Archinect - News

Chicago installs "urban Fitbits" to track air quality, noise levels, and traffic

2016-08-29T13:39:00-04:00

The Windy City has begun installing what sounds and looks a whole lot like a Fitbit that can measure the vitals of a bustling metropolis. Chicago, which partnered on the project with researchers at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory and several corporations, last week installed the first two of 500 modular sensor boxes. The devices will eventually allow the city and public to instantly get block-by-block data on air quality, noise levels, as well as [...] traffic.

The project, the first such initiative in the country, is called 'the Array of Things'. Affixed to light poles, the devices are equipped with sensors that monitor air and surface temperature, carbon monoxide levels, ambient sound intensity, and barometric pressure, as well as other input. A total of 50 devices will be installed this year, with 450 more coming by 2018.

The data will be used to improve public health, traffic conditions, and guide infrastructure decisions. It will also be publicly available starting in mid-October. Like with most "smart" initiatives, privacy concerns have arose, particularly over the devices' capacity to take photos. Officials have stated that any photos taken will be deleted within "tens of minutes".

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What's the newest project for Silicon Valley investors? Building cities

2016-06-28T17:39:00-04:00

Y Combinator, the startup accelerator and investment firm that helped produce Airbnb, Dropbox, and Instacart, is embarking on a creation project arguably more ambitious than any company. "We want to build cities," wrote Y Combinator partner Adora Cheung and President Sam Altman...the project aims to develop ways to reduce housing expenses by 90 percent and to develop a city code of laws simple enough to fit on 100 pages of text. Eventually the plan is to actually produce a prototype city.

"We’re not trying to build a utopia for techies," says Cheung, the project’s director and the former CEO of failed housecleaning startup Homejoy. "This is a city for humans."

For more news from Silicon Valley, check out these links:

Welcome to the Hudson Yards, c. 2019: the world's most ambitious "smart city" experiment

2016-04-26T20:55:00-04:00

The observation deck won’t be finished for a few years yet. If you want to see the future of New York, walk north along the High Line, round the curve at the rail yards, and turn your back to the river. Amid the highway ramps and industrial hash of far-west Manhattan, a herd of cranes hoists I-beams into the sky. This is Hudson Yards, the largest private real-estate development in United States history and the test ground for the world’s most ambitious experiment in “smart city” urbanism.

Last year, I reviewed Mattern's book Deep Mapping the Media City, in which she delves into some of the issues surrounding so-called "smart cities." Check out the review here.

For more on the implementation of surveillance and other technologies in the city, check out these links: