Author: ruchita

Crashing and Hacking the Smart City

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

-Sadly cities are implementing new technologies without first testing cyber security, there is often little or no cyber security testing at all, vendors with little or no experience in implementing security features, Many vendors implement custom wireless and wired communication protocols with either very poor security or no security…. Who is responsible or at fault for such lack of knowledge or being carless while implementing technologies in smart city, the government, other private organizations or vendors who designs these devices and technology?

– In our research at IOActive Labs, we constantly find very vulnerable technology being used across different industries. This same technology also is used for critical infrastructure without any security testing. Although cities usually rigorously test devices and systems for functionality, resistance to weather conditions, and so on, there is often little or no cyber security testing at all, which is concerning to say the least (pg.no: 08). Is it always possible to test technology completely and assure that there is no bug? Sometimes a hardware failure can also cause system to fail.

Townsend, “Buggy, Brittle and Bugged,” Smart Cities

-The sheer size of city-scale smart systems comes with its own set of problems. Cities and their infrastructure are already the most complex structure humankind has ever created. Interweaving them with equally complex information processing can only multiply the opportunity for bugs an unanticipated interactions (pg.no:256). Will the bottom up process of building smart cities have minimal chances for bugs and unanticipated interactions?

 

 

Open Source Urbanism

Urban Versioning System 1.0

The architectural profession remains relatively steadfast in a distinction that divides designers from users, even though technology increasingly provides grounds for diminishing that distinction – What are these distinct features that divides designer from user, as a designer thinks to from user end perspective.

A pragmatic rst step would be to develop infrastructures that enable supposed non-designers to participate more closely in the design and construction process. Involving non designers in a process for feedback would work to resolve design oriented issues but will it not slower down the process of designing and execution.

 

 

 

DIY and Participatory Urbanism

Engaging the Idiot in Participatory Digital Urbanism

1- “Instead, the idiot as understood here is a troubling and transformative agent within participatory processes who cannot or will not abide by the terms of participation that are meant to facilitate and enhance democratic engagement.” – What will disrupt the process complete non participation or participation at lowest level?

Urban Data Infrastructures

Digital Infrastructure Withness 

“The transformations that occur as smart cities migrate from an abstract and even speculative set of technologies to more concrete materializations,” What is concrete materialization author referring to.

“It is important to continue to extend the environmental aspects of computation in these ways, since it enables a more dynamic and processual understanding of how environments and digital media concresce to form actual entities and actual occasions,” How would these sensors work during any environment hazard?

“Sensors can be found overlapping with existing infrastructures, in some cases forming new networks; sensors are in place to monitor speci c temporary uses and events such as construction; sensors are monitoring air and vibration and water levels; and sensors are carried around in smartphones, as wearables, and other portable devices, whether as DIY citizen-sensing tools or monitors for detecting specific phenomena,” – does that mean participation by citizens is just using the digital infrastructure (lowest layer as discussed in previous lecture)?

 

 

Quantified Community: Hudson Yards

“The Quantified Community and Neighborhood Labs:
A Framework for Computational Urban Planning and Civic Technology”  -Constantine E. Kontokosta

“In practice, dated and antecdotal rules of thumb are often used to guide development, planning, and design decisions and to evaluate the effects of policies implemented” – clarify

Smart Cities / Smart Citizens

What Is a City that It Would Be ‘Smart’? – Usman Haque

“We cannot merely export the relatively young and naive interaction protocols of the web to our urban lives, since the increased participation may simply be more segmented and therefore neither sustainable nor desirable in the physical world”  – Clarify

“Smart citizens, not smart cities, are key” – what would be an architects role?

‘Data>Information>Knowledge>Wisdom’ paradigm, which is founded on the mistaken notion of data purity’ -Almost everything can be datafied. And everyday  vast quantities of data are collected and sorted everyday through our interactions online. and now that we can access everything why not use it.