Author: swapnil

Smart Urbanism: Utopian Vision or False Dawn?: Data, an urban resource – Halpren, LeCavalier, Calvillo, Pietsch

The smart grid concept is all about efficiency in consumptions and costs behind it as well as few other factors like reliability, security.With new setup of grid city can achieve the great result but what about existing infrastructure? Huge infrastructure existing in metro cities are working 24×7. What policies, as well as physical changes, can make it more efficient? At what extent current grids can result better?
Tabula Rasa: New Songdo.

What will be the validation mechanism for those trends? What are some of the visualized consequences? What will be the cost, cities, and residents pay to try this technique in the desire of an outcome that promises to become involved public functions and city dynamics in a numerical representation of traits? What could be a few possible false correlations? What would be a mechanism to identify and filter those correlations? What might be the consequences of no longer being capable of becoming aware of those relationships and the way would it affect the decision-making

W12. Alternative Futures – Swapnil

Owning the City: New Media and Citizen Engagement in Urban Design – Michiel de Lange and Martijn de Waal

 

1} The author is discussing urban life and culture, implications for urban design and city’s built form. Smart cities understood as series of infrastructure manages efficiently. But critics note that these imaginaries ignore some of the basic tenants. What are these ignored basic tenets critics talking about?

 

2}Deployment in the smart city is one of the critics. Even today many new cities are planned which are in still a fiction and some are under construction, in future, they will exist. While each new city comes with many new individual problems and solutions and advantages too. I think deployment is really not an issue, it’s just another experiment. Concepts of smart cities and applications of ideas will be partial in early few experiments and gradually with time, it will increase. That is one way to tackle deployment issue.
3}Ownership and engagement of citizens with media and role of the citizen in a smart city are one of the important issues of smart city fiction. Smart city will not have a specific government, rather I would like to say there will be ‘self-managed’ or ‘open government’ and citizen supposed to participate, react and involve individual resources like time, creativity and productivity to city run effectively and efficiently. Under such situation what will be returning for an individual? Decision taking on common grounds will be the slow process and everyone will need to invest time and it’s not productive and decisions will be not in favor of most of the participants. Under such circumstances what will maintain interest and involvement of citizens? There should be some factors which will bound citizens to their responsibilities of involvement. Again bounding comes with some form of government. People might start migrating in mass if a city is not functioning well. Under such thought deployment and investment is really a question. Just a thought, a possible solution, there could be a citizen profile in which citizen will earn points score in returns of involvement and basic services will be provided on that score. Again this is kind of government and against freedom, but I think bounding comes with rules and rules comes from the government. Ownership and engagement are still an issue.

W10 Open Source Urbanism

These alternatives in software, Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS), are highly pragmatic, doing the work required of them but also reinventing forms of production in ways that set up real possibilities for freedom.  (Page no 13)

The Free Software Definition3 states that free software contains the following freedoms:

  • The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
  • The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1).
  • The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom2).
  • The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvementsTo the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3).

 Access to the source code is a precondition for this. (Page no 16)

Thoughts —

The author compares the idea of architecture development with software development and its related system types and freedoms working with it. Particularly open source software with access to source code and data. Is this saying about architectural data like building designs, city plans and collected data from people time to time?

(Freedom 0)– Architecture and spaces are the mostly static physical thing, requires lots of resources to make it happen a trial and error is not possible in terms architecture. How this freedom will be possible in terms of architecture and building space.

(Freddom1)(freedom2) — Architecture design and data to study is already available, one can modify according to needs. But most of the time modification won’t work completely, factors like climate, location, rules and resources don’t go with an idea. Also personal choice and requirement of investor play a major role. Source code, in this case, is design drawings and authenticity of creation could be an issue in this situation. Creativity comes with one’s pride and it’s a push force to create next. In open source scenario city will might look like monotonous and fewer creations will be there.

(Freedom3)—Freedom to involve and improve is a really fantastic idea. But in another perspective it might not end up with that great achievement, public opinions and feedbacks come in large numbers and with lots of glitches. Needs lots of time to gather data and participants also need a lot of time to involve which they don’t want to give for free. Evaluating them is issue and result might disappoint many participants. Participation in architectural problems needs professional skill sets to think and it’s not common. Giving inputs for free is opposite sometimes to its professional behavior.

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 Architecture is merely an epiphenomenon of the political, monetary and material requirements of certain dominant fractions of society, perhaps all such an open aesthetics of organization would tend to do is to render such processes “democratic.”  (Page no 18)

  Architecture is epiphenomenon could have another perspective looking toward it. Architecture is in Harmony one could say. That doesn’t mean its byproduct of political, monetary and material requirements of certain dominant fractions of society. Political, monetary and material requirements or restrictions are planned set of rules by the scholar in that field. Otherwise, cityscape could look like chaos. For example, an old roman city used to have similar kind of architecture which was built under political, monetary and material conditions. It’s about Freedom but the result could be Harmony or Chaos.

 

 

 

 

 

W05 – Sensing the Smart Citizen

Citizen sensing in the smart and sustainable city

 

*In concept of smart city, continues change in imaging, implementation and experience is predicted which might create instability or disturbance in lifestyle. It might create confusions among citizen or lead to wrong decisions related to feedback.

 

*Citizen need to be smart and participative for concept of smart city. What will encourage citizens to participate? It could be a personal profile building issue and related dependent consumer services. (ex. credit score )

Is this a regulation or freedom?

 

*In future, citizens are concretizing concept of sustainability with give and take relationship in terms and feedback and services. In quick feedback system negative reactions from citizens will get unite quickly which might create unhealthy environment in city, just a negative thought.

 

*The smart city is indicative of political and economic interest and targets will be related to that. How an idea of sustainable or smart city will solve socio-cultural problems? Or how it will deal with problems like insensitivity in citizens?

W02 – Smart Cities vs Smart Citizens,

 

Test Bed as Urban Epistemology –

Songdo city and 50000 more smart cities going to be planned as smart cities, What are the planning ethics for these cities?

How smart cities will be different than existing planned cities? (except smart network)

All these are going to be built from scratch, what about transforming current mega cities into smart cities. What ideology can be use for development of existing cities?