<story><title>An Inconvenient Truth about Smart Cities</title><url>https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-inconvenient-truth-about-smart-cities/#</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jesperlang</author><text>We are a culture obsessed by the &lt;i&gt;how&lt;/i&gt;, not the &lt;i&gt;why&lt;/i&gt;. A picture of people walking or biking to work does not fit our idea of the &amp;quot;future&amp;quot; as well as one where we ride around in slick glass pods. We have grown custom to doing even the simplest things orders of magnitude less efficient than they need to be.&lt;p&gt;We are also a culture obsessed by image and impression. Look at the image at the top of this article. Images of futurist cities like this drive me nuts, am I looking at a pimped up motherboard or a city where people actually live? What if a sustainable and livable city doesn&amp;#x27;t look very exciting on picture?&lt;p&gt;Cities are complex adaptive &lt;i&gt;social&lt;/i&gt; systems that we are nowhere near fully understanding. Formulating a vision of a city with its base in a technological ideal (&amp;quot;smart&amp;quot;) just shows how disconnected you are from reality and how setup you will be for complete failure.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bogomipz</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;quot;We are a culture obsessed by the how, not the why. A picture of people walking or biking to work does not fit our idea of the &amp;quot;future&amp;quot; as well as one where we ride around in slick glass pods. We have grown custom to doing even the simplest things orders of magnitude less efficient than they need to be.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I disagree with this. Cities have been adding designated bike lanes for years now. And the growth in bike ridership in cities seems to have moved lock-step with this. Using NYC as an example:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.citylab.com&amp;#x2F;transportation&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;the-steady-rise-of-bike-ridership-in-new-york&amp;#x2F;390717&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.citylab.com&amp;#x2F;transportation&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;the-steady-ri...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;So clearly a picture of people walking or biking has fit some city planner&amp;#x27;s idea of &amp;quot;future.&amp;quot; The fact that bike lanes  continue to be added seems to point to a recognition of their success and place in the future.&lt;p&gt;I think it would be more accurate to say that &amp;quot;A picture of people walking or biking to work&amp;quot; might not fit Google&amp;#x27;s or SV&amp;#x27;s idea of &amp;quot;the future&amp;quot; because it doesn&amp;#x27;t involve collecting data and selling advertising. For example NYC&amp;#x27;s DOT put is putting in the biking lanes. Google(via Sidewalk Labs) converted payphone kiosks ostensibly to provide free internet access. Google provides this in exchange for collecting data and displaying advertising.</text></comment>
<story><title>An Inconvenient Truth about Smart Cities</title><url>https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-inconvenient-truth-about-smart-cities/#</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jesperlang</author><text>We are a culture obsessed by the &lt;i&gt;how&lt;/i&gt;, not the &lt;i&gt;why&lt;/i&gt;. A picture of people walking or biking to work does not fit our idea of the &amp;quot;future&amp;quot; as well as one where we ride around in slick glass pods. We have grown custom to doing even the simplest things orders of magnitude less efficient than they need to be.&lt;p&gt;We are also a culture obsessed by image and impression. Look at the image at the top of this article. Images of futurist cities like this drive me nuts, am I looking at a pimped up motherboard or a city where people actually live? What if a sustainable and livable city doesn&amp;#x27;t look very exciting on picture?&lt;p&gt;Cities are complex adaptive &lt;i&gt;social&lt;/i&gt; systems that we are nowhere near fully understanding. Formulating a vision of a city with its base in a technological ideal (&amp;quot;smart&amp;quot;) just shows how disconnected you are from reality and how setup you will be for complete failure.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>panic</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; We are also a culture obsessed by image and impression. Look at the image at the top of this article. Images of futurist cities like this drive me nuts, am I looking at a pimped up motherboard or a city where people actually live? What if a sustainable and livable city doesn&amp;#x27;t look very exciting on picture?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jane Jacobs addresses this topic at length in Chapter 19 of &lt;i&gt;The Death and Life of Great American Cities&lt;/i&gt;. Here are the first few paragraphs (the whole book is a worthwhile read if you have the chance):&lt;p&gt;-&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;When we deal with cities we are dealing with life at its most complex and intense.  Because this is so, there is a basic esthetic limitation on what can be done with cities.&lt;/i&gt; A city cannot be a work of art.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;We need art, in the arrangements of cities as well as in the other realms of life, to help explain life to us, to show us meaning, to illuminate the relationship between the life that each of us embodies and the life outside us.  We need art most, perhaps, to reassure us of our own humanity.  However, although art and life are interwoven, they are not the same things.  Confusion between them is, in part, why efforts at city design are so disappointing.  It is important, in arriving at better design strategies and tactics, to clear up this confusion.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Art has its own peculiar forms of order, and they are rigorous.  Artists, whatever their medium,&lt;/i&gt; make selections &lt;i&gt;from the abounding materials of life, and organize these selections into works that are under the control of the artist.  To be sure, the artist has a sense that the demands of the work (i.e., of the selections of material he has made) control him.  The rather miraculous result of this process—if the selectivity, the organization and the control are consistent within themselves—can be art.  But the essence of this process is disciplined, highly discriminatory selectivity&lt;/i&gt; from &lt;i&gt;life.  In relation to the inclusiveness and the literally endless intricacy of life, art is arbitrary, symbolic and abstracted.  That is its value and the source of its own kind of order and coherence.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;To approach a city, or even a city neighborhood, as if it were a larger architectural problem, capable of being given order by converting it into a disciplined work of art, is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute art for life.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The results of such profound confusion between art and life are neither life nor art.  They are taxidermy.  In its place, taxidermy can be a useful and decent craft.  However, it goes too far when the specimens put on display are exhibitions of dead, stuffed cities.&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>