Sentient City: ubiquitous computing, architecture, and the future of urban space

Our cities are “smart” and getting smarter, we’re told, as information processing capability is embedded throughout the urban environment.  Sentient City explores the experience of living in a city that uses networked digital technologies to remember, correlate, and anticipate.  Five teams of architects, artists, and technologists imagine a variety of future interactions that take place as computing leaves the desktop and spills out onto the sidewalks, streets, and public spaces of the city.  Less invested in predicting future trends in urban technology, these case studies and accompanying collection of essays focus more on debating just what kind of future cities we might want.

Published by The Architectural League of New York and MIT Press

Case studies by David Benjamin, Soo-in Yang, and Natalie Jeremijenko; Haque Design + Research; SENSEable City Lab; David Jimison and JooYoun Paek; and Anthony Townsend, Antonina Simeti, Dana Spiegel, Laura Forlano, and Tony Bacigalupo

Essays by Martijn de Waal, Keller Easterling, Matthew Fuller, Anne Galloway, Dan Hill, Omar Khan, Saskia Sassen, Trebor Scholz, Hadas Steiner, Kazys Varnelis, and Mimi Zeiger.

Available from MIT Press.