Initially Sidewalk's deal with the organisation will cover a 12-acre site but it is believed it wishes to expand this to the whole area - which at 325 acres will represent a huge land-grab....As part of the planning process of bidding to develop the waterside location, the firm looked at 150 examples of smart cities, including those built from the ground up such as Masdar, in Abu Dhabi and Songdo in South Korea. — BBC News

In the maddening gap between how this place functions and how inventors and engineers here think it should, many have become enamored with the same idea: What if the people who build circuits and social networks could build cities, too? Wholly new places, designed from scratch and freed from broken policies. — The Upshot

The Japanese technology giant wanted a place to experiment with solar power and renewable energy, autonomous vehicles and other technologies. And it needed a public partner and community support. It found that in Denver, DIA, Xcel Energy, developer LC Fulenwider and many others. — Denver Post

Uber has A rocky history with city governments—to put it mildly... Now, Uber is making something of a peace offering. The company is launching a new service that could help cities master their traffic. It’s called Uber Movement, and it uses information on the billions of rides Uber has completed. — Wired

The project, which is being designed by UM SoA’s Responsive Architecture and Design Lab (RAD-UM Lab), will be built next to the Yucatán Science and Technology Park (YSTP), established by the National Autonomous University of Mexico. RAD-UM Lab specializes in technology-based designing and the “internet of things,” everyday objects that can collect data and connect to modern tech. — The Miami Hurricane

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. — USA Today

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. — Bloomberg

Copenhagen has become the first city in the world to attempt to monetize its, and others’, data through a city data market.

Traffic snarl-ups, home break-ins, whether it rained or snowed, and how much electricity the city dwellers use each day is among the data to be traded for cash, city officials announced. Interestingly, the city, which is partnering with Hitachi on the project, also wants to incorporate others’ data. — Network World

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. — Shannon Mattern | Places

Thanks to Big Data, it is now next to impossible to reside anonymously in a modern city.

Why?

Because data anonymization itself is almost impossible without using advanced cryptography. Our every transaction leaves a digital marker that can be mined by anyone with the right tools or enough determination. — Cities of the Future

In the arid plains of the southern New Mexico desert, between the site of the first atomic bomb test and the U.S.-Mexico border, a new city is rising from the sand.

Planned for a population of 35,000, the city will showcase a modern business district downtown, and neat rows of terraced housing in the suburbs. It will be supplied with pristine streets, parks, malls and a church.

But no one will ever call it home. — CNN

The L.A.-Waze partnership is, at least in theory, an initial step toward allowing the city’s planners and engineers to regain a healthier role in mediating the kinds of longstanding cross-town conflicts that Waze has renewed and amplified. Whether the deal will help to resolve fundamental long-term issues related to the city’s growth and inadequate infrastructure is another matter. — newyorker.com

Dash fits squarely into the current age of smart-home technology... It is not simply a matter of practical efficiency but of a proactive, preëmptive way of living, in which inefficiency is the worst kind of waste. The way we manage our chores is a measure of our worthiness. No one wants to live in a stupid home... And only a chump would ever run out of toilet paper.

But what if there is actual value in running out of things? — the New Yorker

...the promise of the internet is contact. It seems to offer an antidote to loneliness, trumping even the most utopian urban environment by enabling strangers to develop relationships along shared lines of interest, no matter how shy or isolated they might be in their own physical lives. But proximity, as city dwellers know, does not necessarily mean intimacy. Access to other people is not by itself enough to dispel the gloom of internal isolation. Loneliness can be most acute in a crowd. -Laing — The Guardian