Smart city visions and human rights
Without consideration for all humans inhabiting cities, smart city and technological approaches have the potential to exacerbate socio-economic divisions, corporate dominance, and top-down governance.
Category Architecture & Urban space
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 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”.
Boston’s human-centered research to design middle-income housing
In Boston, the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics is conducting ethnographic, human-centered research to design middle-income housing that reflects people’s lived experiences, reports the Stanford Social Innovation Review. This includes intensive planning sessions in which residents, designers, and policy…
The time of user empathy
Forbes Product Member, Alec Pomnichowski, describes the parallels between architecture and product development thinking. He asks product-types to be considerate and thoughtful about the ways in which users experience products and find value in them through time. Good architects will…
The Adaptive Reuse Toolkit
The Adaptive Reuse Toolkit – How Cities Can Turn their Industrial Legacy
into Infrastructure for Innovation and Growth by Matteo Robiglio Policy Paper, September 2016 The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) All over in the world, industrial…
The psychology of scarcity: what behavioral economics can teach design
Eldar Shafir, professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University and coauthor, with Sendhil Mullainathan, of the book Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How It Defines Our Lives (Picador, 2013), talks to Metropolis Magazine’s Avinash Rajagopal…
Remember the people: The foundation for success in 21st C infrastructure
Infrastructure providers are used to focusing on issues of project selection, funding, and regulation. The most successful firms are learning to provide great consumer experiences too. “The consumer experience matters. Infrastructure providers therefore need to tap into the disciplines and…
How city design is adapting to older populations
As cities experience a demographic shift, the need for age-friendly design is becoming ever more critical. From almshouses to driverless cars, the future of urban housing and mobility may just be shaped for and by the elderly. Freelance journalist Alice…
Pritzker Prize winner brings communities into the design process
The radical Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, known for his pioneering social housing projects in Latin America, has been named as the winner of the 2016 Pritzker prize, the highest accolade in architecture. The 48-year-old, who is also the curator of…