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?

 

Tabula Rasa : New Songdo

Smarty city – Townsend

 “It was a full fledged crisis of control…Never before had the processing of material flows threatened to exceed the capacity of technology to contain them”, The telegraph was developed in reaction to the communicative/organizational crisis brought fourth by the industrial boom in the 1800s, now almost 150 years later “enhancing global competitiveness, innovation and standard of living” is Wim Elfink’s reason for pursuing a global communications network infrastructure, but how hard is communicating/organizing as is? Are we/our businesses in the face of a communicational breakdown or is a global network merely a corporal pitch to collect, analyze and sell our data to major third party corporations?

 Is the promise of a smart city worth “surrendering to the guardians behind the screen”? Have we not already?

Smart Urbanism: Utopian vision or False dawn?

 Does corporations’ pursuit of smart systems as an opportunity to boost profit revenues and market share effectively prevent the informed public of their belief in the technology’s ability to better our lives? Or can we look at it from a smart citizen’s perspective as the promise of a more efficient, traversable platform on which we can bring new inventions to light; interacting in a way we never thought possible?

 “Every wall every surface can become an interface that offers users everything..”, “Their hope is to use this latent reserve of date gathered on users to produce services that can be paid for through advertising”, Are those “integrated services” really smarter than the capabilities available on our phones today? Is the “reward” worth assuming the risk of more insecurely connected devices?

Does it not seem that as the city becomes smarter as a result of corporations like Cisco and IFEZ’s efforts, our “cognitive freedom” will become more of a commodity? That our privacy in some cases will be a thing of the past – “Legal system in Songdo is being lobbied to enact changes in privacy laws that would allow transfer of medical data outside of the hospital”

 “There can be no smartness without dumbness” Does the dumb become smarter as the city does or does he effectively morph into a bit?

Smart Cities / Smart Citizens – Germania Garzon

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

– Does a smart city take into consideration the day to day life of a small business owner?

– Could there be a way that ‘smart citizens’ play a larger role in the future of these smart cities without compromising their uniqueness?

Smart Cities – Townsend

– Townsend ends the reading by saying he believes there is a better way to build a smart city than “simply calling in engineers.” I believe architects, planners and designers have a role in the development process of smart cities as well but where does the rest of society fit in? Besides being the potential future occupants.

CityofSound – Hill

– “In fact, does removing the conscious decision-making element make us less likely to be aware, to care, about our impact on the environment? Are we becoming passive citizens in response to our systems getting smart? ” – Could we elaborate on this question that seems to be a continuously reoccurring theme throughout history and developing technology over time? How do we feel about these new technologies that “free us” of worrying about turning lights off or driving our own cars? Is the passivity inevitable? Is it really hurting us or allowing us to do more or other more important things?

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.

 

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?

Smart city and smart citizen

Form the reading Townsend, there are so many positive imagination about the development of technology especially in telecommunication. But what will the negative side of it. Just like industrialization, it change the world dramatically. Undeniably, there are huge consequences. Will the telecommunication technology become the force for decentralization. And because the technologies, will it limit the mobility or the willingness of moving? Since we can view everything though the small device. Also, the privacy. The digital process of smart city at some level violate the our privacy, such as tracking information. Most importantly, the physical communication. Smart city/ smart device should design for easy commutation. Now, at some level it is doing opposite thing.

Another question from Townsend reading is about the rapidly growth of city. In developing countries as well as developed countries, people move to urban for job opportunities and living condition. As the growth of city population, the infrastructure could be the problem. And the pattens of growing has been repeated in so many cities. What will be the need to develop same city all over the world. It question the definition of city just like Hill mentioned on his essay. Will it be better to slow down the development of smart city, make it customized for different location.

For Hill’s essay, his ideas of ‘Data>Information>Knowledge>Wisdom’ paradigm drawn the different aspect about computerized process. What will be more trustable, the data the being process by code or the wisdom that we have. His idea about the responsibility behind the decision making make me think about the role we play after having smart city. What can we do if computer take over the most process. Should we rely on computer or it is the tool just like a ruler.
Mm

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.