CALL TO URBANIZE TECHNOLOGY
For years, the Smart City has been the ultimate form of urban progress. This concept can be defined as the use of information technologies to improve the quality of life of citizens while reducing the operating costs for cities and urban stakeholders. The ongoing digital transformation, the abundance of urban data and the emergence of Artificial Intelligence technologies supported this vision as cities around the world became “smarter”.
Despite this hype, a growing opposition began to surface. In both Europe and North America, citizens increasingly distrust urban monitoring and claim more digital rights [1]. In Asia, from the Middle East to South East, several Smart Cities such as Masdar and Songdo struggle to attract residents.
We believe that this global failure highlights a conceptual deficiency.
In the Smart City paradigm, quality of life is mainly quantified via the consumption of urban services and goods. Therefore, technology is used to optimize the city.
This approach has its benefits. Optimization of urban services such as water management, urban logistics and infrastructure maintenance can contribute to safer and more efficient cities. To some extent, smart grids make cheaper and greener energy possible while digital tools can foster civic engagement.
However, on its own, this paradigm is incomplete [2]. Cities are more than an optimized platform offering a frictionless user experience. Civic participation cannot be reduced to data transmission and human beings are not machines. In contrast, we believe that:
1. Cities are owned by people. Streets and parks are shaped by the desire to share a destiny. Places embody our social instincts and our need to gather. In that way, cities materialize our social contract. They are the common ground for generations.
2. Cities are incomplete. They evolve and transform over time. Exactly as if urban materiality was malleable. This plasticity allows us to dwell a city, to extend it and to reconfigure spaces. People do not only own the city, they constantly make it.
3. Cities are complex systems [3]. Complexity is order in heterogeneity. Likewise, cities are balanced by a bottom-up dynamic: urban density and social interactions contribute to distribute rationality and spread information. These welcoming collisions of singularities and cultures make cosmopolitanism possible. That is why cities are where diversity can flourish and thrive.
4. Cities are lands of liberty and opportunities. They are places of encounters and exploration. Encounter with other singularities and exploration of new cultures. These frictions give rise to freedom. It allows self-accomplishment through the interaction with otherness. It gives us the possibility to become who we are.
5. Cities are full of meaning. They host the daily story of people, communities and civilisations. This urban narrative reminds us that, “poetically, humans dwell upon the earth” [4].
6. Cities are not artificial bubbles. They are part of the biosphere and must echo this fundamental truth. Urbanity depends on our ability to live in a sustainable way and to fulfil our biophilia.
Each time a technology atrophies one of these qualities, it de-urbanizes the city.
We believe that in addition to optimize cities, we must urbanize technology [5]. That is, designing and developing technologies that promote urbanity and cityness.
Considering our six urban principles, urbanized technologies are:
1. Situated. They emanate from a social contract, a culture and a geography.
2. Open. They are accessible for all and evolutive.
3. Decentralized. They empower communities and are equally distributed.
4. Frictional. They encourage exploration through interactions.
5. Meaningful. They amplify human speech.
6. Ecological. They are frugal and low carbon.
None of these features are incompatible with contemporary technologies. Sensors can turn into interfaces. Data and codes can become transparent and understandable to all.
Algorithms can ease exploration and wandering. Social Media can be decentralized and frictional. Digital can serve the urban narrative.
The only limitation to reinvent urban technologies is our imagination.
We are convinced it is time to complete the Smart City paradigm and to urbanize technology. It is high time to dwell again upon the earth.
[1] This citizen resistance has even led to the abandonment of smart city projects, for example in Toronto and Los Angeles.
[2] There is now an extensive literature on this conceptual deficiency. Among others: The Smart Enough City by Ben Green, Building and Dwelling : Ethics for the City by Richard Senett and Undoing Optimization by Alison B. Powell.
[3] To be accurate, they are open complex systems interacting with the outside. It also means that their modelization is always incomplete.
[4] Hölderlin, The Ister.
[5] Saskia Sassen, Open Source Urbanism in Domus (2011) and Urbanized Technology in URBAN AI (H. Beroche et al., 2020).
Call to Urbanize Technology by Urban AI is made available under the terms of the licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
Based on a work at https://chocolate-pony-162652.hostingersite.com/call/
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