The Computable City

The Computable City PDF Author: Michael Batty
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262377845
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
How computers simulate cities and how they are also being embedded in cities, changing our behavior and the way in which cities evolve. At every stage in the history of computers and communications, it is safe to say we have been unable to predict what happens next. When computers first appeared nearly seventy-five years ago, primitive computer models were used to help understand and plan cities, but as computers became faster, smaller, more powerful, and ever more ubiquitous, cities themselves began to embrace them. As a result, the smart city emerged. In The Computable City, Michael Batty investigates the circularity of this peculiar evolution: how computers and communications changed the very nature of our city models, which, in turn, are used to simulate systems composed of those same computers. Batty first charts the origins of computers and examines how our computational urban models have developed and how they have been enriched by computer graphics. He then explores the sequence of digital revolutions and how they are converging, focusing on continual changes in new technologies, as well as the twenty-first-century surge in social media, platform economies, and the planning of the smart city. He concludes by revisiting the digital transformation as it continues to confound us, with the understanding that the city, now a high-frequency twenty-four-hour version of itself, changes our understanding of what is possible.

The Computable City

The Computable City PDF Author: Michael Batty
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262377845
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Get Book Here

Book Description
How computers simulate cities and how they are also being embedded in cities, changing our behavior and the way in which cities evolve. At every stage in the history of computers and communications, it is safe to say we have been unable to predict what happens next. When computers first appeared nearly seventy-five years ago, primitive computer models were used to help understand and plan cities, but as computers became faster, smaller, more powerful, and ever more ubiquitous, cities themselves began to embrace them. As a result, the smart city emerged. In The Computable City, Michael Batty investigates the circularity of this peculiar evolution: how computers and communications changed the very nature of our city models, which, in turn, are used to simulate systems composed of those same computers. Batty first charts the origins of computers and examines how our computational urban models have developed and how they have been enriched by computer graphics. He then explores the sequence of digital revolutions and how they are converging, focusing on continual changes in new technologies, as well as the twenty-first-century surge in social media, platform economies, and the planning of the smart city. He concludes by revisiting the digital transformation as it continues to confound us, with the understanding that the city, now a high-frequency twenty-four-hour version of itself, changes our understanding of what is possible.

The Smart Enough City

The Smart Enough City PDF Author: Ben Green
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262352257
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
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.

Media and The City

Media and The City PDF Author: Chiara Giaccardi
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443864145
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
The percentage of people living in cities and the adoption rates of communication technologies continue to grow across the planet. Our age has come to be defined as one of urbanism and communication; but how are those two intertwined? How do they shape each other? Where and in which ways do they diverge, support or fold into each other? As new tensions emerge and old ones find new solutions, social sciences are forced into a dialogue with media studies and urban studies in order to make sense of the new reality. New theoretical and methodological paradigms are urgently needed, and can be produced only through a fertile and eclectic dialogue. This volume presents some of the latest research in this exciting, cross-disciplinary field. Issues of conflict, mobility, crime, art, memory, ethnicity, identity, and city marketing and branding come under rigorous scrutiny in their mutual and constitutive relationship with urban space and communicative technologies and practices. The volume is divided into three broad sections. The first section deals with the role of media in the social production of urban space – that is, with how media interact with other forces in giving shape to the materiality of the city. The second section deals with how urban space acts as a context for a variety of media-related practices – especially in relation to the popularization of mobile geo-localization technologies which have given us mass phenomena such as Foursquare. The third and final section deals with how urban space is mediatised and communicated through ICTs – or in other terms, how urban space is represented by specific media through specific discursive strategies.

The City and Its Sciences

The City and Its Sciences PDF Author: Cristoforo S. Bertuglia
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642959296
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 915

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Book Description
Recent developments in the field of urban analysis and management are investigated in this book. It is a wide-ranging collection of essays on the subject drawn from a long-term project and seminar, held in Italy, to review the state of the art and speculate on the future influence on the "sciences of the city" of the complexity concept. Of particular interest is the variety of points of view, often contrasting, and the attempt to go beyond the conventional approaches to the analysis, and the planning of the city. While focussing mainly on the European (and in particular Italian) context, the discussion is of general relevance and valuable to anyone concerned with the prospects for the city in the new millenium.

The Image of the City

The Image of the City PDF Author: Kevin Lynch
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262620017
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.

Urban Systems Design

Urban Systems Design PDF Author: Yoshiki Yamagata
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0128162937
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
Urban Systems Design: Creating Sustainable Smart Cities in the Internet of Things Era shows how to design, model and monitor smart communities using a distinctive IoT-based urban systems approach. Focusing on the essential dimensions that constitute smart communities energy, transport, urban form, and human comfort, this helpful guide explores how IoT-based sharing platforms can achieve greater community health and well-being based on relationship building, trust, and resilience. Uncovering the achievements of the most recent research on the potential of IoT and big data, this book shows how to identify, structure, measure and monitor multi-dimensional urban sustainability standards and progress. This thorough book demonstrates how to select a project, which technologies are most cost-effective, and their cost-benefit considerations. The book also illustrates the financial, institutional, policy and technological needs for the successful transition to smart cities, and concludes by discussing both the conventional and innovative regulatory instruments needed for a fast and smooth transition to smart, sustainable communities. - Provides operational case studies and best practices from cities throughout Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, Australia, and Africa, providing instructive examples of the social, environmental, and economic aspects of "smartification - Reviews assessment and urban sustainability certification systems such as LEED, BREEAM, and CASBEE, examining how each addresses smart technologies criteria - Examines existing technologies for efficient energy management, including HEMS, BEMS, energy harvesting, electric vehicles, smart grids, and more

Inventing Future Cities

Inventing Future Cities PDF Author: Michael Batty
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262038951
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
How we can invent—but not predict—the future of cities. We cannot predict future cities, but we can invent them. Cities are largely unpredictable because they are complex systems that are more like organisms than machines. Neither the laws of economics nor the laws of mechanics apply; cities are the product of countless individual and collective decisions that do not conform to any grand plan. They are the product of our inventions; they evolve. In Inventing Future Cities, Michael Batty explores what we need to understand about cities in order to invent their future. Batty outlines certain themes—principles—that apply to all cities. He investigates not the invention of artifacts but inventive processes. Today form is becoming ever more divorced from function; information networks now shape the traditional functions of cities as places of exchange and innovation. By the end of this century, most of the world's population will live in cities, large or small, sometimes contiguous, and always connected; in an urbanized world, it will be increasingly difficult to define a city by its physical boundaries. Batty discusses the coming great transition from a world with few cities to a world of all cities; argues that future cities will be defined as clusters in a hierarchy; describes the future “high-frequency,” real-time streaming city; considers urban sprawl and urban renewal; and maps the waves of technological change, which grow ever more intense and lead to continuous innovation—an unending process of creative destruction out of which future cities will emerge.

Urban Operating Systems

Urban Operating Systems PDF Author: Andres Luque-Ayala
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262539810
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
A new wave of enthusiasm for smart cities, urban data, and the Internet of Things has created the impression that computation can solve almost any urban problem. Subjecting this claim to critical scrutiny, in this book, Andrés Luque-Ayala and Simon Marvin examine the cultural, historical, and contemporary contexts in which urban computational logics have emerged. They consider the rationalities and techniques that constitute emerging computational forms of urbanization, including work on digital urbanism, smart cities, and, more recently, platform urbanism. They explore the modest potentials and serious contradictions of reconfiguring urban life, city services, and urban-networked infrastructure through computational operating systems—an urban OS. Luque-Ayala and Marvin argue that in order to understand how digital technologies transform and shape the city, it is necessary to analyze the underlying computational logics themselves. Drawing on fieldwork that stretches across eleven cities in American, European, and Asian contexts, they investigate how digital products, services, and ecosystems are reshaping the ways in which the city is imagined, known, and governed. They discuss the reconstitution of the contemporary city through digital technologies, practices, and techniques, including data-driven governance, predictive analytics, digital mapping, urban sensing, digitally enabled control rooms, civic hacking, and open data narratives. Focusing on the relationship between the emerging operating systems of the city and their traditional infrastructures, they shed light on the political implications of using computer technologies to understand and generate new urban spaces and flows.

The New Companion to Urban Design

The New Companion to Urban Design PDF Author: Tridib Banerjee
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351400614
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 894

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Book Description
The New Companion to Urban Design continues the assemblage of rich and critical ideas about urban form and design that began with the Companion to Urban Design (Routledge, 2011). With chapters from a new set of contributors, this sequel offers a more comparative perspective representing multiple voices and perspectives from the Global South. The essays in this volume are organized in three parts: Part I: Comparative Urbanism; Part II: Challenges; and Part III: Opportunities. Each part contains distinct sections designed to address specific themes, and includes a list of annotated suggested further readings at the end of each chapter. Part I: Comparative Urbanism examines different variants of urbanism in the Global North and the Global South, produced by a new economic order characterized by the mobility of labor, capital, information, and technology. Part II: Challenges discusses some of the contemporary challenges that cities of the Global North and the Global South are facing and the possible role of urban design. This part discusses spatial claims and conflicts, challenges generated by urban informality, explosive growth or dramatic shrinkage of the urban settlement, gentrification and displacement, and mimesis, simulacra and lack of authenticity. Part III: Aspirations discusses some normative goals that urban design interventions aspire to bring about in cities of the Global North and the Global South. These include resilience and sustainability, health, conservation/restoration, justice, intelligence, access and mobility, and arts and culture. The New Companion to Urban Design is primarily intended for scholars and graduate students interested in cities and their built environment. It offers an invaluable and up-to-date guide to current thinking across a range of disciplines including urban design, planning, urban studies, and geography.

Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City

Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City PDF Author: Foth, Marcus
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1605661538
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
"This book exposes research accounts which seek to convey an appreciation for local differences, for the empowerment of people and for the human-centred design of urban technology"--Provided by publisher.