[Book] A City Is Not a Computer
A bold reassessment of "smart cities" that reveals what is lost when we conceive of our urban spaces as computers
Insights curated by Experientia, the international UX consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the international UX consultancy
Category Cities & Infrastructure
Swiss Re Institute on how COVID-19 is transforming consumer behaviour
The COVID-19 pandemic is changing how we work, travel, communicate, shop and more, but which new habits are likely to stick permanently? The authors explore five key behavioural changes and their implications for risk and protection.
Berlin exhibition features Experientia work
The exhibition, curated by ANCB The Aedes Metropolitan Laboratory, presents exemplary built projects and outstanding conceptual models by architects and planners from all over the world
[Essay] Helsinki Design Lab ten years later
A survey of Helsinki Design Lab's activities 2008-2013, with reflections on the three "bets" that the Lab made and their relevance today.
[Paper] Active consumer participation in smart energy systems
Designing energy services with a human-centered approach will allow us to rely on consumers not only as executors of changes in energy consumption, but also as providers of data.
Nordic lessons for people-first smart cities
While it is argued that smart city development is at an impasse, we argue that it is at a crossroads. It is possible to simultaneously develop and adopt new technologies and strengthen people's rights. This has been proven in the Nordic cities and Barcelona. The People-first vision presented in this report shows how it is possible for all cities.
Imagining the world after coronavirus, part 5
Fifth edition of features and articles on what may lie ahead.
Imagining the world after coronavirus, part 4
Fourth (and particularly rich) edition of features and articles on what may lie ahead.
Post-it note city
A visit to the smart-city-in-progress at Sidewalk Toronto prompts questions about what it means to "participate" in civic design.
The first of a thousand nights – ToNite project opening event
Presentation event on 14 February in Torino of the European project that aims to improve the liveability of the areas around the river Dora
La prima di mille notti. Evento di inaugurazione progetto ToNite
Evento di presentazione del progetto europeo che intende migliorare la vivibilità delle aree attorno al fiume Dora
Design thinking in the future of cities: what approach to use for better services?
The design thinking approach offers many tools to design creative solutions to solve the most pressing problems affecting complex ecosystems such as cities. That's why it is important that policy makers are properly trained.
The case for … cities that aren’t dystopian surveillance states
We could decide to treat people as sensors, and not as things to be sensed - to observe Kant's injunction that humans should be "treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to something else".
Smart City Index that takes citizen engagement into account
A team of researchers from IMD in Switzerland and SUTD in Singapore put together the Smart City Index. For the first time, researchers attempted to assess people’s perceptions of technology – as opposed to the quality of the technology itself…
How do we make smart cities civic?
Engagement Lab, an applied research and design lab associated with Emerson College that investigates and creates media and technology to reduce disparities in civic participation, announced via a twitter thread the launch of Making a Smart City Civic, an open…
[Book] Challenging the City Scale
Challenging The City Scale: Journeys in People-Centred Design Ed. by Cité du Design (Saint-Etienne) and Clear Village (London) Birkhäuser, 2018, 176 pages (free ebook) This 176 pages book is released by the famous international publisher Birkhäuser, and co-edited by Cité…
Sidewalk Toronto has only one beneficiary, and it is not Toronto
Jim Balsillie, former chairman and co-CEO of Research In Motion, doesn’t mince his words in discussing the new Google-affiliated waterfront development Sidewalk Toronto: What happens with Toronto’s waterfront infrastructure will have profound and permanent impacts on the digital rights and…
[Report] Reclaiming the Smart City
Reclaiming the Smart City: Personal Data, Trust and the New Commons Why and how city governments are taking a more responsible approach to the collection and use of personal data By Theo Bass, Emma Sutherland, and Tom Symons Monday, 23…
Human-centered building design
Putting people at the centre when designing and delivering buildings of the future is crucial to unlocking the potential of new technologies, according to the third installment of Buildings of the Future paper (pdf) released by Aurecon, an Australasian engineering…
[Study] Rethinking The Smart City – Democratizing Urban Technology
Rethinking The Smart City – Democratizing Urban Technology By Evgeny Morozov and Francesca Bria Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, New York Office January 2018 Download pdf: English version – German version Following the celebration of the “creative city” (as described by Richard…