W12 – Alternative Futures

Alternative Future

For smart city initiatives to work well they need to be conceptualized and contextualized within a broader and richer understanding of what a city is and how it works in practice.

Q) Who does this conceptualization and decision making? What is the skill-set required to anticipate and articulate the context in order to conceptualize? Who defines as a right candidate to qualify these requirements in order to make such decisions or contribute to the process of decision-making? Is it a function of governance, city administration, architects, technology makers, citizens, users? And what would be a concrete process to visualize this broader understanding of the city? Is there a need for guidelines to develop this understanding that can be passed on the potential candidates? If yes, is there a need for consistency in these guidelines?

In general, smart city technologies, and associated rhetoric and science (urban science and urban informatics), are founded on big analytics. In short, this means algorithms are used to process vast quantities of real-time data in order to dynamically manage a system and to make future predictions.

Q) This is true for the top down and bottom up visions of smart city development. In that case, how do we ensure and facilitate participation? What would be the learning curve for users to be able to participate fully and what are the skill sets required? Is the bottom up approach just a leveling down of top-down approach? Is it an inclusive method for decision making? What happens to the excluded groups? And what would be the motivation for participation if it has a learning curve? Is it more like a competition than participation to make it loud to be heard?

The impression one gains from encountering smart city initiatives is that the starting point is the technology and then to partially approach the question from the perspective of what core issue (e.g., sustainability) its technical intervention (reducing traffic) might address. In other words, the means is post-justified by ends, rather than the ends shaping the means.

Q) Do technical interventions sometimes not function as building blocks to the process of problem-solving? Would it be a right to say, that the problem arises when, rather than using technical solutions as a resource to solve identified problems, problems are crafted to fit in the developed technology?

Alternative Future

Reframing Reimaging Remarking Smart City

The author mentions the Promises and Perils in the process of smart city. One of them are: “ Will create a smart economy by fostering entrepreneurship, innovation, productivity, competiveness, and inward investment” and “Promotes a strong emphasis on technical solutions and overly promotes top-down technocratic forms of governance, rather than political/social solutions and citizen-centred deliberative democracy”. After reading all the articles, I think the top – down is not against the democracy at all. It is just part of process. The totally democracy like bottom-up will not exist without top-down. But top- down will survived by it own. The question or fear is not to pause the develop of top-down system but engage the bottom-up system more. Then it goes back to the chapter: how can we engage the process of building the smart city. The development of multi-interface should be important component. Then another question emerges: what will be the benefit of citizen whom is engaging in the process, the sense of ownership?

Owning The City

One question before reading the article: what is the ownership in term of the smart city, and who is the owner and what did he/she/us own? The ownership is broad topic. In the aspect of smart city or big date, I do not think we as individual own anything, just because it is such big scale. Individual matters so little. We can claim we as group of user/ citizen owns our date. But what can we use it for? Research? Analysis? Development? I do not think the big data effect at all for our individual. The function of big data exists when it is processed. The person who process it, may claim he own it. But we are the generator of the date. From the base, we have the ownership. Just like the article I read before: Death of Authorship. The end of authorship is beginning of art. Could the death of ownership simulate a new page of smart city? We are no longer talking being the citizen of smart city but we are the smart city.

In the part of “ Recounting the role of urban tech: From smart city to social city”, author talks about the mobile device will allow the user to create the highly personalized image for their city. I just keep think the video that is post of Facebook. Even it is kind not related. But somehow the Facebook becoming a tool to review another city/ state for me. Maybe not only Facebook, but all other social media. Anyone which allow user to up load photos is kind creating a small file of city/ people. But not all image are nice, should we have a system to eliminate the “bad” one? Then who is doing that? Should we have a more “smart” upload system. Will this system reduce the participation of citizen?

Alternative futures

In his article, Rob Kitchin characterizes the epistemology behind the concept of smart cities as being “reductionist, mechanistic, atomizing, essentialist, and deterministic in how it produces knowledge about cities.” and argues that this approach “decontextualizes a city and its systems from history, its poiitics and political economy, its culture and communities, the wider set of social, economic and environmental relations that frame its development, and it wider interconnections and interdependencies that stretches out over space and time”. In this sense, how could we incorporate other epistemological models to the development of the city, or at least subsume the present one to another set of values, in a way that lets creating a model of the smart city that takes into account all this issues?

In terms of governance, Kitchin critices the current model of the smart city, and describes it as “top-down, centraly controlled and managerial in orientation, often introduced by bureaucrats rather than elected officials.” In this sense, he points out the need that solutions in the smart city “be introduced and implemented through processes co-creation and co-production between city administrators, companies and citizens; be open and transparent in their formulation and operation, including using open platforms and standards where possible; and be used in conjunction with a suite of aligned interventions, policies and investments that seek to tackle issues in complementary ways, blending technical, social, political and policy response”. In this context, how could such open structures of co-creations be implemented, and which would be the role and degree of participation of the citizens in such processes and platforms?

In their article, Lange and the Waal define ownership of the city as “the degree to which city dwellers feel a sense of responsability for shared issues and are taking action on these matters”. In this sense, how can technologies be used to foster such ownership, but not only as a feeling, but in a way that articulates action and participation to engage with the co-design of the city?

Alternative Futures – Germania Garzon

Owning the city: New media and citizen engagement in urban design – Lange, Waal

“We have shown how digital media have created a number of qualitative shifts in the way publics can be engaged with organized around and act upon collective issues. The shifts mean that it has become easier for many citizens to organize themselves and take ownership of particular issues. In turn this may lead not only to new ways in which social life is organized but also to new ways of shaping the built environment.”

– As technology starts to influence urban design and the built form of our surrounding environment, with light installations, objects and real-time reflection of citizens and the space we occupy, – how can architects play a bigger role in the development of the smart city besides developing physical structures such as Hudson Yards or New Songdo to better engage the citizens and participants of the future city?

– In regards to OMA’s lecture last night could we relate the idea of ‘new ways of shaping the environment’ to their idea of reorganizing program of architectural spaces into separate ‘objects’ that compliment each other by each taking a unique form?

Rethinking, Reimagining and Remaking Smart Cities – Kitchin

“It means putting principles into action – to translate them into practical and political outcomes. Our own endeavours have demonstrated that smart city stakeholders are open to robust exchanges and are prepared to rework initiatives and change direction, especially if we are willing to work with them and others to realise any reframing, reimagining and remaking involved…However, in my view, such critique ideally also needs to suggest alternatives – whether ideological or practical – and to support the work of other oppositional groups (such as local communities or NGOs).”

– How can these reframing, and remaking initiatives be put forth and implemented without being seen as an attempt to push the idea of ‘togetherness’ when there are people like Jane Jacobs (previous reading) that would see it as a failing and destructive structure in a city?

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.

Alternative Futures – Sandra

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

– Smart city projects typically consist of a ‘triple helix’ of government, knowledge production (e.g., universities) and industry. Such consortia often ignore the role of citizens as equally important agents.” The ‘helix’ may not name ‘citizen’ as one of its main strategies, but is it not assumed that these concentrations are chosen and being designed for the citizen? Of course a successful project should include the general public in as many aspects of the development as possible, but perhaps naming them as necessary initiators might be intimidating for citizens, even smart ones. A ‘smart citizen’ might be willing to take collective ownership of the city, but not everyone has the means or desire to author the initiative. If only few are willing, there runs a risk of systems that only represent a small number of loud, too-similar voices.

– “In her (Jane Jacobs’) view cities offer citizens the advantage to escape narrow social control of the small village, and obtain the freedom to choose their own lifestyles.” Don’t cities offer their own kind of social interdependence? Not everyone knows each other as in a small village, but there is still a great deal of mutual trust needed. If one chooses to move to a large city with a heavy overlap of people, is it not understood that although invisibility is more or less possible, participation is required?

– It seems as though projects that visualize the general feeling of the city, like the D-Tower are quite popular.

http://www.designboom.com/art/feel-o-meter-smiley-face-reflects-city-mood/

‘Happy Barometer’ Monitors the Mood of a Gloomy City

– “Architects adopt the roles of commissioner and executor at once. …they actively seek out an issue…and try to organize publics that take ownership.” How can architects and planners convince the public to take ownership and care? How hard should/ do they push?

Reframing, reimagining and remaking smart cities – Rob Kitchin

– Some of the perils listed alongside the promises in Table 2 seem to be reaching. For instance, how is it bad that “technologies deployed are objective, commonsensical pragmatic and politically benign?” As an example: an overburdened subway line is identified and additional bus/tram lines are put in place or rerouted to more equally distribute the passengers. This seems to be objective, pragmatic and not at all a peril.

– “Moreover, no two cities hold the same qualities, having different histories, populations, cultures, economies, politics, legacy infrastructures and systems, political and administrative geographies, modes of governance, sense of place, hinterlands, interconnections and interdependencies with other places, and so on.”(pp. 8) For these reasons, a one-size-fits-all approach to smart city initiatives should be avoided at all costs. But it also begs the question of how smart cities being built from the ground up can hope to be truly successful if they do not yet know what the tides and general feeling of the city will be. There is only so much than can be planned and predicted.

– “Failing to tackle these issues (of security and ethics) will undermine and curtail smart city initiatives and public support for them.”(pp.12) If administrations and designers assume that citizens will be comfortable with a certain level of surveillance and privacy when they are not, would an active refusal in participation be feasible? What would the consequences of that be?

Alternative Futures – Jiaqi

Owning the city

Author mentioned, “The relationship between (digital) media technologies and the physical city has often been thought of in a straightforward, even simplistic manner.” This brings us a new way to rethink smart city. As architects, we design buildings, making cities but how to make a proper space of architecture for proper future is still a challenge. Will smart city really challenge us to design “internet of things” but not a real object, for example, a building? In this circumstance, is form of architecture still important? Maybe we just live in a box with smart technologies rather than skyscrapers？

Nowadays, a lack of information will not be a barrier for smart citizens to share information and internet of things. But how do we share “situated” information between citizens? Most of them love information of gaming, news or other different personal prefer? Is it hard to manage all data to distribute to citizens to helpful for making smart cities? And only sharing information and enjoy new technologies are not enough for making a smart city by DIY ways. How to using information and engaging in the process of making smart city maybe more important than sharing information?

Reframing, reimagining and remaking smart cities

“Smart city technologies enact algorithmic governance and forms of automated management.” From my perspective, it’s right but hard to complete. When we think to redefine our government, is it too late? Redefining a government is right way to reframe a smart city, but it is primary in the process of building smart city. After we build a smart city by using top-bottom way to build, then it is too late. But does that mean we should build a smart government first before building smart city?

W12 Alternative Futures – Feng

Reframing, Reimagining and Remaking Smart Cities

Page 8 “…no two cities hold the same qualities, having different histories, populations, cultures, economies, politics…and interdependencies with other places, and so on.” However, the development of smart cities seems like to make all cities be similar. People living in different cities but they will use the IoTs for same companies, they will get same comfort form same Apps. Unique makes differences, and sometimes the differences take troubles. One goal of human’s technology is to overcome troubles, also it will erase some uniques. For a city, is the unique of a city not important any more? Or should we still try to keep some unique of the cities and give up some benefit from technology.

Owning the City

In the article, the author mentioned the ownership. A city is hard to simply be belong to one person. Lots of people share it, its functions, environment benefit, and so on. In one of goals, the smart cities try to offer a better life for everyone who living inside. But how to deal with some case like this if two people have different requires, such as temperature, but they stand together?
Give them a temperature between their requires may make each one unhappy. If the technology could offer each one a separate temperature, it will become a such lonely thing. It is just like people living their own mini Environment Bubble. Maybe “what is the weather today” can not be a common talking beginning any more. Just like the video game, some people criticize the VR technology make people more lonely than before, player will be limited in their own VR glasses. For smart cities, could we find a way that keep the aggregation and sharing as features of a city while give citizen high individual benefit?

Section 4.5 Act: DIY urban design. “…With this crowdsourced plan they managed to persuade the local government to abandon the initial plans for the park and execute theirs instead…” This crowdsourced plan show the people’s demand. In another hand, it is telling the designers of cities, they don’t like what you are doing. In this situation, should the designers of cities follow the crowd?

Alternative Futures — Yumeng Chen

Owning the city: New media and citizen engagement in urban design.

–while talking about togetherness, how to deal with the divide opinions are always the issues. Because it involve in every citizen so that we definitely can not use the minority is subordinate to the majority?

Reframing, reimagining and remaking smart cities

–Since the reformation of technology is very fast, how to balance if the technology is enough for the smart city or not enough that we need to update ?

–Smart cities bring a lot of benefits which relate to the energy solution, the citizen security. However, all these above will need a long time to show up. Which will make the test period very long. How can we get the feedback faster and more accurate?

W12. Alternative Futures – Pinelopi

On de Lange and de Waal, “Owning the city: New media and citizen engagement in urban design.” First Monday

-The authors argue that city dwellers should neither be expected to trade in their freedom of choice and autonomy for a community of homogeneous parochiality, nor supposed to be blasé about shared concerns of the commons (section#3). Looking beyond scenarios of compromise between one or the other of the prominent opposing modes of citizen engagement, the authors underline the need to create a common ground. What would the role of ICT be in addressing the current opposition? What kind of digital media would support such a paradigm shift towards the hybridization of the two extremes?

-In an attempt to redefine or expand the concept of community, de Waal and de Lange refer to Varnelis’ “networked publics” to describe the ways that assemble themselves around shared concerns, strengthened by their differences and organized through distributed networks (section#3). What architectures would enable ‘networked publics’ to come together and influence their environment? Are those spatial configurations more likely to reach a certain mature form or are they instead in a continuous process of production by the ‘networked publics’?

on Kitchin, “Rethinking, Reimagining and Remaking Smart Cities,” Programmable City

-After tracing the two sides of the smart urbanism coin, Kitchin notes it is high time the constructive critique on smart cities matured into “concrete advice” (pp.6) for making smart cities, notably in a proactive manner – as if their networked and mobile ICTs are already fully in place. Later on, he suggests that governing bodies should be the first to lead this process to form and address normative questions and then coordinate smart city initiatives accordingly (pp.7). What kind of institutional and legal framework could grant city administrations with a more dynamic, ad-hoc role in the smart city discussion, instead of them being merely ‘clients’?

-Another challenge is to redefine smart governance and its technologies towards a more open, transparent and diverse “suite of solutions” (pp.8) or “interventions” (pp.11) where technical, socio-cultural, political and administrational parameters converge. What would the rules (and ratios) of such a complex and ambitious blend comprise of? How and by whom could these be written?