Cities, Citizens, and Technologies

Cities, Citizens, and Technologies PDF

Author: Paula Geyh

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-05-21

Total Pages: 461

ISBN-13: 1135852197

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This book is about the contemporary city and those who live in it. It is thus also about the urban world of the era (extending roughly from the 1960s to the present) that we see as postmodern, and specifically about how the postmodern city is changing under the impact of globalization and new information and communication technologies. In particular, Geyh explores how the urban spaces of postmodernity (parks, plazas, streets, sidewalks) and postmodern urban subjectivities and communities respond to and create each other – how they become mutually constructing. While there is much in this book about what makes a city "postmodern," its primary focus is on how the postmodern city is experienced by its inhabitants, and in this respect the book is also a study of everyday life in the postmodern era. As such, it deals not only with the ways in which the postmodern city has developed out of economic, technological, political, and cultural structures that are different from those of the modern city, but also with how the postmodern city changes our ways of knowing and experiencing the world and ourselves as postmodern urban subjects, as citizens of postmodernity.

The Smart Enough City

The Smart Enough City PDF

Author: Ben Green

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2019-04-07

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0262039672

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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.

Smart City

Smart City PDF

Author: Renata Paola Dameri

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-06-26

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 3319061607

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This book presents a comprehensive overview of the various aspects for the development of smart cities from a European perspective. It presents both theoretical concepts as well as empirical studies and cases of smart city programs and their capacity to create value for citizens. The contributions in this book are a result of an increasing interest for this topic, supported by both national governments and international institutions. The book offers a large panorama of the most important aspects of smart cities evolution and implementation. It compares European best practices and analyzes how smart projects and programs in cities could help to improve the quality of life in the urban space and to promote cultural and economic development.

Citizens in the 'Smart City'

Citizens in the 'Smart City' PDF

Author: Paolo Cardullo

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-09-22

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 0429798091

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This book critically examines ‘smart city’ discourse in terms of governance initiatives, citizen participation and policies which place emphasis on the ‘citizen’ as an active recipient and co-producer of technological solutions to urban problems. The current hype around smart cities and digital technologies has sparked debates in the fields of citizenship, urban studies and planning surrounding the rights and ethics of participation. It also sparked debates around the forms of governance these technologies actively foster. This book presents new socio-technological systems of governance that monitor citizen power, trust-building strategies, and social capital. It calls for new data economics and digital rights for a city founded on normative ideals rather than neoliberal ones. It adopts a normative approach arguing that a ‘reloaded’ smart city should foster citizenship as a new set of civil and social rights and the ‘citizen’ as a subject vested with active and meaningful forms of participation and political power. Ultimately, the book questions the utility of the ‘smart city’ project for radical municipalism, proposing a technological enough but more democratic city, an ‘intelligent city’ in fact. Offering useful contribution to smart city initiatives for the protection of emerging digital citizenship rights and socially accrued benefits, this book will draw the interest of researchers, policymakers, and professionals in the fields of urban studies, urban planning, urban geography, computing and technology studies, urban politics and urban economics.

Smart Cities

Smart Cities PDF

Author: Germaine Halegoua

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2020-02-18

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 0262538059

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Key concepts, definitions, examples, and historical contexts for understanding smart cities, along with discussions of both drawbacks and benefits of this approach to urban problems. Over the past ten years, urban planners, technology companies, and governments have promoted smart cities with a somewhat utopian vision of urban life made knowable and manageable through data collection and analysis. Emerging smart cities have become both crucibles and showrooms for the practical application of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and the integration of big data into everyday life. Are smart cities optimized, sustainable, digitally networked solutions to urban problems? Or are they neoliberal, corporate-controlled, undemocratic non-places? This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers a concise introduction to smart cities, presenting key concepts, definitions, examples, and historical contexts, along with discussions of both the drawbacks and the benefits of this approach to urban life. After reviewing current terminology and justifications employed by technology designers, journalists, and researchers, the book describes three models for smart city development—smart-from-the-start cities, retrofitted cities, and social cities—and offers examples of each. It covers technologies and methods, including sensors, public wi-fi, big data, and smartphone apps, and discusses how developers conceive of interactions among the built environment, technological and urban infrastructures, citizens, and citizen engagement. Throughout, the author—who has studied smart cities around the world—argues that smart city developers should work more closely with local communities, recognizing their preexisting relationship to urban place and realizing the limits of technological fixes. Smartness is a means to an end: improving the quality of urban life.

American Cities and Technology

American Cities and Technology PDF

Author: Gerrylynn K. Roberts

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-11-01

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1134636121

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Designed to be used on its own or as a companion volume to the American Cities and Technology textbook. Chronologically, this volume ranges from the earliest technological dimensions of Amerindian settlements to the 'wired city' concept of the 1960s and internet communications of the 1990s.Its focus extends beyond the US to include telecomunications in Asian cities in the late 20th century. The topics covered: * the rise of the skyscraper *the coming of the automobile age * relations between private and public transport * the development of infrastructural technologies and systems * the implications of electronic communications * the emergence of city planning.

Smart Cities

Smart Cities PDF

Author: Alfredo Barton

Publisher: Nova Science Publishers

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781536124040

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There are several different definitions of smart cities based on the various characteristics related to the adjective Smart and the noun City. The Smart City commonly involves new intelligent technological tools, services and applications integrated in platforms, providing interoperability and coordination among several sectors, which are crucial for the future life of urban communities and have impacts on the environment. Chapter One describes the smart city as a concept, discusses the issues that have arisen in the post-GFC society, the need for a smart environment vision, and the importance of moving the focus from the remoteness and rigidity of national government back to a more grassroots level, while still taking advantage of the benefits offered by the technological advances that have made. Chapter Two highlights the working mechanism, advantages and disadvantages of ICT technology applied to transportation in the field of safety improvement, environmental sustainability, road redesign and traveller behavioural change. Chapter Three seeks to answer if and to what extent urban communication may be either a guarantee or a possibility to create a citizen identity. In Chapter Four, a Renewable Wireless Sensor Network (RWSN) architecture for human sensing is presented to study the spatial and temporal information of urban space utilization and pedestrian flow. Chapter Five focuses on the ways in which specific key concepts, such as those of data collection, syntax and affordance, present a dynamic intervention tool, leading to an instrumental and performative construction of a smarter city.

Cities, Citizens, and Technologies

Cities, Citizens, and Technologies PDF

Author: Paula Geyh

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-05-21

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1135852200

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This book is an investigation of how contemporary – postmodern – cities and their inhabitants have been transformed by the forces of globalization and new information technologies. Drawing upon a wide range of discourses, from architectural theory and urban studies to psychoanalysis and Marxism, it explores this transformation through readings of contemporary literature, film, art, and real-world urban and cyber spaces.

The American Cities and Technology Reader

The American Cities and Technology Reader PDF

Author: Gerrylynn K. Roberts

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780415200851

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Designed to be used on its own or as a companion volume to the textbook, this book offers in-depth readings on the technological dimensions of US cities from the earliest settlements to the internet communications of the 1990s.

Technology and the City

Technology and the City PDF

Author: Michael Nagenborg

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-01-25

Total Pages: 445

ISBN-13: 3030523136

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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.