Category: questions

Tabula Rasa

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?

 

Tabula Rasa: New Songdo – Sandra

 

$100 Billion Dollar Jackpot – Townsend

 – In some ways, Songdo is a scaled up continuation of Price’s “Generator,” in the sense that the 60’s project was one of the first to conceptualize a built environment that “could learn, remember and develop an intelligent awareness of their needs.” (p. 22) On the other hand, Songdo has gone in a completely different direction. Generator was described as “a computerized leisure facility” while every description of Songdo that I have seen has failed to mention or consider the happiness of its inhabitants. It may be efficient, and it may be “smart,” but will it be enjoyable? “Intuitive, mobile, and effortless, high definition video keeps the cities residents in near-lifelike contact at a distance and on the go.” (p. 48) Near-lifelike contact is still not actual human contact, and it seems like Songdo is giving its citizens every excuse to stay in their apartments, away from real contact to other people.

– Though we don’t think about it, “cellular” and “mobile” are missing the mark when it comes to how we describe our untethered devices. Maybe the German term “Handy” is the most accurate current expression.

 

Test Bed as Urban Epistemology – Calvillo, Halpern, LeCavalier, Pietsch

 – If Songdo is “the experimental prototype community of tomorrow,” why is it already being exported to other parts of the world? According to the authors, the city is still “both literally and conceptually incomplete.” Should they not wait at least a few years, evaluate, and then learn from their mistakes before transplanting a replica?

– Living in an environment built on data mining sounds like it could be incredibly helpful and efficient in some ways, but one can imagine it quickly becoming an episode of Black Mirror. What is the need for home genetic-testing kits and blood-work labs in every home?

Tabula Rasa: New Songdo – Jiaqi

Smart Cities – $100 Billion Dollar Jackpot

  • “ The infrastructure is being laid, but the ideas and software that will choreograph it will require years, if not decades, of research and development in test beds like Songdo.” From the book, to say Songdo is really a good start of smart cities, but in some cases to say Songdo is like a test bed, a test of smart cities. How about the next smart city? What kind of information could be extracted from Songdo to improve infrastructure construction for next smart city?(environment?)
  • “Yet while untethered networks are the weakest links in the plumbing smart cities, they are the most valuable.” When machines that become to us, are we become to machines?

Smart Urbanism – Test bed as urban epistemology

  • “These individuals can be anywhere in the world; the territory is plastic and it does not need to be occupied” How to understand “territory is plastic”? Does it mean a smart city could also be plastic?

Tabula Rasa: New Songdo — Yumeng Chen

Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia

-So via reading the article, many mechanical devises or good design can take place of so called smart city, so that the city will use less energy and avoid of power cut, isn’t it?

-the urban plan group of building the smart city,  must be grouped of many people from different fields, is there a position that people who in this position will take care of the extra energy cost?

 

Smart Urbanism: Utopian Vision or False Dawn?

 

-In my country, we usually have a five-year plan or fifteen-year plan, since the smart city is a very new concept, do we have a long time plan instead of roughly adding devices into the city saying making the citizens convenience?

 

 

 

Tabula Rasa: New Songdo

Urbanization and Ubiquity: Power Platform – Anthony Townsend

 

  • The Smart Grid offers a more efficient, reliable, secure, and less costly transmission and usage of electricity. How must our current power grid change to incorporate the Smart Grid? How much can a Smart City accomplish on our current power grid?

 

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

 

  • The author states, “In either case, both Cisco and IFEZ are looking for new sources of revenue and hope to ‘monetize’ the attentive capacity of Songdo’s inhabitants. Their hope is to use the latent reverse of data gathered on users to produce services that can be paid for through advertising in multiple-scale devices, electronic education, physical treatment, home tele-medicine or any number of other speculative services vying for a share of this new market.” So in other words, both Cisco and IFEZ are charging Songdo inhabitants for some of the services entailed in the Smart City, to then use this data to generate advertisements, thus monetizing their attentive capacity? If so, how does this affect what makes the city “smart”?

Tabula Rasa: New Songdo—Shen

1Testbed as urban epistemology

Could New Songdo be a huge data sampler? So that the smart city Songdo not only an information collector or a recorder, but also could make an expectation and simulation.

 

Data will be the currency in new realm, and sensing devices could be a new materializes in an architecture the more sophisticated also means more vulnerable. So this fragile system is truly benefit to the citizen who lives in the city or benefit to the people who have access to the data?

2  $100 Billion Dollar Jackpot —–Townsend

What is the purpose of the emerging and developing of the smart city? As telegraph didn’t appear out of nowhere. It was invented to meet the growing need to coordinate vast of commercial and government enterprises. So does the smart network? Do we really need the smart city?

It seems Cisco aimed China will be his next costumer due to the large amount of needs during urbanization, could the smart city be the next generation of the urbanize?

 

Smart City vs. Smart Citizens

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

As mentioned by Haque, the model smart cities tend to be justified by the connectivity, readability and profitability of a model of city developed  in a top-down relation with the inhabitants. In this sense, looking forward to create a different relation to the development of the city, Which would be the model of a city in which technologies and further developments of the city are part of a more organic growing of the community as whole? which could be the models of participation for such city? and how could the efforts for innovation developed in the bottom can reach a more broad social level?
On the smart city; Or, a ‘manifesto’ for smart citizens instead
In his text, Hill uses Social Networks and Crowd-source platforms as models for both, explaining on-line social sociability, and the possibilities opened by a networked city in terms of the way we can create new models of governance in the smart city. In this sense, which could be other models of social interaction in the network that could be also used for thinking on our relation with the community, and our interaction with authorities? The forum, the open-communities or other forms of on-line interaction could be also taken in account for thinking about new models of governance?

Urbanization and Ubiquity

In his text, Townsend emphasizes on the role that historically the technologies have had on the development of the city, and in the way that the common live is shaped by this developments. He mentions how most of the decisions have happened as the result of the lobbying of companies and the decisions of certain urbanists to impose a certain model of the cities introducing such technologies in a way that has been more harmful than beneficial, creating the need for introducing new technologies to solve the problems of past decisions. In this sense, how can we seek to develop different relations to technologies that allow citizens to have a more active role in the development of the city? At the same, time, how can technologies be introduced in the city in an organic way that fosters a dialogical model of the city?

 

Smart Cities/Citizens – Feng Guo

Smart City

  • As the words of George Gilder, “cities as ‘leftover baggage from the industrial era’ “. The Internet make space limit smaller on citizen’s city life. In this case, is there a possible that cities will be gone before it become smart?

Hill’s Essay

  • How to understand “It turns out that changing behavior is a way to subsequently change attitudes; this is entirely counter the thinking behind many smart system.”

What is a City that it would be smart

  • For the first view of author. Does he mean that the smart things, online things, make people go away from group slowly and they are not good for city.

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.

 

Smart Cities vs. Smart Citizens – Sandra

What is a City that it Would be “Smart”? – Haque

“…smart cities are somehow conceived apart from humans. They are simply to be inhabited and connected to as necessary, not created by citizens but their progenitors – developers, master planners, and investors.” If that is true, is the statement really so different if we take the “smart” out of it? Every day inhabitants also have little say over “dumb” aspects of the city. New buildings, street signage, etc. are also conceived by progenitors. Citizens’ concerns and wishes are consulted occasionally, and in any functioning democracy inhabitants should be encouraged to voice hesitations, needs and desires – but they are ultimately not the designers. A smart city, like any city, should of course be cultivated and evolved for the people, and with the best interests of the people in mind, but that doesn’t necessarily mean by the people. This is not to say that we should be ever trusting of investors and designers, as history shows us that they do not always know best. Then again, recent events may tell us that the masses also might not know best. Smart, informed citizens in conjunction with smart, transparent municipalities are key.

 

Essay: On the smart city; Or, a ‘manifesto’ for a smart citizens instead – Hill

“…there is a further tendency to ‘make these technologies, and hence put them in command rather than in dialogue with users.'” Do we really want them to be invisible? Maybe, but not in the way Hill and Sassen are implying. Ubiquitous, and therefore blending? Perhaps. But invisible?

“…but at its most basic level, sustainability necessitates a selflessness, a scaling of empathy beyond one’s immediate concerns…” A collective compassion and therefore betterment on a city-wide/state-wide/country-wide scale is honestly a bit easier to imagine in places where public welfare systems do not have a negative connotation. Places where people already see the benefits of giving something up (taxes, for example) for the good of the whole, with the knowledge that the whole will benefit them at some point. Can the US become somewhere like this? Smart city initiatives, like investments in the infrastructure of any kind require funds, and the funds need to come from somewhere.

 

Smart Cities – Townsend

“Looking smart, perhaps even more than actually being smart, is crucial to competing in today’s global economy.” (pg. 10) This is an interesting notion. Is it enough for governments and municipalities to make their cities seem just smart enough to attract the best minds that will actually make the city smart? Would this hands-off, yet responsive approach be enough incentive, or do the brightest want to be somewhere with more of a foundation from which to jump forward.