to better understand how cities function, how citizens behave and how to integrate unpredictability as an essence of urban life.
From my blog: following last week The intelligence of a city is on the streets, some everyday life examples on what to expect and what not from techno sophistication in cities. Or, let´s better understand how cities work and how we live in cities and take the smart thing with caution. Daily scenes in an intelligent city.
Technological determinism inevitably collides with the unpredictabilityand complexity of urban life if technologically sophisticated top-down strategies are employed at a time, furthermore, of budget constraints for local authorities.
It took place in 2011 but is an inspiring initiative.
Summer of Smart is a new model for how citizens and government can work directly together to address urban issues. Developers, designers, city officials, urbanists, journalists, community members, and more are building rapid innovation prototypes and presenting them directly to government. It’s our vision for Democracy 3.0.S
Networked cities in the digital age
Jennifer Pahlka is the founder and executive director of Code for America, which matches web professionals with US cities to reboot local services. Code for America funds fellowships that bring technologists into municipal offices to sort databases, build apps and unleash data. Philadelphia is one of two cities to be part of the program two years running (http://codeforamerica.org/philadelphia).
If you expect more than techno-optimism and acritical celebration of smart cities, this is one of the books you should read. This is my book review.
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.
The documentary ‘Thinking Cities’ deals with one of the most dramatic societal trends happening today: urbanization. The world population is expected to soar to more than 9 billion people by 2050, with roughly 70 percent living in cities. At the same time, Information Communications Technology (ICT) is extending its reach.
These parallel trends are intersecting at a time in which the world faces serious economic, environmental, and social challenges in achieving a more sustainable development. Thinking Cities explores the challenges and opportunities of urbanization in the Networked Society.
‘Connected Cities: Your 256 Billion Euro Dividend’ is a comprehensive handbook by Aida Esteban Millat, Sascha Haslemayer and Jakob H Rasmussen that illustrates through a selection of handpicked case studies how innovation in services and mobility can contribute to improving the economical, environmental and social values of our cities and questions ‘why‘ their uptake is still relatively slow respect the opportunities they present. (via Cluster | City - Design - Innovation » Connecting cities: an interview with Sascha Haselmayer)
Taxi! is an analytical model that maps the trip data for 10,000 taxi rides over the course of 24 hours. Geographic location data for the origin and destination of each ride is combined with waypoint data collected from the Google Maps API in order to generate a geographically accurate representation of the trip.
The team used data from taxi rides originating or ending in the neighborhoods of Lincoln center or Bryant Park. The visualization recreates a ‘breathing’ map of Manhattan based on the migration of vehicles across the city over a period of 24 hours, displaying periods of intensity, density and decreased activity.
Created by Tom McKeogh, Eliza Montgomery and Juan F Saldarriaga.
