Smart Cities

Smart cities – Townsend – Songdo

1. If computers become architectural materials, would the disembodied (data) provided by computers and utilized by designers be considered architectural material as well?

2. ‘a showroom model for what is expected to be the first of many assembly-line cities?’ – Lindsay

Are we moving towards an architecture that is economical, convenient: one where the parts to a whole assemble quickly? Just as buildings during the industrial revolution constructed assembly- line cities. Where does individuality and uniqueness of a city fall into place? Unique spaces that help to distinguish cities would then cease to exist. What happens to human experience?

 

3. ‘Remodeling cities in the image of Multinational Corporation requires three new layers of technology (Arup) – Instrumentation, urban informatics, and urban information architecture.’

Human information and consciousness, should it not be considered as another layer of technology?

Shouldn’t multinational corporations consider humans/consumers as another layer of technology; Since Human Information and consciousness could be contained within a computer just as much as it can be contained in a biological entity. The extension or addition of using technology and by it embedded into our lives as ubiquitously and subconsciously it becomes a form of extension, amputation or replacement to or for the body. Then according to Mc Luhans view in, “The Medium is a Message”, technologies involving communication add to the post-human process of evolving humans, through technology being an extension of the body.

 

4. Sociologist James Katz, ‘Machines that become us’, Merge with our devices. Is this debunked by Hayles, when she questions what it means to be post-human, ‘The defining characteristics [of being post-human] involve the construction of subjectivity, not the presence of non-biological components’. It is not the use of technology or the addition of a prosthesis that determines being post-human but subjectivity or the freedom of choice to control technology or one’s self, the ability to possess freedom. The ability to choose, decide and react has led a shift from self-organizing systems to emergent systems in responsive or mediated environments.

Smart Urbanism – Utopian Vision or False Dawn

Test bed as Urban Epistemology

1. “These self-referential and self-generating properties make Songdo, perhaps unsurprisingly mimetic of the logics of the very financial systems that have conceived and sponsored this ‘product’.” Does this mean Songdo design and push towards sustainability is driven by financial systems? Does this city then too become a product of consumerism?
2. ‘Omniscience and omnipresence viewers/users/consumers can exceed their human limitations. … but these interfaces work on us as much as for us. The bilateralism of the interface informs the users but also makes them informers – i.e. it works to optimize the viewers and the network in which they operate. Because their habits and maps create a map of future habits, supply and demand will eventually merge.’ By mapping, human behavior, how do these interfaces work for us? Is optimization geared more towards consumers or the producers?

3. What does he mean when he says, ‘The loss of the ideal image of space is replaced with an ideal of the perfect methodology’?

4. When does space become a Territory, ‘an area defined not merely by physical geography but by ratios’? What does he mean by ratios? (Quantifiable?)

5. The idea of selling data to other cities, to create exportable cities how effective and successful, would this data be in relation to other cities culture, religion, economy etc?

Smart City

• P21 “It would sense the layout of the modules and reassemble them overnight into a new pattern to provoke, delight, and otherwise stimulate the retreat goers.” In those words, there is a possibility or tendency for flexibility. Dose the flexibility good for a building or architecture for users.
• P28 Why dose author said, “…Songdo became too big to fail.”?
• The upgrade speed of “smart thing” is much faster then infrastructure. (For example the least iPhone already can not connect to the least MacBook without a usb a-c adapter.) How would people deal with them?

Test Bed as Urban Epistemology

• At the 4th paragraph of Automated Infrastructures. “at the domestic level, it is assumed that every wall, every mirror and every surface can become an interface that offers users everything from on-demand data and weather reports to home medical monitoring.”   It’s very convenient if people could get data of information from anywhere at home, but would it become a problem about information overload at home for people?

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?

 

 

$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?

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?

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?