Technology and the City

Technology and the City
Author: Michael Nagenborg
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2021-01-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030523136

The contributions in this volume map out how technologies are used and designed to plan, maintain, govern, demolish, and destroy the city. The chapters demonstrate how urban technologies shape, and are shaped, by fundamental concepts and principles such as citizenship, publicness, democracy, and nature. The many authors herein explore how to think of technologically mediated urban space as part of the human condition. The volume will thus contribute to the much-needed discussion on technology-enabled urban futures from the perspective of the philosophy of technology. This perspective also contributes to the discussion and process of making cities ‘smart’ and just. This collection appeals to students, researchers, and professionals within the fields of philosophy of technology, urban planning, and engineering.

Urban Play

Urban Play
Author: Fabio Duarte
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021-08-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0262362260

Why technology is most transformative when it is playful, and innovative spatial design happens only when designers are both tinkerers and dreamers. In Urban Play, Fábio Duarte and Ricardo Álvarez argue that the merely functional aspects of technology may undermine its transformative power. Technology is powerful not when it becomes optimally functional, but while it is still playful and open to experimentation. It is through play--in the sense of acting for one's own enjoyment rather than to achieve a goal--that we explore new territories, create new devices and languages, and transform ourselves. Only then can innovative spatial design create resonant spaces that go beyond functionalism to evoke an emotional response in those who use them. The authors show how creativity emerges in moments of instability, when a new technology overthrows an established one, or when internal factors change a technology until it becomes a different technology. Exploring the role of fantasy in design, they examine Disney World and its outsize influence on design and on forms of social interaction beyond the entertainment world. They also consider Las Vegas and Dubai, desert cities that combine technology with fantasies of pleasure and wealth. Video games and interactive media, they show, infuse the design process with interactivity and participatory dynamics, leaving spaces open to variations depending on the users' behavior. Throughout, they pinpoint the critical moments when technology plays a key role in reshaping how we design and experience spaces.

Urban Transit Systems and Technology

Urban Transit Systems and Technology
Author: Vukan R. Vuchic
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 622
Release: 2007-02-16
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 047175823X

This is the only current and in print book covering the full field of transit systems and technology. Beginning with a history of transit and its role in urban development, the book proceeds to define relevant terms and concepts, and then present detailed coverage of all urban transit modes and the most efficient system designs for each. Including coverage of such integral subjects as travel time, vehicle propulsion, system integration, fully supported with equations and analytical methods, this book is the primary resource for students of transit as well as those professionals who design and operate these key pieces of urban infrastructure.

Smart Cities and Innovative Urban Technologies

Smart Cities and Innovative Urban Technologies
Author: Tommi Inkinen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2020-12-29
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 100032950X

Over the past decade smart urban technologies have begun to blanket our cities, forming the backbone of a large intelligent infrastructure. Along with this development, dissemination of the smart cities ideology has had a significant imprint on urban planning and development. Smart Cities and Innovative Urban Technologies focuses on the concepts of smart cities and innovative urban technologies. It contains research that provides insight into spatial formations of information and communication technologies, and knowledge production practices from various perspectives—including analyses of public and private sectors together with NGOs and other stakeholders. It provides a state-of-the-art analysis from multidisciplinary point-of-view in urban studies. Contributions in this edited volume include theoretical developments as well as empirical analyses. This book will be of great use to various audiences including academics as well as practitioners, spatial developers, planners, and public administrators in order to increase understanding of the dynamics and factors effecting smart cities conceptual maturation and their physical emergence. Information generated in these chapters, particularly regarding the challenges and obstacles of smart cities and innovative urban technologies, are intended to be of benefit to the key local actors in making decision in their cities or/and peripheral locations. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Urban Technology.

Smart Cities and Innovative Urban Technologies

Smart Cities and Innovative Urban Technologies
Author: Tommi Inkinen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2020-12-18
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1000329607

Over the past decade smart urban technologies have begun to blanket our cities, forming the backbone of a large intelligent infrastructure. Along with this development, dissemination of the smart cities ideology has had a significant imprint on urban planning and development. Smart Cities and Innovative Urban Technologies focuses on the concepts of smart cities and innovative urban technologies. It contains research that provides insight into spatial formations of information and communication technologies, and knowledge production practices from various perspectives—including analyses of public and private sectors together with NGOs and other stakeholders. It provides a state-of-the-art analysis from multidisciplinary point-of-view in urban studies. Contributions in this edited volume include theoretical developments as well as empirical analyses. This book will be of great use to various audiences including academics as well as practitioners, spatial developers, planners, and public administrators in order to increase understanding of the dynamics and factors effecting smart cities conceptual maturation and their physical emergence. Information generated in these chapters, particularly regarding the challenges and obstacles of smart cities and innovative urban technologies, are intended to be of benefit to the key local actors in making decision in their cities or/and peripheral locations. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Urban Technology.

The Smart Enough City

The Smart Enough City
Author: Ben Green
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2019-04-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262352257

Why technology is not an end in itself, and how cities can be “smart enough,” using technology to promote democracy and equity. Smart cities, where technology is used to solve every problem, are hailed as futuristic urban utopias. We are promised that apps, algorithms, and artificial intelligence will relieve congestion, restore democracy, prevent crime, and improve public services. In The Smart Enough City, Ben Green warns against seeing the city only through the lens of technology; taking an exclusively technical view of urban life will lead to cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality. He proposes instead that cities strive to be “smart enough”: to embrace technology as a powerful tool when used in conjunction with other forms of social change—but not to value technology as an end in itself. In a technology-centric smart city, self-driving cars have the run of downtown and force out pedestrians, civic engagement is limited to requesting services through an app, police use algorithms to justify and perpetuate racist practices, and governments and private companies surveil public space to control behavior. Green describes smart city efforts gone wrong but also smart enough alternatives, attainable with the help of technology but not reducible to technology: a livable city, a democratic city, a just city, a responsible city, and an innovative city. By recognizing the complexity of urban life rather than merely seeing the city as something to optimize, these Smart Enough Cities successfully incorporate technology into a holistic vision of justice and equity.

The Urban Commons

The Urban Commons
Author: Daniel T. O'Brien
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2018-12-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0674975294

The future of smart cities has arrived, courtesy of citizens and their phones. To prove it, Daniel T. O’Brien explains the transformative insights gleaned from years researching Boston’s 311 reporting system, a sophisticated city management tool that has revolutionized how ordinary Bostonians use and maintain public spaces. Through its phone service, mobile app, website, and Twitter account, 311 catalogues complaints about potholes, broken street lights, graffiti, litter, vandalism, and other issues that are no one citizen’s responsibility but affect everyone’s quality of life. The Urban Commons offers a pioneering model of what modern digital data and technology can do for cities like Boston that seek both prosperous growth and sustainability. Analyzing a rich trove of data, O’Brien discovers why certain neighborhoods embrace the idea of custodianship and willingly invest their time to monitor the city’s common environments and infrastructure. On the government’s side of the equation, he identifies best practices for implementing civic technologies that engage citizens, for deploying public services in collaborative ways, and for utilizing the data generated by these efforts. Boston’s 311 system has narrowed the gap between residents and their communities, and between constituents and local leaders. The result, O’Brien shows, has been the creation of more effective policy and practices that reinvigorate the way citizens and city governments approach their mutual interests. By unpacking when, why, and how the 311 system has worked for Boston, The Urban Commons reveals the power and potential of this innovative system, and the lessons learned that other cities can adapt.

Splintering Urbanism

Splintering Urbanism
Author: Steve Graham
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2002-09-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 113465698X

Splintering Urbanism makes an international and interdisciplinary analysis of the complex interactions between infrastructure networks and urban spaces. It delivers a new and powerful way of understanding contemporary urban change, bringing together discussions about: *globalization and the city *technology and society *urban space and urban networks *infrastructure and the built environment *developed, developing and post-communist worlds. With a range of case studies, illustrations and boxed examples, from New York to Jakarta, Johannesberg to Manila and Sao Paolo to Melbourne, Splintering Urbanism demonstrates the latest social, urban and technological theories, which give us an understanding of our contemporary metropolis.

Urban Machinery

Urban Machinery
Author: Mikael Hård
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2008
Genre: City and town life
ISBN: 0262083698

Urban Machinery investigates the technological dimension of modern European cities, vividly describing the most dramatic changes in the urban environment over the last century and a half. Written by leading scholars from the history of technology, urban history, sociology and science, technology, and society, the book views the European city as a complex construct entangled with technology. The chapters examine the increasing similarity of modern cities and their technical infrastructures (including communication, energy, industrial, and transportation systems) and the resulting tension between homogenization and cultural differentiation. The contributors emphasize the concept of circulation--the process by which architectural ideas, urban planning principles, engineering concepts, and societal models spread across Europe as well as from the United States to Europe. They also examine the parallel process of appropriation--how these systems and practices have been adapted to prevailing institutional structures and cultural preferences. Urban Machinery, with contributions by scholars from eight countries, and more than thirty illustrations (many of them rare photographs never published before), includes studies from northern and southern and from eastern and western Europe, and also discusses how European cities were viewed from the periphery (modernizing Turkey) and from the United States.ContributorsHans Buiter, Paolo Capuzzo, Noyan Din�kal, Cornelis Disco, P�l Germuska, Mikael H�rd, Martina He�ler, Dagmara Jajesniak-Quast, Andrew Jamison, Per Lundin, Thomas J. Misa, Dieter Schott, Marcus StippakMikael H�rd is Professor of History at Darmstadt University of Technology. His books include The Intellectual Appropriation of Technology: Discourses on Modernity, 1900-1939 (coedited with Andrew Jamison; MIT Press, 1998). Thomas J. Misa is ERA-Land Grant Professor of the History of Technology at the University of Minnesota, where he directs the Charles Babbage Institute. His books include Modernity and Technology (coedited with Philip Brey and Andrew Feenberg; MIT Press, 2003).

Solving Urban Infrastructure Problems Using Smart City Technologies

Solving Urban Infrastructure Problems Using Smart City Technologies
Author: John Vacca
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 820
Release: 2020-09-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 012816817X

Solving Urban Infrastructure Problems Using Smart City Technologies is the most complete guide for integrating next generation smart city technologies into the very foundation of urban areas worldwide, showing how to make urban areas more efficient, more sustainable, and safer. Smart cities are complex systems of systems that encompass all aspects of modern urban life. A key component of their success is creating an ecosystem of smart infrastructures that can work together to enable dynamic, real-time interactions between urban subsystems such as transportation, energy, healthcare, housing, food, entertainment, work, social interactions, and governance. Solving Urban Infrastructure Problems Using Smart City Technologies is a complete reference for building a holistic, system-level perspective on smart and sustainable cities, leveraging big data analytics and strategies for planning, zoning, and public policy. It offers in-depth coverage and practical solutions for how smart cities can utilize resident’s intellectual and social capital, press environmental sustainability, increase personalization, mobility, and higher quality of life. Brings together experts from academia, government and industry to offer state-of- the-art solutions for urban system problems, showing how smart technologies can be used to improve the lives of the billions of people living in cities across the globe Demonstrates practical implementation solutions through real-life case studies Enhances reader comprehension with learning aid such as hands-on exercises, questions and answers, checklists, chapter summaries, chapter review questions, exercise problems, and more