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A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences
<strong>A bold reassessment of "smart cities" that reveals what is lost when we conceive of our urban spaces as computers</strong> Computational models of urbanism—smart cities that use data-driven planning and algorithmic administration—promise to deliver new urban efficiencies and conveniences. Yet these models limit our understanding of what we can know about a city. <i>A City Is Not a Computer</i> reveals how cities encompass myriad forms of local and indigenous intelligences and knowledge institutions, arguing that these resources are a vital supplement and corrective to increasingly prevalent algorithmic models. Shannon Mattern begins by examining the ethical and ontological implications of urban technologies and computational models, discussing how they shape and in many cases profoundly limit our engagement with cities. She looks at the methods and underlying assumptions of data-driven urbanism, and demonstrates how the "city-as-computer" metaphor, which undergirds much of today's urban policy and design, reduces place-based knowledge to information processing. Mattern then imagines how we might sustain institutions and infrastructures that constitute more diverse, open, inclusive urban forms. She shows how the public library functions as a steward of urban intelligence, and describes the scales of upkeep needed to sustain a city's many moving parts, from spinning hard drives to bridge repairs. Incorporating insights from urban studies, data science, and media and information studies, <i>A City Is Not a Computer</i> offers a visionary new approach to urban planning and design.
As we may think
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The Consensus Trap: Dissecting Subjectivity and the “Ground Truth” Illusion in Data Annotation
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The Application and Its Consequences for Non-Standard Knowledge Work
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Rethinking the human-readability infrastructure
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The world is not a desktop | Interactions
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Computational Public Space
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.
Research Fiction: Storytelling, Plot and Design
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The Politics of Open Infrastructures: Power, Governance, and Justice in Digital Knowledge Practices
This volume examines how openness is designed, governed, contested and lived in contemporary digital knowledge infrastructures. From open source software and internet standards, to citizen science platforms, public sector data systems and alternative computing practices, the book shows that infrastructures are never neutral technical backbones.
The open authorial principle: supporting networks of authors in creating externalisable designs
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The operating system: should there be one?
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Sensibilities as Knowledge in Design Research
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City Snapshots — For The People
Did you know that Las Cruces, New Mexico spends 870 times more on policing than libraries? Our new publication, Budgets Are Values, gives an overview of how 15 public library systems are funded, governed, and used by communities, and highlights the stark and indefensible contrast between funding for
New_ Public Invests in Local Online Spaces as Digital Civic Infrastru…
archived 11 Apr 2025 17:34:52 UTC
