On Townsend, A. “$100 Billion Dollar Jackpot” in Smart Cities (19-56)
In what seems to be the analog struggle of the smart city, its various digital flows and operations depend on legacy infrastructure (pp.40-45). Is the economic burden of updating them greater than actually laying out brand new infrastructure? What could the unexpected perks of the “ideas follow infrastructure” approach (pp.29) in Songdo be?
On Halpern, LeCavalier, Calvillo, Pietch. “Testbed as Urban Epistemology” in Smart Urbanism (145-167)
The failure in the logical operations of u-cities like Songdo seems to lie in the fact that they combine empirical methodology and refusal of an ideal, initial research hypotheses or endpoints with inductive reason – as opposed to past utopias that apparently speculated in a deductive manner. Each of the above elements alone marks a rather welcomed deviation from the cartesian, deterministic and deductive norms of modernity. Yet, as a whole, it is dysfunctional and problematic. Which element is causing this “epistemology of infinity, non-normativity and speculation” to fail?
In my opinion, it is inductive reasoning that undermines the whole. However, I wonder how it is possible for an urban model built on boolean operations, statistical analysis and other firm logical tools to operate inductively.