The $100 Billion Jackpot
On Townsend words, Smart Cities rely on three different aspect: the deploy of a heavily interconnected infrastructure of power and sensing at a urban scale; “urban infomatics” capable of analysing and visualizing data coming from the network of sensors; and “managment practices” which lead to the automation and adaptation of the city to any certain condition in real time.
In this context, City is portrayed more like the development of a product, than a living environment in which people are suposed to live. In this context, which is the role of companies deveolping such cities, in terms of common political aspects of the city as governance and privacy? If instead of citizens, people are portrayed as users, which are their rights to act accordingly to this new scenario?
Test bed as urban epistemology
As Smart Cities are heavily dependent on models of data analysis that create responses based on “habits” of their users/citizens, what should we learn from the present problems related to the bias in the design of intelligent algorythims that analyse the stream of data from Social Networks and the Internet? Shouldn´t we be worried of the privacy of such data, as in the present this is used as a commodity? are there going to be a way to opt out of bringing our data? or is there going to be any kind of politics in terms of the usage of such information?