Smart Cities: A Spatialised Intelligence

171 Pages·2015·84.98 MB·English

by  Picon

PRIMERS
Smart Cities
A Spatialised
Intelligence
ANTOINE PICON

PRIMERS
Smart Cities

PRIMERS
Smart Cities
A Spatialised
Intelligence
ANTOINE PICON
This edition first published 2015
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-119-07559-2 (paperback) 978-1-119-07560-8 (ebk)
ISBN 978-1-119-07561-5 (ebk) 978-1-119-07562-2 (ebk)
Executive Commissioning Editor: Helen Castle
Project Editor: Miriam Murphy
Assistant Editor: Calver Lezama
Cover design, page design and layouts by Karen Willcox, www.karenwillcox.com
Printed in Italy by Printer Trento Srl
Cover image © Keiichi Matsuda
Acknowledgements
In a book like this one, exchanges have a special importance. I would
like to thank here the individuals involved in digital and smart city
development, colleagues and friends, whose input has been very helpful
to me. I am indebted to Joëlle Bitton, Jean Daniélou, François Ménard,
Dominique Lorrain, François and Manuel Gruson, Nikola Jankovic, Nashid
Nabian, Nicolas Nova, Colin O’Donnel, Carlo Ratti, Molly Wright Steenson
and Ornella Zaza for their information and ideas. Special thanks to Marie
Veltz who has shared with me the abundant documentation that she has
gathered on smart cities.
My research has been facilitated by a Canadian Centre for Architecture
Senior Mellon Fellowship. I would like to thank here Maristella Casciato,
Mirko Zardini and Phyllis Lambert, who have been instrumental in making
my stay at the Canadian Centre for Architecture especially fruitful.
Abigail Grater has done a wonderful job translating my sometimes
intricate French into English. At Wiley, Helen Castle’s constant support has
proved invaluable. Caroline Ellerby has played an essential role in gathering
the illustrations, a process that has proved quite challenging at times.
My deepest gratitude goes to Virginie Picon-Lefebvre whose careful
reading and insightful comments have been, as always, essential.
Contents
Acknowledgements 005
Introduction: A New Urban Ideal 009
Spatialised Intelligence 011
Technology, Space and Politics 015
Chapter 1: The Advent of the Smart City, from
Flow Management to Event Control 023
Defining the Smart City 024
Self-Fulfilling Fictions 030
The Sentient and Sensory City 037
Massive Quantities of Data 046
What Happens 052
Chapter 2: A Tale of Two Cities 067
Neocybernetic Temptation 069
The Cyborg-City Hypothesis 078
Spontaneous City, Collaborative City 083
The Digital Individual 091
Chapter 3: Urban Intelligence, Space and Maps 105
Augmented Reality and Geolocation 106
Towards Three-Dimensional Urbanism 110
A New Relationship to Infrastructure 119
The Stakes of Representation 124
A New Aesthetic 138
Laboratories of Public Life in the Digital Age 140
Conclusion: The Challenges of Intelligence 145
The Limits of All-Digital Solutions 146
The Necessary Diversification of Scenarios 149
Public/Private 153
From Event to History 154
Bibliography 158
Index 162
Photo Credits 167
IBM, infographic on
‘building a smarter city
and state’, 2013
IBM has played an important
role in the rise of the smart
city ideal. This infographic
was released to illustrate a
series of projects launched
in partnership with the city
of Boston and the state of
Massachusetts. It features
some key elements of the
smart city approach such
as a better management
of urban infrastructure
and the quest for greater
environmental efficiency.