Digital Futures and the City of Today

Description

In the contemporary city, the physical infrastructure and sensorial experiences of two millennia are now inter-woven within an invisible digital matrix. This matrix alters human perceptions of the city, informs our behaviour and increasingly influences the urban designs we ultimately inhabit. Digital Futures and the City of Today cuts through these issues to analyse the work of architects, designers, media  specialists and  a  growing number of community activists, laying out a multi-faceted view of the complex integrated phenomenon of the contemporary city. Split into three sections, the book interrogates the concept of the 'smart' city, examines innovative digital projects from around the world, documents experimental visions for the future, and describes projects that engage local communities in the design process.

Foreword: Graham Cairns

Introduction: Glenda Amayo Caldwell and Carl Smith

Section One: Embedding - The digital in the physical world

Chapter 1: No need to fix: Strategic inclusivity in developing and managing the smart city:  Alessandro Aurigi

Chapter 2: Reimag(in)ing the city: Street View as storyspace: Aroussiak Gabrielian

Chapter 3: Information, communication and the digital city: Cláudia Sofia Gonçalves Ferreira Lima

Chapter 4 From the iron cage to the mediated city: Cristina Miranda de Almeida

Section Two: Applications - The use of the digital in the everyday

Chapter 5: Identity management, premediation and the city: Sandra Wilson and Lilia Gomez Flores

Chapter 6: Urban utopics: The politics of the digital city view: Gavin Perin and Linda Matthews

Chapter 7: Place, play and privacy: Exploring location-based applications and spatial experience: Melanie Chan

Chapter 8: Post-digital approaches to mapping memory, heritage and identity in the city: Georgios Artopoulos and Nikolas Bakirtzis

Chapter 9: Responsive transport environments: System thinking as a method to combine media architecture into a digital ecology to improve public transport: M. Hank Haeusler

Section Three: Studies and trials - Examples of community uses of digital technologies

Chapter 10: Digital urban health and security: NYC’s got an app for that: Kristen Scott

Chapter 11: Explorations of an urban intervention management system: A reflection on how to deal with urban complex systems and deliver dynamic change: Marta A. G. Miguel, Richard Laing and Quazi Mahtab Zaman

Chapter 12: Innovative urban mobility shaped by users through pervasive information and communication technologies: Marco Zilvetti, Matteo Conti and Fausto Brevi

Chapter 13: Blurring the physical boundaries of the city: Media architecture and urban informatics for community engagement: Glenda Amayo Caldwell and Mirko Guaralda

Epilogue : Edward M. Clift

Notes on Contributors

Index

 

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Architecture
• Digital Media
• Media Studies
• Social Science
• contemporary
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Architectural theory
• General officer
• Design
• General
• Internet

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783205622
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2016 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2016 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2016 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Cover designer: Gabriel Solomons
Front cover image © Linda Matthews
Production managers: Gabriel Solomons and Jelena Stanovnik
Typesetting: John Teehan
ISBN 978-1-78320-560-8
ePDF ISBN 978-1-78320-561-5
ePub ISBN 978-1-78320-562-2
Produced in conjunction with AMPS (Architecture, Media, Politics, Society)
Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK
Contents
Foreword
Graham Cairns
Introduction
Glenda Amayo Caldwell and Carl Smith
Section One: Embedding - The digital in the physical world
Chapter 1 No need to fix: Strategic inclusivity in developing and managing the smart city
Alessandro Aurigi
Chapter 2 Reimag(in)ing the city: Street View as storyspace
Aroussiak Gabrielian
Chapter 3 Information, communication and the digital city
Cláudia Sofia Gonçalves Ferreira Lima
Chapter 4 From the iron cage to the mediated city
Cristina Miranda de Almeida
Section Two: Applications - The use of the digital in the everyday
Chapter 5 Identity management, premediation and the city
Sandra Wilson and Lilia Gomez Flores
Chapter 6 Urban utopics: The politics of the digital city view
Gavin Perin and Linda Matthews
Chapter 7 Place, play and privacy: Exploring location-based applications and spatial experience
Melanie Chan
Chapter 8 Post-digital approaches to mapping memory, heritage and identity in the city
Georgios Artopoulos and Nikolas Bakirtzis
Chapter 9 Responsive transport environments: System thinking as a method to combine media architecture into a digital ecology to improve public transport
M. Hank Haeusler
Section Three: Studies and trials - Examples of community uses of digital technologies
Chapter 10 Digital urban health and security: NYC’s got an app for that
Kristen Scott
Chapter 11 Explorations of an urban intervention management system: A reflection on how to deal with urban complex systems and deliver dynamic change
Marta A. G. Miguel, Richard Laing and Quazi Mahtab Zaman
Chapter 12 Innovative urban mobility shaped by users through pervasive information and communication technologies
Marco Zilvetti, Matteo Conti and Fausto Brevi
Chapter 13 Blurring the physical boundaries of the city: Media architecture and urban informatics for community engagement
Glenda Amayo Caldwell and Mirko Guaralda
Epilogue
Edward M. Clift
Notes on Contributors
Index
Foreword
Graham Cairns
F or architects, the city can still be a question of constructed buildings, a physical entity; whilst for human geographers, it is a place of human interaction and engagement. Similarly, for film-makers, it may be a site for action and futuristic nightmare; whilst for animators and computer programmers, it becomes a virtual world – a second life, a ‘simulated’ city. For sociologists, it is a defining aspect of cultural identity; whilst for political activists and theorists, it is a place to ‘occupy’ and the site of the polis. In the current urban context, however, the digital is now both evasive and pervasive. Almost every action we take in the contemporary metropolis is either recorded, encoded, interlaced with, or overlaid by, an electronic network that joins us to each other and to itself.
In this contemporary context, we are now familiar with the digitally laden experience of the contemporary public transport ride, and listen to urbanists as they envisage a future for the interconnected ‘smart city’. We watch the design process of our buildings and environments become, in and of itself, a mediated engagement, as creative human actions merge with autonomous form to generate computer algorithms. Today, architects simulate user behaviour as a form of ‘space syntax’, while the contemporary flâneur navigates the city through Google Maps and a myriad of other Web 2.0 paraphernalia. Through counter-positioning discipline-centred perspectives, overlaying their research methods and fomenting opportunities for cross-disciplinary engagement, this book aims to offer insights into the contemporary and historical city, and its continually evolving relationship with emerging medias and technologies.
The context for this book – and the launch of this Intellect series – is a global network of activities investigating these issues. The Mediated City Research Programme involves conferences, workshops, research projects and related events which have fed into this engagement with Intellect and its publication of this book series. Led by the research group AMPS (Architecture, Media, Politics, Society) and its associated scholarly journal, Architecture_MPS , the Mediated City Research Programme is an ongoing international engagement of artists, designers, planners, architects, digital image-makers, computer programmers, film-makers and photographers. Already engaged in North America, Europe and Australasia, it positions the city as a dual physical and mediated phenomenon, and seeks to better understand and disseminate research on the contemporary city as a phenomenon increasingly experienced, rendered, designed and explored as both a physical and virtual entity. To this end, the engagement of AMPS on this Intellect Books publication series is a natural step for both parties.
The other books with which Intellect launches this series – Filming the City: Urban Documents, Design Practices & Social Criticism Through the Lens and Imaging the City: Art, Creative Practices and Media Speculations – similarly come from this engagement with AMPS. Inevitably, they offer their own particular insights into this multifaceted hybrid phenomenon. In this volume, however, the focus is split into three main areas, reflected in its three sections: ‘Embedding – The digital in the physical world’; ‘Applications – The use of the digital in the everyday’; and ‘Studies and trials – Examples of community uses of digital technologies’. Split into these three related parts, this book offers overviews of the hybrid phenomenon that is the modern digital or smart city; examines live projects active across the world; documents experimental visions and ideas on the future of the hybrid metropolis; and finally, presents experimental projects engaging local communities in design through new technologies.
What this book, its associated series and the broader AMPS research programme all highlight, then, is an understanding that an invisible digital matrix has become interwoven into the physical infrastructure and sensorial experience of the contemporary city. This matrix alters our perception of the city, informs our behaviours and increasingly influences the physical designs we propose. It is also changing the nature of the design process itself by allowing more people to be involved, a greater range of voices to be heard and more complex interactions to be imagined. Obviously, it is also integrally linked to the very tools architects and planners use in the design process. This book slices through the wide array of issues now emerging in the digital era to critically examine key areas of activity for architects, designers, media specialists, communities and activists concerned with the futures of our cities. In short, it offers a multifaceted view of the complex integrated phenomenon that is the contemporary hybrid city.
Introduction
Glenda Amayo Caldwell and Carl Smith
T he pervasive and ubiquitous nature of digital technologies have affected nearly all aspects of our daily lives, including the design and experience of the built environment. This book is a compilation of chapters that have been contributed by academics, practitioners and designers who reveal that this phenomenon is felt across the globe. The city of today is an interwoven series of physical spaces with digital layers of media and information. From the perspectives of architects, designers, media specialists, technologists, communities and societal activists, this book explores the hybrid city as it is today, and what the potential futures of our cities may look and feel like.
This book is one of the results of the AMPS Mediated City Research Programme, and draws materials from research held events in London and Los Angeles in 2014. Added to that mix are essays from a range of other disciplines and countries, who together offer critical discourses that explore the city as a physical, virtual, filmic, social and political construct. Split into three related sections, this book offers overviews of the hybrid phenomenon that is the modern digital or ‘smart’ city; examines live projects active across the world that present ideas on the future of the hybrid metropolis; and finally, offers experimental projects engaging local communities in design through new technologies. In short, the book offers a multifaceted view of the complex integrated phenomenon that is the contemporary hybrid city.
Section One – ‘Embedding – The digital in the physical world’ – begins with a contribution from Alessandro Aurigi, who writes about the struggles managing top-down urban approaches and bottom-up urban acupuncture. Proposing a smart urban acupuncture that mediates between the two through strategic and multidisciplinary work, he strikes a cautionary tone about the future of the ‘smart’ city.
Aroussiak Gabrielian from the University of Southern California examines how new means of navigating space can open up innovative possibilities in architectural practice. She investigates how navigational technologies (su