3,702 research outputs found
The smart city as urban eco-modernisation: the case of Masdar City in Abu Dhabi
No full textThis chapter explores the notion and practice of the smart city with a geographical focus on Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. Smart-city projects are understood and discussed as the product of overarching political economies related to fast-track urbanisation. The case of Abu Dhabi shows that smart-city initiatives are connected to the state’s goals of changing its economic base and preserving the political status quo, through the development and commercialization of smart-clean technology. In this sense, the smart city, as a living laboratory meant to produce new cleantech products such as smart grids and state-of-the-art solar power stations, becomes the physical locus where new strands of the regional economy are cultivated.
Through the example of Masdar City, a new high-tech city under construction in Abu Dhabi, the chapter unpacks and critiques the contradictions between the economic imperatives that underpin so-called smart interventions and their overall sustainability, revealing that, as in most cases of ecological modernisation, socio-environmental concerns are overshadowed by business interests. We conclude that, in addition to being ineffective against the social and the environmental problems caused by cities, by supporting transnational machines of production and consumption, smart-city solutions risk to backfire and exacerbate the same vicious circle that they should be breaking
Charting AI urbanism: conceptual sources and spatial implications of urban artificial intelligence
No full textAbstract The aim of this paper is to tease out some of the key issues concerning the relationship between AI and urbanism. This relationship, which is presented in the academic literature as a new driving force of contemporary urbanism, will be investigated through an interdisciplinary approach that places urban studies and philosophy of technology in dialogue. Thus, the analysis will not focus on the technological development of artificial intelligence systems but on how their application can affect urbanistic thinking and vice versa. The chart that is produced by this method is based on two fundamental axes: time and space. AI urbanism will then be inquired first through key turning points in the history of the relationship between technology and the city (modern urbanism, cybernetics and the smart city paradigm). Secondly, the spatial implications of urban AI will be investigated from the point of view of the concrete applications of this technology to the city (Robots, AVs, Software agents) and their impact on the relationships between different urban actors. Ultimately, this work aims to offer a conceptual tool for understanding some decisive implications of the relationship between AI and urbanism, such as the connection between quantitative and qualitative approaches, the implications related to autonomous technology, the economic-political background of AI urbanism, the material urban impact of AI, and the relationship between AI and other urban intelligences. Understanding these implications will be valuable for future research on AI urbanism oriented toward transforming simple technological development into sustainable urban innovations
An urbanistic take on autonomous vehicles
No full textAutonomous vehicles (AVs) are coming. This is happening particularly in cities where AVs are being increasingly employed as devices for land transport, which are fully driven by artificial intelligence (AI). AVs are emerging largely as a matter of transportation with a focus on logistics. Their dominant role and function appear to be about moving someone or something from A to B. The mainstream narrative pictures autonomous vehicles primarily as transport technologies that simply move things and people in space. In this chapter, we critically discuss the dimensions of the AV that exceed its transportation role. We do so by adopting an urbanistic perspective, in an attempt to show how what is generally portrayed as a simple vehicle is in reality a potent driver of urban change whose actual impact and repercussions can be properly understood only within the field of urbanism. We argue that the AV stands, conceptually and empirically, at the conjunction of two themes, vehicles and AI, and draw on complementary strands of literature in urban studies, to unpack the three main urban dimensions of AVs, which go beyond solely transportation: data, design and environmental impact
Ordinary Chinese Smart Cities: The Case of Wuhan
No full textThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Routledge via the link in this recordCommentaries on future-oriented Chinese urban development tend to focus on showcase projects underway in wealthy coastal cities. This chapter instead sheds light on the way that the smart has been integrated into more ‘ordinary’ Chinese urban life, using the case of Wuhan, a ‘Tier II’ city in Central China. It explores the conditions of the emergence of Wuhan’s smart city activities from three perspectives. First, it outlines a series of ‘vertical’ enabling factors, whereby an international body of discourse and practice has been ‘translated’ into national Chinese urban policies. Second, it considers the simultaneous significance of ‘horizontal’ links between Wuhan’s local government, city governments abroad, local private enterprises, and foreign firms. Third, it relates Wuhan’s smart credentials to a broader process of digitalisation of everyday life in the city. It concludes by reflecting on the distinctive characteristics of Chinese smart urbanism, as exemplified by Wuhan, and finally draws out some implications for future research into smart cities elsewhere. Specifically, it proposes that the smart city is most usefully approached as a shifting and locally inflected concept which not only channels multiple policy agendas, but also reflects broader changes to urban space and governance in particular contexts.This chapter draws on a research project funded by the Economic and Social Research
Council (grant number ES/L015978/1) ‘Smart eco-cities for a green economy: a
comparative study of Europe and China’
Conclusions: The present of urban AI and the future of cities
No full textThe era of urban artificial intelligences has begun. It is already difficult to imagine urban futures without artificial intelligence (AI). In this final chapter, we draw on the volume’s empirical findings to explore the repercussions of urban AI and give evidence of how the emergence of AI in cities is reshaping urban society, urban infrastructure, urban governance, urban planning and urban sustainability. Subsequently, we demonstrate how the city is influencing the evolution of AI, by moulding its physical manifestations in actually existing spaces and determining its very intelligence. The second half of the chapter is dedicated to unpacking similarities between this collection’s case studies of AI urbanism and well-known practices of smart urbanism. Here, we highlight connections with past and present smart-city initiatives, as well as points of departure that suggest the formation of a novel AI urbanism. We conclude the volume by discussing the implications of the emergence of urban AI for urban theory and the future of cities
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Artificial Intelligence and the City: Urbanistic Perspectives on AI
No full textThis book explores in theory and practice how artificial intelligence (AI) intersects with and alters the city. Drawing upon a range of urban disciplines and case studies, the chapters reveal the multitude of repercussions that AI is having on urban society, urban infrastructure, urban governance, urban planning and urban sustainability.
Contributors also examine how the city, far from being a passive recipient of new technologies, is influencing and reframing AI through subtle processes of co-constitution. The book advances three main contributions and arguments:
First, it provides empirical evidence of the emergence of a post-smart trajectory for cities in which new material and decision-making capabilities are being assembled through multiple AIs.
Second, it stresses the importance of understanding the mutually constitutive relations between the new experiences enabled by AI technology and the urban context.
Third, it engages with the concepts required to clarify the opaque relations that exist between AI and the city, as well as how to make sense of these relations from a theoretical perspective.
Artificial Intelligence and the City offers a state-of-the-art analysis and review of AI urbanism, from its roots to its global emergence. It cuts across several disciplines and will be a useful resource for undergraduates and postgraduates in the fields of urban studies, urban planning, geography, architecture, urban design, science and technology studies, sociology and politics
Introducing AI into urban studies
No full textInnovation in artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming cities in unprecedented ways. In this chapter, we unpack the connections between AI and the urban by introducing the concept of urban AI and reflecting on its most prominent incarnations: autonomous vehicles, urban robots, city brains and urban software agents. We then illustrate how the emergence of urban AI is producing a new urbanism that we term AI urbanism. AI urbanism originates from smart urbanism but also departs from it along three main axes, namely function, presence and agency. We discuss the similarities and differences underpinning AI and smart urbanism, highlight the problematic implications of human–machine interactions in the making and governance of cities and, finally, call on urbanists and urban stakeholders to scrutinize the critical intersections between urban development and the development of artificial intelligences
Editorial: Autonomous mobility transitions—Socio-spatial dimensions and the role of urban planning and policy
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Milano consolato nell' elettione a questo arciuescouado, e promotione alla sagra porpora dell' eminentissimo Federico Visconti : colla sua solennissima entrata seguita a' 11. genaro 1682 e fontioni antecedenti /
No full textFrontispiece coat of arms of Milan, engraved by Federico Agnelli.Signatures: pi⁴ A-G⁴ H⁴(-H4).Mode of access: Internet.Binding: limp vellum. Author & title written on spine
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