A city is not a computer : other urban intelligences

Auteur(s) :

Mattern, Shannon Christine (1976-....) Découvrir l'auteur

Résumé

This book is important for urban designers and city managers. Referencing architect Christopher Alexander's seminal essay "A City Is Not a Tree" (1965), Mattern (anthropology, New School for Social Research) dismantles the computational tree-like logic of "smart cities," contending that it limits people's engagement with and understanding of cities and argues for a more critical approach to urbanism to reveal the "prismatic complexity" of cities. Smart cities often reduce inhabitants to merely "consumers" or "users," deploying information gleaned from automated computer systems that quantify, aggregate, and display a constrictive "operational logic, aesthetic, and politics" for specialist managers who need access to the granularity of human and civic interactions. The visionary changes that Mattern advocates for in urban planning and management include deeper interaction with a broader swath of people in cities; reformed and extensively enlarged libraries as actual places that affect citizens’ lives; maintenance of physical things large and small, data, and constantly outmoded "smart" things; and greater use of familiar knowledge to generate a multitude of small-scale solutions. This readable, compact volume includes extensive endnotes and images, though they are often too small.