Author: Pinelopi Papadimitraki

W12. Alternative Futures – Pinelopi

On de Lange and de Waal, “Owning the city: New media and citizen engagement in urban design.” First Monday

-The authors argue that city dwellers should neither be expected to trade in their freedom of choice and autonomy for a community of homogeneous parochiality, nor supposed to be blasé about shared concerns of the commons (section#3). Looking beyond scenarios of compromise between one or the other of the prominent opposing modes of citizen engagement, the authors underline the need to create a common ground. What would the role of ICT be in addressing the current opposition? What kind of digital media would support such a paradigm shift towards the hybridization of the two extremes?

-In an attempt to redefine or expand the concept of community, de Waal and de Lange refer to Varnelis’ “networked publics” to describe the ways that assemble themselves around shared concerns, strengthened by their differences and organized through distributed networks (section#3). What architectures would enable ‘networked publics’ to come together and influence their environment? Are those spatial configurations more likely to reach a certain mature form or are they instead in a continuous process of production by the ‘networked publics’?

on Kitchin, “Rethinking, Reimagining and Remaking Smart Cities,” Programmable City 

-After tracing the two sides of the smart urbanism coin, Kitchin notes it is high time the constructive critique on smart cities matured into “concrete advice” (pp.6) for making smart cities, notably in a proactive manner – as if their networked and mobile ICTs are already fully in place. Later on, he suggests that governing bodies should be the first to lead this process to form and address normative questions and then coordinate smart city initiatives accordingly (pp.7). What kind of institutional and legal framework could grant city administrations with a more dynamic, ad-hoc role in the smart city discussion, instead of them being merely ‘clients’?

-Another challenge is to redefine smart governance and its technologies towards a more open, transparent and diverse “suite of solutions” (pp.8) or “interventions” (pp.11) where technical, socio-cultural, political and administrational parameters converge. What would the rules (and ratios) of such a complex and ambitious blend comprise of? How and by whom could these be written?

W11. Crashing and Hacking the Smart City – pinelopi

Cerrudo, “An Emerging US (and World) Threat: Cities Wide Open to Cyber Attacks,” White Paper

-To take seriously the arguments of a paper that omits references or draws them from Wikipedia and Amazon is certainly unlikely. As a marketing tool, this white paper presents smartness as synonymous to automation and security, while bugs, glitches, cyber-terrorists or hacktivists pose equally serious dangers to the city (pp.10, 17). The author appears to regard transparency of decision making to be a drawback and presents open data as raw material for attacks (pp.15), yet he seems to reach some conclusions worth considering, such as the need for a fail-safe approach and manual overrides, as well as proper encryption and authentication in software that mediates urban processes. In which ways can digital infrastructure be designed to filter out malicious attacks, but still invite participation? How will this line be drawn and by whom?

-In an attempt to map the attack surface of a smart city, the author applies a deterministic, sequential rhetoric: it all begins with malicious manipulation of information, which creates a false alarm, which causes the wrong behavior change of citizens, which then results at some type of congestion – mobility or energy-wise. Yet, I dare say this effect would mostly appear in u-cities with non-existent legacy organizational systems, as existing cities would probably self-regulate their flows in an alternate way shortly after the disruption – given that their legacy infrastructure would remain in place. How can an analog Plan B be designed for a smart Plan A? What would their common elements consist of?

Townsend, “Buggy, Brittle and Bugged,” Smart Cities: pp.252-281

-As Townsend unfolds the wide spectrum of cyber-sabotage, one may identify that the aftermath is more often than not constructive. In which ways do “zero-day” attacks (pp.267) contribute to the evolution of software by creating links of collaboration between groups of opposing interests? Walking in the shoes of hackers is commonplace for security researchers in their attempt to unveil vulnerabilities [ ex. Beresford of NSS Labs (pp.268), McAfee researchers (pp.269) or Davis of IOActive Labs ( in Cerrudo’s white paper, p.16)].  What are the unlikely perks of cyber-sabotage as a dynamic mechanism for code development?

-As opposed to the demands for decentralization in the 60’s (pp.277), the urban future ahead looks rather centralized according to Glaeser (pp.278). To prevent doomsday scenarios from happening is a bet we cannot afford to lose, but in which ways is a purely centralized strategy more suitable for the task? The potential failures of our cities are complex conglomerations of urban, economic, technological and social parameters. What would the forms of participation and action to address them look like, especially across different scales?

W10. Open Source Urbanism – pinelopi

on Townsend, “Open Source Metropolis,” Smart Cities (pp. 115-141)

– In the seventies, Burns acted as a mediator between cable, the ground-breaking technology of the day, and people that wished to appropriate it (pp.117). The community video centers she launched in numerous cities could not have been made possible without the support of local governments and the industry. Townsend uses the term “perfect storm” to describe the synced point in time where technologies and people’s understanding of them become ripe together. Later in the chapter, it is implied that a similar condition is taking place today. How will the contemporary “perfect storm”, supposedly comprised of open source commons, ‘wirelessness’ and democratized electronics affect ‘the ways the city plays itself’ in the words of Gabrys? Are local governments and industry still fit to support the creative process “through which people harness technology to create a system” (pp.118) in the smart city?

– The format and standards of technology emerge as enablers of unplanned ‘idiotic’ applications from the users themselves (such as the microcassete recorder or the beeper of the 70’s, pp.119), yet on the other hand, they also pose important challenges along the way. An example of the latter is the obstacle of ‘walled gardens’ for the mobile web and how Crowley identified e-mail, a technology that was already in place as a workaround (pp.123). In a similar manner, Wi-Fi’s limited scale range was initially tackled with an ingenuous use of simple, already existing tools brought together in unexpected ways (arrays of DIY antennas linked to wireless networks, pp.129). But as technologies become more sophisticated, innovation tends to be in the hands of the ones that have the know-how – the hackers, as the last two examples show. Yet, as the “steep learning curve” of physical computing (pp.136) is being evened out, how are non-engineers empowered to meaningfully disrupt and appropriate the existing smart infrastructure of the city?
on Haque and Fuller, “Urban Versioning System 1.0,” Situated Technologies Pamphlets #2

– To approach the building as an in-progress model of itself opens the floor to the participation of non-designers and directs the discussion towards real-world constraints – two features that are apparently suspended by the representational practices and media through which spatial design is usually communicated (pp.23-24). However, it is probable that if the non-linear space-making processes described here were to be entirely carried out in meatspace, then the financial and spatial challenges that would consequently arise would threaten the feasibility of the project or force to unpleasant compromises. It seems that Haque and Fuller identify a resolution in BIM systems’ ability for digitally merging design and construction in an object-oriented manner (pp27). How are BIM systems suggestive of a shift from representation (a linear structure of communication) to simulation (a digital version of the real, constantly subject to change)? BIM systems have been accused of isolating the designed artifact from its context by situating it in an oversimplified approximation of its original environment. How to resolve this contradiction? For instance, in which ways could BIM systems take social parameters as an input?

– Where non-plan ideas meet Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS), Haque and Fuller advocate for an Urban Versioning System that runs on granular parameters. There may include participation [from the non-designer to the virtuoso (p.30, 36)], modularity [ dependent on scale, expertise and time (p.37)] property [from its existing neoliberal redundancy to its mitigation (p.49)] and many others. Is there also a need to granularize persistence (from permanence to ephemerality)? The non-planners proposed permanent hyper-structures on which ephemeral envelopes would allow for ever-changing situations to happen. How would such a condition translate in the contemporary setting? How will the joints between the parts of the system change when the base structure itself is contingent?

W6. Urban Data Infrastructures – pinelopi

on Kitchin, Lauriault and McArdle, “Smart cities and the politics of urban data,” Smart Urbanism: Utopian Vision or False Dawn pp. 16-33

This chapter underlines the urgency to revisit existing smart-city technologies. The most constructive start in this process seems to be the exposure of the data assemblage (pp22) that produces them as opposed to its usual concealment or disregarding (pp30). The process of this revelation would be inevitably political itself – especially if It would not be enough to merely present the dispositif to all stakeholders, but to allow them to understand and actively engage with it too. What would the means of such a process be? How can we keep it from inheriting the same weaknesses that indicator, benchmarking and dashboard initiatives demonstrate?

Being the final visual output of city-sensing, dashboards are responsible for the illusion that a city is a collection of absolute facts to be observed. However, it is the conception of data as a solid, stand-alone series of facts that creates this oversimplified approach to city management in the first place, as it decontextualizes the city from the complex relations that constitute it (pp27). Should the next generation of the smart-city toolbox emphasize on making those relations between facts more apparent to citizens and city managers as a means to prove their contingent nature?
Also, how would a spatial interface with the ability to render these relations tangible look like?

on Gabrys, “Digital Infrastructures of Withness: Constructing a Speculative City,” Program Earth, pp.241-266

Within the digital infrastructures of smart cities, various types of participation arise, some of which produce modalities of withness. As opposed to the usual approach to participatory urbanism that attends to the ways through which individuals and communities are empowered  to get involved, withness identifies the human and more-than-human parts that together constitute “a wider infrastructural network of participatory and transindividuating politics and action” (pp243). Is this shift telling of a more post-human approach to urbanism? Would there be enough room for human agency in the cybernetic vision of the city as an “automated urban organism” (pp253)? Also, when Gabrys considers digital infrastructure as Automatism, she refers to Easterling’s quote saying “designing infrastructure is designing action” to suggest that infrastructures and actions coincide and co-emerge (pp257). Are they co-designed as well though? Isn’t the city-as-platform scenario, mostly promoted and implemented by corporations such as Microsoft and IBM, a profoundly top-down one?

Gabrys identifies a paradox in the evolution of abstract technology, where the process of its concretization is apparently one of high indeterminacy (pp254). Is this margin of indeterminacy a fertile ground for all three modalities of withness – measurement, automatism, contingency- or only for the latter?

W7. DIY and Participatory Urbanism – pinelopi

on Townsend, “Tinkering Toward Utopia,” Smart Cities (115-141)

– As experiences become a reward or bonus for their users, many apps of the emerging Social Web are interpreting the city as a platform of entertainment, full of challenges to be unlocked (pp147). It appears that this approach inevitably leads to their initial spontaneity giving way to a kind of ‘programmed serendipity’ (pp152). For instance, Foursquare took a not-so-subtle commercial direction when it mined its databases to deliver personalized recommendations, while the DIYcity project reached a financial dead-end (pp158). How can grassroot smart initiatives survive without monetizing their users’ habits at the expense of their ideals?

– If buildings are simply the ‘support system’ of urbanity (pp160), urban sociability, its fundamental substance, is a rather volatile one. Could the crossing of the Social Web movement with grassroot smart-city initiatives materialize it by producing direct impact on the urban fabric? How could such ephemeral tangible effects be hacked to extend their life-span and address enduring urban problems?

– As hacking is typically done for the sake of control of infrastructures for personal gain (pp.166), how can it be put in the service of social change? To what extend is the ecosystem of software developers (and architects as well) distantiated from real social problems and how could this be reversed?

on Gabrys, “Engaging the Idiot in Participatory Digital Urbanism,” Program Earth (207-240)

– (Please allow me to refer to the etymology of the word ‘idiot’, as an extension to the background provided by Gabrys (p209-210) to demonstrate the divergence between the classical and the smart approach of the citizen a couple of thousand years later).
In ancient Athens, participating in the commons was not just another property of citizenship – it was a duty. The word “idiot” derives from the Greek “ιδιώτης” (:idiothes), a derogatory term that characterized the apolitical members of society, those that neglected their civic responsibilities of participating and voting. Such behavior resulted in the removal of their civil rights and them being send to exile.  In his Politics, Aristotle defined the idiot as the opposite of the citizen, stating that citizenship is first and foremost a matter of education and culture.
On the other hand, participatory urbanism sees the citizen from a completely different perspective. The idiot could be a precious agent within the smart city, bearer of potential for more flexible, open-ended, yet passive interactions (pp215) fueled by passive participatory sensing. In many ways one can argue that the smart city runs on a more inclusive model than the classical one – even Aristotle was concerned about the fact that hardworking members of society, such as the mechanics, were unable to excel in their civic responsibilities and were rendered noncitizens. Does the smart city need to be inhabited by entities that are simultaneously citizens and idiots? And how probable is it that this hybrid will lose its balance, rendering active forms of engagement unlikely to take place?

– In the context of ‘write-able cities’, the citizen and the city are to be brought into dialogue (pp.217), far from the initial conception of the smart citizen as a mere data-generating node. Gabrys is examining the forms of motivation and skillset a citizen needs to engage in this open process (pp.220). A question would be, how could an ongoing process like this be structured and sustained in time? Do we need to design a model for a kind of mutual governance?
Also, given the rapid pace that smart technologies change, citizens would probably have to ceaselessly evolve to maintain the integrity of their citizenship intact.  Would this lifelong smart education be citizen-driven or government-driven?

– The relationship of politics and disruption has always been a tense one. Is the inclusion of the idiot, an agent of disruption, a disguised attempt to appropriate deviations from the smart norm by extending the tolerance of participation processes? Criticizing digital platforms of participation, Iveson warns that they are not necessarily fostering political engagements, yet Gabrys seems to regard the idiot as a fruitful voice of doubt for (not against) the good intentions of smart initiatives (pp235). But what impact can a voice make?  Is this to empower new modes of participation, or rather to prevent Sterling’s “dump ghettos” and dump countercurrents of resistance from happening?

W5. Sensing the Smart Citizen – Pinelopi

On  Gabrys, Jennifer –  Program Earth: Chapter 7, Citizen Sensing in the Smart and Sustainable City: From Environments to Environmentality.

– According to Foucault, the behavior of a subject or population is but indirectly influenced in the generalized state of ‘environmentality’ (pp190). What would the techniques of environmental governance come to be in a smart city of direct monitoring of bodies and their predicted behavior patterns?

– In the smart city, software constitutes urban processes to such an extent, that they themselves fail in case the former does (pp197). Should computational operations consciously allow for faults and glitches in programmed environments instead of programming them out? The production of code, as MacKenzie describes it (pp197-198), bears resemblance to that of space. Software is a complex, co-written product that is constantly subject to change and prone to error. Do we need to design an oxymoron ‘non-plan’ approach to urban computing?

On Shepard, Mark and Simeti, Antonina – What’s so smart about the Smart Citizen?

– Mapping the field of smart urbanism, we come to realize that it is not at all homogeneous. To the contrary, it is characterized by a strict opposition whose ends are defined according to who leads the initiative (ICT companies, developers, governments vs. citizens), what are their methods (top-down, centralized vs. bottom-up, distributed) and what are their -more or less pronounced- intents (automation, optimization, efficiency vs. engagement, social and cultural revitalization) (pp13-14). As with every opposition, each end in a sense includes the ideas of the other – just inverted. This underlying convention prohibits them from articulating a different, more holistic approach and inducing change (pp17). A hybrid between the Smart City and the Smart Citizen may seem as a long-anticipated bridge, but what are would its ‘materials’ be? Who and how could design the convergence of two so seemingly disparate poles? Should we rather reinvent completely new tools for this middle ground?

W4. Quantified Community: Hudson Yards – Pinelopi

– On Kontokosta K., “The Quantified Community and Neighborhood Labs: A framework for computational Urban Planning and Civic Technology Innovation”

The key feature of the Quantified Community (QC) seems to be that of scale. Kontokosta is repeatedly emphasizing on its importance to demonstrate that, as opposed to previous urban scale smart projects, time and resources are not squandered, social and political aspects are considered and citizens are an integral part of decision-making. Notably, the QC is understood as a hybrid of urban-scale Smart City initiatives and the “Quantified Self” movement (pp2) to overcome the problem of ‘low-resolution’ evaluation criteria of urban policies and design (pp4). In the words of Kontokosta, data acquired “voluntary (…) could also be used to understand links between the neighborhood/community conditions and personal health outcomes of residents” (pp7, my emphasis). Aren’t there ways to gain insight on behavior patterns other than directly monitoring bodies themselves?

– on Mattern S., “Instrumental City: The View from Hudson Yards circa 2019”

Mattern touches extensively on the material expression of ‘smartness’, identifying three key issues. On the one hand, fundamental urban processes are being dematerialized, hidden away and thus, ‘forgotten’ by citizens (pp5). The physical infrastructure that profoundly sustains the instrumental city is to be observed through “a deceptively clean, shallow interface” (pp13) – not unlike the screen-filled control rooms in Songdo. On the other hand, the build environment becomes an architectural product that appears to perform according to the branded identity of the district (pp5) in a ‘form follows data’ manner (pp6).

Considering the above, it seems that the instrumental city embodies the opposition of depth vs. surface: while its digital infrastructure mediates multiple levels of urban processes, it remains out of sight for the citizens and it is merely represented as an interface – a surface of control. The build environment is also developed along these lines, offering little or no insight on the parameters that constitute it. Shouldn’t the smart city be primarily about transparency and accessibility? Could contrasts like this be resolved in the future, or are they part of the smart problematique by default?

W3.Tabula Rasa: New Songdo – Pinelopi

  • 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.

W2. Smart Cities vs. Smart Citizens – Pinelopi

Hill makes an open call to harvest inspiration for a ‘cooperative urban governance model’ from social media and their dynamic, as they enable citizens, mostly through mobile technologies, to demand and support urban change. However, all the examples he provides, such as the Arab spring (or to put it into context, the Women marches of a few weeks ago), were currents against the main flow of governance. Given the concerns about the privacy of our data portraits on social media platforms, the pressing question of privacy returns. Would a decision-making model, modelled after social media and mutually constituted by lawmakers and citizens alike, protect the identity of the latter? Would it be possible to imagine democracy without anonymity in the contemporary setting?

Townsend is emphasizing on the necessity to infuse a certain threshold of indeterminacy in the concept of the smart city (pp.15). Spontaneity and randomness are basic ingredients of city life, but as Haque puts it (pp.141), city managers and software companies always strive for more control and regulation. The question is, why would they give away power to the community if there is no monetary or political profit in for them?

Townsend describes how “smartness” emerges locally, only to be later considered a case study of a global interest for localities elsewhere (pp.11). He also briefly mentions the apparent danger of smart cities ending up amplifying social inequality (pp.12) instead of tackling it. Today, two of the most pressing urban problems worldwide are unemployment and homelessness. Why haven’t we seen as many smart attempts that deal with social issues?