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‘In the end, they will destroy democracy' – The Guardian on smart cities
Songdo in South Korea: a ‘smart city’ whose roads and water, waste and electricity systems are dense with electronic sensors. (via theguardian.com; Photograph: Hotaik Sung/Alamy)
The smart city is, to many urban thinkers, just a buzzphrase that has outlived its usefulness: ‘the wrong idea pitched in the wrong way to the wrong people’. So why did that happen – and what’s coming in its place?
— theguardian.com
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18 Comments
Kim Jong Un is very pleased.
The question is what can stop our mindless march toward the boot stomping a human face forever?
I expect the threats and benefits of the very vaguely-defined 'smart city' are both overstated. It really is just a buzzword for a whole range of technologies unrelated in purpose or implementation.
FWIW fire alarm call boxes predate traffic signals by about 60 years - I'd say they were the first 'smart city' infrastructure. Notably Chicago had installed them before it burned down in 1871 - one common story suggests firefighters wasted time responding to boxes triggered by people observing the fire from a distance.
"smart" is a marketing ploy: smartphone, smart house (LoL), smart car, smart city. It's a corporate sales agenda that has nothing to do with our well being and everything to do with profit.
Good article, but you will blow mind if you think any of this is really any different than the real year 1984....................If you bought or buy Apple products because you think they are better designed and Steve Jobs was behind it you might as well join Scientology because Tom Cruise said so..........................You ever see those people sitting at corners with clipboards and clickers?....................... Ever wonder why, after months of two rubber cables crossing a highway a fast food joint opens up at one location rather than another?..............................When did data become smart and when did a computer program become an App?.........................you really think Big Brother is that interested in what you think they would be interested in? No, Duane Reade or Walgreens or Target just want to know if they should reduce Red Bull prices during university finals week and do not care if you drink too much beer, neither does the NSA, but your local pub cares and maybe your mother!....................Mass efficiency of data gathering means nothing ultimately, someone has to care to read it, understand it, and use it.................if someone wants to spy on you they will...................if someone wants to scam you they will.....................just because everyone now has a better opportunity of giving up their information doesn't mean anyone and more agencies care...............................In the future it sounds like Gilles Deleuze Rhizome will be a 'terrorist'........................Dear Archinect/Butler I think it's time for the 'Analog City' contest, this may help mass cultures emerging mass psyche calm down a bit.
OK, the so-called "smart city" is still undefined, so we don't need to be immediately either against or for it. There will be great benefits and serious problems, both.
This is a nice little fun article on what it's like to ride in one of Google's self-driving cars. The benefits seem clear, but obviously there will be problems as we learn how to implement any of these technologies.
Self-driving cars are idiocy. The effort to make the iCar should be put into mass transit.
Miles, seriously: I'm a huge proponent of transit and think the way we underfund it as a society is criminal - racist and classist and awful. But as the article points out self-driving cars can exactly help those people who have the hardest time with mass transit: disabled, poor, isolated.
Also, we *have* a huge infrastructure in place for cars, an infrastructure that also kills tens of thousands of people every year. Removing human error from the driving equation would lessen deaths caused by cars. Should Google just stop developing this pretty incredible technology because it's not the perfect solution to every single problem of US urban development? It's a fantastic solution to one set of problems, and can certainly be a step on our way to a better solution that addresses a bigger set of problems. A complete redesign of the US to make cars a minimal part of the circulation equation is an excellent goal. It will take many, many decades to get there.
(Tell me how I'm wrong. Easier to just scream "IDIOCY!!!" than to actually discuss, though, right?)
How is a poor person going to afford any car?
If you're thinking of this as a long-range wheelchair for a society that does very little to accommodate the disabled, that's great. But if it's the next generation of "smart" technological anti-social culture it's just more of the same shit we already have. Until the satellite hiccups and GPS goes out we'll have more time to look at our iPhones. Energy savings are non-existent because the electrical grid is 2/3 fossil fueled and operates at about 30% efficiency. Now if we went to solar ...
Meanwhile the national highway infrastructure is crumbling. We can spend money to fix it, or we can privatize it, or we can spend money to create efficient public transit. Or we can do as little as possible and just let things keep going the way they are.
The main train station in Osaka has 6 platforms and 11 tracks connected by overhead walkways. Each track has a train every 2-1/2 to 3 minutes. The platforms are marked for boarding - local, express, etc. - and when the train pulls up it stops in exactly the right place so that exiting passengers do not interfere with the line waiting to load. On top of this there are 7 independent train companies running simultaneously through the system - both local and long distance - and it all runs like a Swiss watch. AMTRAK, on the other hand, stops for half-a-day ever time somebody farts, probably because the entire line is held together with 50 year old bailing wire and duct tape.
It's every man for himself. In other words: self-driving cars are simply another way to further the intentional collapse of every remaining aspect of social society. When the transit systems are literally run into the ground through intentional mismanagement they will be privatized for efficiency - and not efficiency of service but efficiency of profit.
The trains in Osaka sound like a dream. Japan's population density is 836 people per square mile.
Now how is that infrastructure going to be implemented in the US, where density is ten times less at 84 people per square mile?
We agree that massive investment by the government in mass transit infrastructure to catch us up with every other country's 20th Century (let alone 21st) level of service would be good. But is Google simultaneously investing in self-driving cars really going to bring about the downfall of society? In many applications - disabled, drunk people, the last mile problem, tourists in a different city or country - self-driving vehicles could be great.
It sounds to me that a balance needs to be maintained between comfort/security and transgression/freedom. Personally I'm optimistic about the direction that technology is moving in (internet of things, ubiquitous computing etc) but I'm also very glad that Koolhaas has broadened the discussion a little to remind us that cities are desirable places in part because of the spontaneity and freedom that they enable. I hope that his words register with urban planning departments and urban activists.
I think its worth pointing out that current urban planning dogma, as much as "big technology", is advancing a vision of extremely safe, dense and highly organized cities. The dark side of this is obviously widespread gentrification, privatization and pervasive surveillance and policing.
Tech displaces people from jobs. Case in point: the Metro North train crash of November 2013. The train had one engineer because an automated braking system had been installed that eliminated the "need" for a second engineer. The accudent occurred when the engineer blanked out and the automated system didn't work according to plan. End result - a bunch of dead people because of a cost savings measure that eliminated one engineer's salary and benefits (and livelihood).
I'd much rather see professional drivers ferrying people around than automated cars, at least someone will be gainfully employed.
Does DIY home repair or gardening also "displace people from jobs"?
we should develop some sort of 'leisure' life. maybe instead of working your free interns 10 hours a day, cut back the hours and pay them reasonable wages. let people go home while it's still light out so they can tend to an urban garden or fix broken stuff on their houses.
with automation, as miles points out, it takes less people to do the same amount of work. so why not pay people the same, but let them go home earlier so they have time to be creative entrepreneurs and innovate and do all those good things that they can't do when they're stuck at work grinding?
A lovely bit of writing on the nature of the city, from the Wikipedia article on Kisho Kurakawa:
...the four seasons are very clearly marked in Japan, and the changes through the year are dramatic. Time, then, in Japanese culture is a precious entity that forces every candle, every being, every entity to fade at one point in time. The idea that buildings and cities should seem as natural as possible and that they should be in harmony with the rest of nature, since it is only temporarily there, helped create the tradition of making buildings and cities of “temporary” structure.
For Donna and Miles............. http://texascentral.com/ Dallas to Houston on 90 minutes.............there is nothing smart about data, and the more dependent we become on data that is retained outside our minds the less smart we will be. GOOGLE IT.........Davidd in the future as I noted above, spontaneity will be the equivalent to 'terrorism', Koolhaas always one step ahead......
We architects are great at digging our own graves
Zoomorphically speaking, architects are the fleas on lemmings.
@curtkram re: 'leisure' life a philosopher friend of mine is a big supporter of the idea of a basic income...
To me the dream of automation was never about everyone becoming an "engineer" / or member of c-suite, moving up the value chain. Rather it was to allow us to work less...
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