Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
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
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... View full entry
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
"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:Silicon Valley campuses at risk as sea levels riseSilicon... View full entry
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
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... View full entry
