La ciudad como interfaz: arte, juego y tecnología digital en el espacio público

Acaba de publicarse el volumen 12 de la revista Arte y Políticas de Identidad, coordinado por Clara Boj Tovar (Universidad de Murcia) y Diego Diaz García (Universitat Jaume I de Castelló), integrantes además de Lalalab, desde donde han desarrollado proyectos como Observatorio o Hybrid Play.

Hace ya tiempo que Clara me invitó a participar con un artículo (Urban Interaction Design: La convergencia de disciplinas hacia una nueva forma de hacer ciudad) y una revisión del libro de Martijn de Waal (La ciudad como interfaz: Cómo los medios digitales están transformando la ciudad), así que me alegro de que por fin estén disponibles.

Esta es la introducción al volumen:

En los últimos años la ciudad ha cobrado relevancia, no solamente como estructura urbanistica y arquitectónica en torno a la que se organiza la vida de millones de personas en todo el mundo sino también y especialmente como metáfora de nuestra forma de ser en común, como sistema complejo que modela y construye sociedad en sus dimensiones politica, económica, medioambiental e incluso emocional y afectiva. La reivindicación de la ciudad como espacio de construcción colectiva de la experiencia la convierten en el escenario para la puesta en práctica de otros modelos de convivencia y participación desde los que repensar el espacio público y su rol en la definición de un nuevo tiempo social para la ciudadanía. 

La búsqueda de nuevos modelos de gobernanza comienza por cambios en el concepto mismo de ciudad: dejar de pensar la ciudad como contenedor, espacio y estructura para entenderla como organismo vivo a través de cuyos nodos y membranas fluyen los espacios de relación entre individuos, entre individuos e instituciones e incluso entre individuos y el medio ambiente. La ciudad no es el lugar donde suceden los acontecimientos sino que su estructura, diseño y gobernanza modelan y forman parte de los mismos. 

Si por interfaz entendemos un agente o zona de comunicación entre sistemas, la ciudad organismo es fundamentalmente una ciudad interfaz de cuya concepción y diseño se desprende la capacidad de los ciudadanos de conectar entre sí, relacionarse, compartir y crear experienciasy en definitiva crear ciudad. 

En este deplazamiento conceptual desde la ciudad estructura hacia la ciudad interfaz cabe preguntarse cual es el papel que las nuevas tecnologías de la información y la comunicación desempeñan en la construcción de imaginarios futuros para la ciudad que indudablemente es y será conectada e informacional. 

La expansión de las tecnologías digitales y la computación ubicua en el contexto urbano ha favorecido la aparición de nuevos modelos conceptuales para la metrópolis: ciudad inteligente, ciudad de datos, ciudad pop up, ciudad reactiva, ciudad sensible... Cada una de estas metáforas se articula en base a diferentes prioridades: funcionalidad, eficiencia, sostenibilidad, seguridad... pero todas comparten el mismo principio: la ciudad contemporánea es una ciudad híbrida donde se mezclan lo físico y lo digital, los datos y el cemento, la gente y los avatares, las calles y las redes sociales, las plazas y los chats. 

En este volúmen de Arte y Políticas de Identidad abordamos este tema de manera poliédrica mediante artículos e intervenciones que analizan el papel de las tecnologías en el diseño de las ciudades, la participación del arte contemporáneo en la definición crítica del espacio público híbrido y la relevancia del juego como activador del espacio social.

Contenidos

• Introducción. Clara Boj

• El futuro de la ciudad: ¿Una ciudad inteligente o una ciudad social? Martijn de Waal

• Urban Interaction Design: La convergencia de disciplinas hacia una nueva forma de hacer ciudad. Manu Fernández 

• Dattenspiel / Dataplay: From critical awareness to emancipation: four workshops led by artists for the citizens of Athens. Daphne Dragona

• La revitalización del espacio público desde la comunicación y la práctica creativa neomedial: Nuevos lenguajes para el diálogo entre el ciudadano y el entorno urbano. Francisco Felip Miralles, Julia Galán Serrano

• La emergencia de la multitud y las prácticas de crowdmapping: Reflexionando sobre los espacios posmodernos y sus narrativas. Juliana Caetano Nêto

• Ciudad flujo: complejidad Y desorden. La superación de la homogeneidad y la jerarquía urbana y política. Rafael García Sánchez, Francisco Segado Vázquez

• Ludocracia: El juego como herramienta de revitalización urbana en la ciudad interfaz. Jonathan reyes, Irene Reig, Aitor Deza, Antonio Moya, Rubén Tormo

• Pixel Art: Estética de la necesidad o elogio del medio. José Luis Maravall Llagaria, José Vicente Martín Martínez

• Curatorial Selection: A Decade that Goes from Locative Media to Resistance to the Privatization of the Public Realm. A Fragmentary and Subjective Walk into the Crossover Between Play, Technology and Urban Space. Régine Debatty

• Celebraciones Híbridas: Una aproximación al uso de las nuevas tecnologías como facilitadoras
• de la participación ciudadana en las celebraciones populares. El caso de las fallas de Valencia. María Oliver Sanz, Javier Molinero Domingo

• La ciudad como interfaz: Cómo los medios digitales están transformando la ciudad. Manu Fernández 

La ciudad mecánica (y su código oculto)

Uno de los aspectos que más se destacan de los sistemas inteligentes es su capacidad de actuar de manera automática a partir de modelizaciones, simulaciones y algoritmos. La inteligencia ambiental nos propone automatismos en los dispositivos que intermedian nuestra experiencia en la ciudad. La ciudad será así capaz de personalizarse en tiempo real, de maximizar la eficiencia en el funcionamiento de los servicios públicos y desencadenar pequeñas adaptaciones en función de las circunstancias del entorno. Las infraestructuras y los servicios de la ciudad se abren a un horizonte en el que serán capaces de anticipar sus especificaciones, sus funcionalidades y sus estándares de prestación de servicio a situaciones modelizadas previamente. La ciudad te escucha.

How Might Streetlights become Smart Lights? 

Pensemos en un ejemplo relativamente inocuo: los sistemas de iluminación inteligente. La lógica funcional de estos sistemas reside en que son capaces de encender o apagar el alumbrado público punto a punto en función de si en la calle hay unas necesidades concretas de iluminación. Estas pasarían por la detección a través de sensores de presencia, bien de personas andando por la calle a la noche, bien de automóviles en el viario. Su racionalidad, por otro lado, estriba en la capacidad de dotar de eficiencia operativa a este sistema, al optimizar el consumo energético y al reducir en consecuencia las emisiones derivadas de la producción de la energía consumida. Hasta aquí, el escenario se presenta intuitivamente neutro.

Sin embargo, la lógica completa del sistema esconde una normatividad que escapa de lo puramente técnico: para operar, este sistema necesita definir una serie de escenarios reales con x resoluciones pre-fijadas paraque actúe y se adapte a ellos. Así, necesita establecer qué se considera presencia, qué actividades permite iluminar, bajo qué régimen horario actúa, etc. ¿Es suficiente una persona? ¿Qué tipos de personas? ¿Necesitará moverse esta persona? ¿Qué pasa si la persona se queda quieta durante un tiempo? ¿A qué velocidad? ¿Reconocerá a una persona andando despacio? ¿Y si la persona no quiere ser iluminada? ¿Reconocerá cualquier tipo de vehículo? ¿Y si pasa un gato? ¿Y si es un grupo de personas haciendo botellón? ¿Durante cuánto tiempo permanecerá iluminada? ¿Cuántas se iluminarán a la vez? Respondamos a estas preguntas con situaciones concretas y veremos que las respuestas no son tan sencillas o, mejor, las respuestas tendrán como consecuencia normalizar unos usos del espacio público frente a otros. Sumemos a estas escenas tecnologías complementarias como la detección facial, la integración con sistemas de alerta policial, su vinculación a la posesión de una tarjeta de identificación como ciudadano, etc., y las condiciones bajo las que opera un sencillo sensor instalado a tres metros del suelo en una farola abre importantes incógnitas sobre los límites de lo posible en la ciudad. Esas incógnitas forman parte del código de diseño de estos objetos, un código no técnico.

Instalación Too smart city para la exhibición Toward the sentient city  

En efecto, la simulación del comportamiento esperado de la implícitamente deriva en un juicio normativo sobre lo que es esperable, lo que el sistema de simulación considera como normal. En la medida en que los sistemas inteligentes se constituyen como sensibles, es decir, capaces de reaccionar de manera automática ante situaciones concretas, se convierten también en dispositivos de control y de normalización de la vida en la ciudad. A través de la simulación los sistemas aprenden a reproducir comportamientos automáticos que inscriben una separación entre lo normal y lo anormal. Definen con ello patrones de lo que la ciudad permite o lo que la ciudad determina como situaciones y comportamientos susceptibles de protección y aquellos sujetos a control, limitación o represión. Pasemos de la iluminación inteligente a otros equipos de funcionamiento automático (puertas que se abren según determinados parámetros, tarjetas que te dan acceso a determinados servicios, sistemas de videovigilancia, dispositivos que captan tus datos,...) y usos modelizados (drones para la seguridad pública, vehículos sin conductor, sensores de acceso, etc.) y las incertidumbres éticas se multiplican.

Smart cities. El mito de la integración y la retórica de la experiencia seamless (PhD brief notes #4)

Uno de los argumentos más utilizados para explicar el potencial de las tecnologías smart es el de su capacidad de integrar todos los sistemas de información y gestión que rodean la compleja gestión de los servicios urbanos. En esencia, esta aspiración busca un modelo de gestión centralizada en el que todos los mecanismos de toma de decisiones sobre cualquier elemento de la ciudad y sus infraestructuras descansan sobre un modelo ideal de integración de los sistemas de movilidad, de abastecimiento de agua, de información ciudadana, de gestión de residuos sólidos urbanos, etc. De esta manera, gracias a la integración, se consiguen dos objetivos básicos:

• Por un lado, una mejora en la toma de decisiones públicas gracias a la disponibilidad de información contextualizada sobre diferentes parámetros en relación a otros conexos (por ejemplo, el sistema de gestión de emergencias perfectamente sincronizado con los modelos de gestión de flujos de tráfico, la información de disponibilidad en tiempo real de la flota de vehículos públicos de atención ciudadana, etc.). Es lo que llamaremos la integración de infraestructuras públicas.
• Por otro lado, de cara a la ciudadanía, una experiencia sin interrupciones ni fricciones (seamless), que permite al ciudadano transitar en su vida diaria a través de los diferentes dispositivos, plataformas e interfaces de relación con la esfera pública inteligente sin incurrir en costes de transición de un sistema a otro (por ejemplo, mediante el uso de sistemas de identificación personal interconectados entre diferentes servicios a través de tarjetas ciudadanas que permiten el acceso a los medios de transporte público, a las actividades culturales, a la identificación para el pago de impuestos, etc). Es lo que llamaremos la integración de la experiencia pública conectada o, en palabras de Greenfield y Shepard (2007), “digitally-enhanced lifestyle consumerism, a narrative of effortless ease and convenience and security”

Via Official seasons

Respecto a la integración de infraestructuras públicas, el objetivo lo describe sintéticamente McCullough (2014:198), al afirmar la preeminencia de la idea de la ciudad como sistema de sistemas:

“Seen from the top, where IBM provides consultation to policy makers and infrastructure builders, the challenge is to integrate. The city is a “system of systems”, which integrates core services in transportation, health care, public safety, nd public education”

A la hora de entender su significado, empezaremos por seguir algunas de las conclusiones de Bell y Dourish (2006), que analizan dos de los casos pioneros de implantación masiva de infraestructuras inteligentes en Singapur y Seúl desde una teoría crítica de las infraestructuras tecnológicas, caracterizadas, según los autores por su carácter imperfecto (frente a la supuesta perfectibilidad de su despliegue y funcionamiento):

“In other words, infrastructures are messy. The messiness that we experience in laboratory ubiquitous computing infrastructures is not a property of prototype technologies, of the bleeding edge, or of pragmatic compromise; messiness is a property of infrastructure itself. Infrastructures are inherently messy; uneven in their operation and their availability. The notion of a seamless and uniform infrastructure is, at best, a chimera, and at worst, to draw on aboriginal Australian myth, a mulywonk—a fearsome creature that might be invoked to steer people away from certain paths, places, or actions. “

Respecto a la integración de la experiencia pública conectada, es decir, de una experiencia mediatizada por la tecnología en la que no hay lugar a las dudas, los inconvenientes, los esfuerzos extra, los retrasos o la preocupación en el uso de los mecanismos inteligentes, de nuevo nos encontramos ante una pretensión que necesita pasar el filtro de la realidad y el filtro de la evaluación ética. Desde el punto de vista ético, de nuevo el análisis de Adam Greenfield en Everyware (2006) nos permite situar unos primeros cuestionamientos éticos a la hora d enfrentar el diseño de sistemas inteligentes de servicio a la ciudadanía (Greenfield 2006: 235-247):

• En caso de fallo, estos sistemas deben asegurar la seguridad física, psíquica y financiera de los usuarios, de manera que un potencial error, fallo limitado o bloqueo absoluto del sistema inteligente no produzca en ningún caso riesgo o daño alguno al usuario.
• Los sistemas inteligentes han de ser diseñados de manera que sea transparente e inmediato el reconocimiento de su presencia y sus aplicaciones por parte del usuario, de manera que se evite que el usuario opere con el sistema de manera inconsciente o inadvertida.
• El comportamiento normal del sistema ha de evitar generar sistemas de abuso, humillación o rechazo social para sus usuarios.
• El sistema inteligente no debe introducir complicaciones indebidas en sus operaciones ordinarias para el usuario. 
• El sistema inteligente ha de ser diseñado para contener una forma fácil para salir de su ámbito de actuación en cualquier momento y situación.

En este mismo orden de cosas, y también desde el punto e vista especifico de la computación ubicua –uno de los drivers de muchas de las soluciones del catálogo propuesto de las smart cities- podemos destacar las notas realistas de Galloway (2008:268) sobre esa aspiración a un mundo de integración absoluta, sin obstáculos, natural e imperceptible:

“I believe that the kind of world envisioned by ubiquitous computing will never have the perfectly seamless or stable infrastructure necessary to make it work at its most global and totalising scale. Computer technologies, including the internet, have always rolled out unevenly and without clear plans—and much of our technological infrastructure is already a mash of disparate parts made to do the best they can until they break, or something better comes along.” 

Este escenario es presentado en el nuevo imaginario tecnológico de la ciudad inteligente como un constante flujo de relaciones que ahora podemos prever y determinar, cuando, en realidad, “(…) the kinds of social relations and interactions that are advocated in urban computing and locative media visions are equally uncertain, inconsistent and unstable” Galloway (2008:269) y representan la definición misma de la vida en la ciudad, representada precisamente por situaciones de discontinuidad de un sistema a otro:

“Much of what is interesting and valuable in urban life happenns precisely at the means, at the hinges or interfaces between different states of being.” (Greenfield 2013)

La retórica semalessness - tal como se presenta se presenta esta promesa desde las principales empresas del movimiento smart city: “In this context, “semaless” means that the user perceives no interruption in the flow of a technically-mediated experience, even though that experience may be produced by the interaction of heterogenerous systems” (Greenfield 2013)- es una constante casi desde el inicio de los estudios de las tecnologías de información ubicua, en paralelo a su reputación tanto desde dentro como desde fuera del campo propio de la computación ubicua. Sin embargo, la promesa de un escenario de perfecta integración de los servicios a través de los cuales es mediatizada la vida en la ciudad sigue siendo una promesa central y crítica del relato de la smart city, basada en la descontextualización social sobre el uso práctico de las infraestructuras desplegadas en la ciudad, tal como apuntan Bell y Dourish (2006):

“They are sites of negotiation and contest, compromise and coordination, approximation and partial agreement. They are unevenly distributed and unevenly available. They are continually in flux, and brought into local stability only through active engagement and coordination. Infrastructure itself is a relational property; it describes a relationship between technology, people, and practice. In this environment, then, thinking of infrastructure as stable, as uniform, as seamless, and as universally available is clearly problematic. It is not merely a dream of a world not yet realized; it is a dream of a world that could never be realized.”

----
BELL, Genevieve y Paul DOURISH (2006) “Yesterday´s tomorrows: notes on ubiquitous computing´s dominant vision”, en Personal Ubiquitous Computing 2006
GALLOWAY, Anne (2008), A Brief History of the Future of Urban Computing and Locative Media, disertación de tesis doctoral, Carleton University Ottawa
GREENFIELD, Adam (2006) Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, New Riders Publishing, Berkeley
GREENFIELD, Adam y Mark SHEPARD (2007) Urban computing and its discontents, situated Technologies Pamphets 1, The Architectural League of New York, New York
GREENFIELD, Adam (2013) Against the smart city, Do Projects, Nueva York
McCULLOUGH, Malcolm (2014) Ambient commons. Attention in the age of embodied information, MIT Press, Cambridge
----
Tras la primera presentación que hice de la estructura de la tesis (The myths behind the smart city technological imaginary (PhD brief notes #1)), a partir de ahora iré publicando algunos retazos del texto, que va avanzando. En algunos casos serán notas bastante desestructuradas o incluso una sucesión de citas, pero igual sirven como guía para entender cómo va evolucionado los temas que voy trabajando, qué referencias nuevas van apareciendo, etc. 

Book: Ambient commons. Attention in the age of embodied information

Acabo de terminar de leer Ambient commons. Attention in the age of embodied information. El libro me interesa porque el autor, Malcolm McCullough, es uno de esos nuevos descubrimientos que estoy encontrando en el proceso de la tesis, principalmente por su libro Digital ground. Architecture, pervasive computing, and environmental knowing. Ambient commons ha resultado un libro algo más alejado de mis intereses de lo que esperaba pero, al mismo tiempo, se trata de un texto que abre muchas opciones porque es, ante todo, un libro amplio en cuanto a los temas que aborda, siempre con los medios digitales como centro de atención.

Básicamente, se trata de un estudio en torno a la atención en la sociedad conectada y, en especial, sobre las contradicciones y problemáticas que genera la extensión de soportes, dispositivos, infraestructuras y aplicaciones digitales que  han dejado de ser invisibles y forman parte sustancial del espacio físico. Diferentes dispositivos colonizan nuestra forma de movernos en la ciudad, las fachadas de los edificios, el propio funcionamiento de los mismos, etc. y pelean por atraer nuestra atención. La información, así, traspasa nuestra memoria y nuestros ojos y toma forma física entre la intrusión, la utilidad, la superabundancia o la contaminación sensorial. La vida ordinaria y los objetos más cotidianos han incorporado estas capas de información valiéndose de recursos de diseño urbano y arquitectónico para configurar nuevos recursos culturales del entorno que habitamos. Su presencia, a fuerza de imponerse de manera desordenada, gradual y pervasiva, se hace inconsciente en nuestras decisiones y transacciones diarias, pero modifica nuestra capacidad de comprender y leer la ciudad y nuestra propia vida.

Estas son algunas de las reflexiones de fondo del autor a la hora de desarrollar un texto a caballo entre muchas disciplinas, desde la arquitectura a las ciencias de la computación, pasando por la psicología, la epistemología, el diseño de interacción o la neurociencia. Así, McCullough ofrece una lectura de la realidad (y sus implicaciones) sobre la experiencia tecnológica de la computación urbana en temas tan específicos como las señales y anuncios que pueblan las ciudades, el arte urbano, las fachadas, los edificios inteligentes, el aire,  y las condiciones de confort,  los mapas y el wayshowing o la música y el sonido. Con ello, la propuesta del autor quiere ser una llamada de atención a considerar con mayor preocupación esta generalización de dispositivos en los diferentes elementos de la ciudad. Frente a al tecno-determinismo fatalista hace falta una lectura cultural de la transformación del espacio urbano en todas sus dimensiones (con una llamada de atención especial del autor al silencio como especie en peligro de extinción) que nos permita tomar el control sobre lo que el autor considera un procomún, las condiciones sensoriales de la ciudad. A través de una multitud de ejemplos de experiencias cotidianas, proyectos y lecturas, el libro es una invitación –una más, nunca suficientes- a evitar la banalización tecnológica para que no sea demasiado tarde:

“Social historians often warn of the unintended consequences of sudden infatuations with new technologies. Just as Americans rushed to do anything and everything in cars half a century ago, so, today, people worldwide are rushing to do anything and everything on socially linked smart devices, often all at once. It was decades before experts recognized the physical, social, and environmental health consequences of overreliance on the automobile. How long will it take to recognize the consequences of much wider overreliance on smart devices?”

Aquí dos reseñas de Dan Hill y David Bollier.

Tesis. Imaginarios tecnológicos en la ciudad conectada

Como ya he ido comentado alguna vez en el blog, desde hace unos meses estoy trabajando en la tesis doctoral. Viejo proyecto aparcado allá por 2002 tras realizar los cursos de doctorado, con esta nueva fase profesional y personal se abría una oportunidad para tener un aliciente para escribir la tesis. Cosas de los diferentes planes de estudios que ha habido mientras estaba fuera del mundo universitario, ¡qué mejor aliciente que tener el plazo de febrero de 2016 para completarla!

No es una ambición académica. No me interesa nada la carrera académica, entre otras cosas porque estar fuera de ella durante tanto tiempo te convierte en un completo outsider y, esta es mi experiencia e impresión, una vez que estás fuera (y he estado fuera durante doce años), las barreras de entrada son absolutas. Al menos, tal como hemos montado el sistema aquí.

Es más una ambición por tener una excusa para investigar, leer y escribir de manera más organizada. Echo la vista atrás y este blog ha sido una magnífica herramienta para mis investigaciones, siempre de manera intuitiva, desorganizada y poco sistemática. Pero el paso de los años ha ido dejando un poso que quería aprovechar para estructurar mejor algunas cosas. Porque, a pesar de estar fuera de la academia y haberme dedicado a esa cosa genérica llamada consultoría en cualquiera de sus formas, me siento principalmente investigador. Investigador simplemente como resumen de un impulso personal primario: leer y escribir antes de tener una opinión formada (y ni siquiera por tenerla). Investigador artesanal quizá.

Pero también hay una razón más práctica. De la misma forma que no veo razón alguna para aspirar a entrar en la universidad en España, la tesis doctoral es un salvoconducto, un título habilitante, un identificador, un pasaporte. Es así. Te reconocen como doctor o nada. Y en estos meses, en dos momentos la oportunidad de salir a trabajar fuera se ha presentado muy cercana y, entre otras razones, no tener la tesis ha supuesto un obstáculo para algo que tarde o temprano se dará tal como andan las cosas por aquí. De mientras, la tesis es un incentivo, una excusa para construir una rutina de investigación y desarrollar un algo con sentido. Así de anti-académico siento que es el inicio, pero suficientemente estimulante.

Al mismo tiempo, también apostaría ahora a que no la termino, al menos en el plazo previsto. Estoy convencido, pero tengo que auto-engañarme. No importa si no llego. Sólo por el esfuerzo que está suponiendo en forma de producción de textos y de solidificar ideas, ya está valiendo la pena. Pero es cierto que en el día a día, la rutina es difícil de conseguir. Y el tiempo también es escaso entre viajes, proyectos y cuidados. De la misma forma, cambiar el registro a un formato y a un tono académico es casi una tortura, acostumbrado como estoy a formatos más ligeros y menos encorsetados. Por eso también creo que estoy aún en modo muy poco académico y creo que en el fondo, el problema no será el plazo sino simplemente llegar a la conclusión de que “esto no es una tesis doctoral”. Y tampoco importará mucho.

Otra cuestión ha sido elegir el tema de la tesis. Inicialmente aposté por el tema del urbanismo adaptativo y, en concreto, las formas institucionales y normativas de flexibilizar el urbanismo para admitir usos transitorios y otra serie de apropiaciones del espacio y el equipamiento público en desuso. Pero durante el proceso para matricular la tesis –durante el cual, por cierto, descubrí que hasta algo tan simple se puede convertir en una gran aventura en la universidad española si pretendes cambiar de facultad, de estudios de procedencia, etc., hasta el punto de perder un buen tiempo en el intento- he estado centrado en otros temas. En especial, la preparación de dos artículos (Smart cities of the future? It is already happening, but not in the way we are being told y La desilusión de las smart cities) me llevo a cambiar de idea, sobre todo cuando el último fue tomando unas dimensiones mayores de las esperadas.

Así que definitivamente, desde hace unos meses y posiblemente durante los próximos diez, una buena parte del tiempo irá dedicada a trabajar sobre Imaginarios tecnológicos en la ciudad conectada. Un título aún provisional, pero suficiente para centrar el tema.

El planteamiento de la tesis se basa en la revisión del discurso subyacente en la visión predominante de las smart cities como imaginario tecnológico dominante en la ciudad contemporánea. El objetivo principal es ofrecer un marco de análisis para comprender las preconcepciones que están detrás de esta determinada visión del papel de las tecnologías digitales en las ciudades. Este imaginario discursivo y práctico remite a la eficiencia en el consumo de recursos, la eficiencia en la gestión de los servicios públicos, la automatización y predicción de comportamientos y necesidades o la reducción de la complejidad urbana a una serie de variables críticas, aspectos centrales en la configuración de las políticas urbanas.

El trabajo propone una lectura desde las políticas públicas sobre la inteligencia urbana y el reconocimiento de una utilización de las tecnologías digitales que ya está sucediendo y que no pasa necesariamente por la mediación de las instituciones -ni forma parte de los proyectos de inversión-marketing de las smart cities- pero que ofrece nuevas posibilidades de colaboración y organización colectiva aprovechando las tecnologías en red para construir un imaginario tecnológico cercano a la experiencia cotidiana de la vida en la ciudad.

Percibo que desarrollar un trabajo así fuera de la vida universitaria (con sus congresos, seminarios, publicación de artículos, docencia,…) dificulta mucho las cosas. Las opciones para contrastar con otras personas, para discutir o descubrir nuevas ideas, para encontrar plazos intermedios a través de los cuáles avanzar nuevos textos, disponer de contactos habituales con otros centros de investigación,…son opciones que, sin disponer de ellas, me parecen muy útiles o, al menos, un aliciente para no distraerse y mantener el pulso. Alone in the wilderness. A cambio, supongo que tengo que buscarme mis propios espacios. Las conferencias siempre han sido un buen aliciente, al igual que los artículos que me piden de vez en cuando. En este último caso, el compromiso de aportar un artículo para el próximo número de Arte y políticas de identidad: La ciudad como interfaz: arte, juego y tecnología en el espacio público, es la principal excusa a corto plazo, de manera que el verano, igual que el año pasado, y contra todo pronóstico, se convierte en un periodo productivo para avanzar. También la participación en algunos de los proyectos en los que estoy involucrado (UrbanIxD, Madrid Laboratorio Urbano,…) sirven igualmente no sólo para “quitarme tiempo” para la tesis, sino para poder tener pequeños espacios de relación con otras personas, colectivos, instituciones y profesionales que son inspiración y aliciente para seguir avanzando.

Como aspiración, sí me gustaría que durante los próximos meses encuentre la forma de organizar algún tipo de actividad alrededor de la investigación en forma de seminarios o encuentros de trabajo. De nuevo, algo que intuyo sería mucho más fácil dentro de la universidad, pero no es el caso. En un mundo ideal, sería genial poder contar con un espacio de trabajo y discusión con algunos autores que están influyendo mucho en el avance de la investigación, para poder discutir y avanzar conceptos que estoy trabajando. Pero, de mientras, algunos encuentros como el último para el booksprint del que salió Urban interaction design: towards city-making me van salvando la papeleta. Por supuesto, también está el director de tesis, Imanol Zubero, que me está poniendo todas las facilidades posibles.

En su momento, pensé en abrir un canal de difusión para abrir la investigación. Sin embargo, por economía de tiempo y salud mental, lo he descartado. Al fin y al cabo, para eso ya está este blog y los diferentes canales que lo alimentan (Tumblr, Delicious, Twitter,…). Seguramente por eso el blog últimamente respira mucho este tema y sería complicarme mucho la vida publicar notas de investigación, reseñas de lecturas y demás en un espacio específico. Pero no descarto que aparezcan de forma esporádica en el blog, sobre todo pensando en ir publicando borradores o avances de algunos capítulos, compartiendo bibliografía, etc.

Así que este es el plan.

Urban Interaction Design - Online Conversation

As a follow-up of Urban Interaction Design: Towards City Making, which meant to be a collaborative effort to set some roots to help understand the emerging field of urban interaction design and turned live some days ago as a book/pamphlet, UrbanIxD have opened an online conversation:

In this book, the eight co-authors, who come from many different backgrounds, establish what they propose as the FOUNDATIONS of urban ixd, and then they point to five TRENDS which they see as central to the field. The five trends are: Amateur Professionals Reshaping Cities, Rethinking City-Making Institutions, Urban Product and Platform Reciprocity, Sharing Tools for Sharing, Designing for Digital Ownership in Cities.
The core tenet is that a confluence of fields is happening out of necessity, and that the trends manifest themselves through activities and people working together. The book uses a wide variety from cities and organizations around the world to draw up a picture of urban ixd. The outcome traces an overall outline of emerging city making practices which in some ways are challenging established urban planning.

Along with Tobias Revell and Han Pham, and hosted by Martin Brynskov, I will be part of the conversation for the next ten days, discussing the character and relevance of the emerging field of urban interaction design. You can follow the conversation as a series of question-responses rounds and let´s see how the experiment works. You can comment or contribute directly on the site as the three of us share our thoughts.

The not-so-new science of cities

The idea of a new science of cities sounds catchy, particularly after it became popular thanks to a Geoffrey West´s talk at TED. It was a superficial but very effective way to show urban complexity through equations, graphics and a set of laws allegedly behind how cities work and grow. If you are familiar with this blog, you know I resist this idea or, in a few more words, the implications of over-simplifying urban studies into a patterns, predictability, etc.

Of course, this can mean a great contribution, but there is the risk to understand these findings and research as a complete roadmap for urban studies. Michael Batty has been on this topic for decades and has a wide understanding of tools, frameworks and methods to approach cities as complex systems that comprise a science of networks, flows and connections to unveil.  His newest book, The new science of cities, is a compilation of techniques and decision-making models built on his previous research and the work developed at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. As a matter of fact, the title does not merit Batty´s point of view on the quest for this “new” “science” of cities, as the book is clear on this: those looking for an “integrated science that is nicely packaged and available to apply immediately will be disappointed. No such package exists, and it probably never will. Like physics, it might seem as though the field should aspire to an integrated theory… but as in physics too, this is a mirage.” So, first caution is overcome.

One of the main contributions of the book is that it serves as an excursus on the history of urban complexity studies and research, clearly showing that the claim for a new science (mostly determined by smart city and big data enthusiastic proponents with a short perspective of where we come from on urban studies) is not new. The book acknowledges these previous efforts and the incrementality of this field of knowledge. In fact, Batty recently shared on his blog just another piece of research written in 1967 on a science of cities: “Amazingly as far back as January 1967, we were quite literally talking about ‘a science of cities’, using the cliche. Jennifer Light’s book From Warfare to Welfare published in 2003 recounts the optimism of the 1960s in which many believed that one could import the products of the space program specifically and the military industrial complex more generally into tools that we might used for solving the urban crisis. In America this was the crisis of segregation and poverty in cities as well as traffic congestion, housing conditions and endemic decay (...) But we tend to forget that we have been here before in the 1960s and it is well worth looking at what was said then. The pamphlet referred to was produced by Volta Torrey for HUD (Housing and Urban Development) and published in January 1967. (...) Its contents make fascinating reading, and those of us who are scholars of urban and planning history will be intrigued by its perspective. The world is very different now but the sentiments are much the same”. From Ildefons Cerdá to Patrick Geddes, the foundations for a genuine science of cities has been attractive as a way to sum up the knowledge from different fields with a new set of scientific tools, laws (the Seven laws of scaling in chapter 1) and new ways for spatial representation (again, a great review of historic stages from the 19th century). By the way, this is something Anthony Townsend covers in his book (especially in the Cybernetics redux chapter), with a great review of previous attempts to build a positivist and mechanical framework for urban studies in the ´60s through computer models.

This book can probably serve as a guidebook for those interested in using the techniques of complexity theory using the chapters as independent resources. But, to someone like me, more comfortable dealing with critical analysis and strategic implications of digital technologies in urban life, the book is also a handhold to understand the balanced role these tools can offer to urban studies, particularly in the field of smart cities and quantitative urbanism. The core point on the emerging topic of this science of cities is to what extent we can expect a comprehensive understanding of cities based on mathematical models, but as Andrew Karvonen reviews, Batty´s science “is incremental, uncertain, and modest rather than comprehensive and predictive”. In this sense, how these complexity tools can inform urban design and decision making is framed in the book as a contribution to other disciplines, and it is the mix of all of them what can constitute the best knowledge on understanding cities, and assuming there will be still, always, black holes:

”The kind of rudimentary science that was largely physicalist a century ago was regarded as being central to a professional concern that was quite separate from the city itself. The notion that planning might actually make matters worse was simply not part of this intellectual agenda, until, however, experience with such interventions began to accumulate. By the 1970s, Rittel and Webber (1973) in their review of planning theory were suggesting that many urban problems were what they called “wicked”, (and here I recall Usman Haque) since intended improvements often intensified the problems they were designed to solve. (...) Insofar as our science is being used to inform planning, it is now part of a much wider dialog in which many different perspectives –many different sciences, if you like- are brought to bear on urban problem solving” (p. 302).

Good to hear that. It may seem obvious, but it is always good to keep in mind this when we are being overloaded with reductionist –but easy to celebrate- visions of urban research and policy making.

Smart cities in present tense - Notes from my talk at #reworkcities (London, December 13th)

Here are the notes from my talk at Re·Work Cities summit that was held last Friday in London. As you can see, my intervention was mostly based on my essay for Smart Citizens book, Smart cities of the future? It´s already happening, but not in the way we are being told, and was basically an invitation to describe and understand the smart cities in present tense.

The session was prepared as a brainstorming meeting conducted by Scott Cain and titled Cities of Tomorrow: Challenges for Integration with Future Cities Catapult. It was great to share the time with Andrew Hudson-Smith (University College London), Paula Hirst (Disruptive Urbanism) and Lean Doody (Arup) and explore the challenges Future Cities Catapult is dealing with.

I brought to the table three main ideas:

• Technology alone is not the enough and this basic premise, which seems so obvious, is not well embedded in the smart city narrative, I will explain it later.
• There´s no need to wait for smart cities to happen or for others to let people transform the city with their own hands. 
• We need to raise questions and have a critical mindset on the implications of these technologies.

Regarding to what extent technology can play a role in our current and future cities, I find this cartoon very illustrative. With the same technology, you can have very different outcomes and consequences that shape our cities and the way we live. Just imagine how different urban mobility could have been in the last decades, and how different our cities and city life could be. Because design decisions implicitly mean certain assumptions, priorities and conceptions about society. To me this is an invitation to add context to technology or, as Saskia Sassen usually says, urbanizing technology.

My second point was this: distrust the smart city rhetoric that sets the promises in the future. Of course we will see great things to come, but my point is that we have to acknowledge what is going on today and the kind of things citizens can already do without any mediator with the technologies we already have. It´s not, in fact, a dichotomy. We need both approaches, but we should have a more balanced view if we want to make the smart city claim something meaningful for everyday life.

If we are thinking about smart cities, we have to critically examine what they mean and I am not sure the smart city narrative is considering this kind of questions. I must admit I get nervous sometimes when I hear about smart cities. The narrative usually employs certain concepts that are easier to mention than to really understand their meaning in urban life. Consider, for example, the Intelligent Operations Centre in Rio de Janeiro seems to be the ultimate representation of the smart city canonical ideal: a real-time mirror to watch the city and predict, adapt and react to everything that is controlled under a complex and expensive system of data flows.

I wonder if this really fits with the cultural shift we are living. Concepts such as peer to peer, commons, distributed production, open source, social hardware, open data,...are becoming core features of our daily life. And cities should be coherent with this and build their systems in this way (and here if where I could not have enough time to go into much detail about these projects):

• With the same raw material, but for very different users, purposes and possibilities, a City Dashboard like this one, developed by Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, can be delivered on an open framework.
• Smart cities are also about community-based organisations working with open-source tools and accessible Do-It-Yourself techniques for civic science.
• We have available tools like the Smart Citizen Kit to be active citizens instead of just passive data generators.
• And we have the tools to create solutions where public authorities fail to offer them, like this project that copes with the lack of reliable transport information systems.
• There are thousands of hacker spaces and media labs organising people to create local solutions and digitally-based civic engagement processes. And this is how a smart city becomes real.
• We have the tools to co-create and design public services in a co-operative way.
• Smart cities are about solutions to create urban interaction design systems to enhance public life in living innovation zones.
• And they are about transforming the public space by digital means to create new contexts for participation and to enjoy the city.

In the end, future cities will be, more or less, quite the same as we know them today and I think we need to keep an optimistic view of the cities we already have. And learn from Jane Jacobs who, of course without knowing, was an expert on smart cities.

Just finished with some remarks for the following debate:

• Citizens won´t buy into smart cities unless they find them meaningful
• DNA of smart cities potential is that they can empower people
• Smart city industry, consider interaction design in your innovation process
• Think smart city solutions in a broad perspective as services, not as products
• Acknowledge digital social innovation as the smart cities in practice
• Always explore the consequences for people and communities
• We need to work on smart cities from a cross-disciplinary perspective

You can check the presentation I used here:

Smart cities of the future? It´s already happening, but not in the way we are being told from Manu Fernández

Interviewed by Chronos Group on smart cities: control vs. empowerment

Some weeks ago I shared a good time chatting with Caroline de Francqueville from Chronos Group discussing some ideas around smart cities and its social and political implications. As a result, the interview is now published on their blog. It is part of a series in which other authors (read here the interview with Anthony Townsend - by the way, I am just now enjoying reading his new book, Smart cities: big data, civic hackers and the quest for a new utopia after some months waiting for it and soon I will post a review) address different topics on urban futures.

If you are a usual reader of this blog, you will probably find most of the main ideas I usually insist on dealing with smart cities, the underlying discourse and the role of citizens in a networked society, but it is fun to read them in French :-)

Here is an excerpt:

A l'heure des débats autour de la smart city, Manu Fernández choisit un positionnement critique pour révéler ses dérives potentielles. A la manière de Dan Hill, Anthony Townsend, Adam Greenfield et d'autres encore, il apparaît à la fois fasciné par les promesses du numérique, et inquiet de l'instrumentalisation dont il fait l'objet. Les entreprises du secteur tentent chacune d'imposer leur définition de la ville intelligente à l'aune des produits et services qu'elles proposent.

Pour ce consultant espagnol, nous devons nous départir d'une approche naïve qui verrait nécessairement dans les technologies numériques des outils d'empowerment pour les individus. La révélation récente de partage de données personnelles issues de Facebook, Google ou You Tube - pour ne citer qu'eux - avec l'Agence nationale de sécurité (NSA) américaine illustre cette mise en garde. Une bataille de pouvoir est en train de se jouer entre les tenants d'une vision descendante et ceux qui privilégient une approche ascendante. La réelle valeur de la smart city ne réside pas dans la capacité d'automatiser, par exemple, le fonctionnement d'un système d'éclairage grâce à des outils de détection de présence. Elle tient dans le potentiel d'auto-organisation et de prise de décision personnelle et collective, dans la possibilité offerte aux citadins de créer leurs propres services et de développer leurs propres solutions pour vivre en ville.

(...)

Quel sera l'héritage des smart cities ?
Je suis un assez mauvais futurologue mais j'essaie de susciter des débats. Deux scénarios s'offrent à nous. Le premier correspond à celui décrit par des experts comme Dan Hill. Une vision de la rue comme plateforme, un réseau distribué dans lequel les individus peuvent interagir avec leur environnement, grâce aux technologies numériques. Dans le second scénario, la ville intelligente évolue vers un système encore plus centralisé qu'il ne l'est actuellement où ceux qui détiennent le pouvoir en obtiennent encore davantage. Dans ce cas, nul développement social n'intervient et les problématiques de sécurité liées à la vie privée peuvent atteindre un seuil vraiment critique.

J'espère bien entendu que le premier scénario se réalisera. Tout dépend cependant de la capacité des citadins à se saisir des opportunités qui s'offrent à eux. Je suis assez sceptique quant à la capacité des entreprises et des villes à aller seules dans cette direction. Nous sommes à un moment critique : en tant qu'individus, entreprises, villes, nous devons prendre conscience du fait que nous nous situons à la croisée de ces chemins et qu'il nous revient de choisir la voie à suivre. Nous devons nous départir d'une approche naïve qui tendrait à croire que les technologies numériques sont des outils d'empowerment pour les individus. Elles ne sont pas neutres et une bataille de pouvoir est en train de se jouer.

Read the complete version of the interview: Entretien avec Manu Fernandez, consultant et chercheur en stratégie urbaine chez Human Scale City.

Dissecting some underlying assumptions of the smart city discourse

IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING BUT NOT IN THE WAY WE ARE BEING TOLD

I have just finished a two-months period writing two articles that will appear soon. One will be a short article in English for a book focused on the role of citizens in the smart city and I am glad to be part of the list of authors (most of them have been so inspiring to me in the last years). Wait until the first days of December.

The other one is more exhaustive, with more details, references and quotations. More academic, let´s say. It will be part of a collective book in Spanish on new discourses on the city and I was commissioned to write about smart cities. I took it as a chance to put some order on my writings and clarify some of the topics I have been sharing about why the idea of smart cities that has become mainstream is not meaningful for citizens. It will be published in December, I guess.

It covers a state of the art, but, particularly, a dissection of some underlying myths in that vision (in a few words) and how these risks and misconceptions can lead to disillusionment: 

• Operational efficiency of local governments as the main objective, confusing the city council with the whole city.
• Weak use of sustainability claims, without an overall understanding of environmental implications and with poor attention on some background knowledge from urban ecology.
• Useless simplification of urban complexity.
• Pretended neutrality of data.
• Depolitization of urban debates and social conflicts.
• Technological smugness and over-representation of technology means to address non-technological issues.

The article concludes with some notes suggesting practices and concepts to be favoured in the search of a citizen-centered smart city. It tries to address a new reading of what is already happening out of the spotlight to acknowledge projects, practices and actors exploring how to make the smart city something meaningful and relevant. I feel this is the part that still lacks a deeper elaboration, but I am quite happy with the three sections. As you can see, it´s not a technology analysis, nor an assessment of implementation projects, but a discursive review of the assumptions behind a certain vision of the intersection of cities and digital technologies. The title, "The disappointment of the smart city" -I am so bad with titles and it is actually a slight reminiscence of Urban computing and its discontents- refers to the frustrating distance between the celebrated theoretical promises and the reality of urban living and certain practices and alternative approaches that do not find their place in the more established version of smart cities. It does not mean destructive skepticism, but a balanced contribution to build a broader understanding on the implication of all these technologies we are already living with for the sake of our cities and their citizens. If not, failed promises will arise unless these misconceptions are tackled in the way projects are designed.

It took me a lot of time and, in fact, I ended up with a three times longer version than the threshold of words I was asked. So, I will probably find some more time in the next weeks for a refined and extended version that could constitute a book (whatever a book is nowadays, but at least an extensive and structured writing). In the meantime, I will try to find a way to translate this article into English. It´s been such an effort to put all those paragraphs and chapters together in a logical way, and after submitting the article I realized it turned out to be a detailed writing I am comfortable enough with, and an invitation to go a little bit further in the next weeks to close the circle. I will try to wait for the three books I am eager to read this year that will be published soon, as I am sure all of them will be an inspiration and a great contribution for a wider perspective on what smart cities imply from a citizen perspective. I would also like to contrast and refine some ideas in workshops and public talks (at Re·Work Cities in London, December 13th, for instance), in the coming weeks to have a more accurate book version.

(Note: I regret to say I am not really sure if I can give more details about both books until they are published, but keep posted here for updates).

Code/Space. Software and everyday life

This book by Rob Kitchin (National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis, National University of Ireland, Maynooth) and Martin Dodge (Department of Geography, the University of Manchester) has been for some months on my to-read list of books. For someone that doesn´t come from a software background, the intersection of code and space is an approximation to understand the role of software in shaping our world from social sciences perspective. If Everyware was an open window to the emerging –remarkably considering the year it was written- expanded presence of invisible zeros and ones in our daily life, Code/Spaces puts more light into recent developments and prospects on ambient intelligence in its multiple forms.

Planning, geography or regional studies seem to have lost the run on influencing and analysing the smart city concept to some extent, precisely when it has become more than evident the personal and collective implications of different software assemblages in all social spheres. This book proposes a descriptive genealogy of the different forms the transduction of code and space takes. Particularly relevant to me is the analytical framework to understand the different classes of coded objects, "objects that have code physically embedded into their material form, altering endogenously their ongoing relations with the world". Ranging from digital timers embedded in home appliances and USB memory sticks to GPS trackers to cell phones or security monitoring systems.

All these objects, with their extended presence in public spaces, productive systems, personal sphere of devices or homes, create a new "spatialities of everyday life" taking an active role in creating new forms of relationships between people and particularly in everyday systems like consumption systems, homes or air travel (the three systems covered in-depth in the book). Thus, this research offers a framework to understand code/spaces as those –as opposed to coded spaces- whose functionality is completely dependent on software in its diverse array of uses in different objects so that any fail or malfunctioning implies the impossibility to use them in a traditional way. In this sense, the book also explores the everyware paradigm termed by Adam Greenfield to look into different approaches often used synonymously: pervasive, ubiquitous, sentient, tangible and wearable computing, showing the different forms, functionality and impact software can imply in everyday objects. At the same time, authors take a step further from descriptive purposes, bringing to the table some conflicting issues such as empowerment, surveillance, uneven distribution of objects, networks and Access or the risks of automation.

As a final but critical contribution to further research efforts, the book includes "A manifesto for software studies" as a research agenda in the spatialization of software. One could possibly argue, as I often do, that there is a risk to make a deterministic understanding of the role of technologies and the current spectacularization of smart technologies contributes to hide more complex social and political questions. The production of space is a critical a complex topic approached from different perspectives and especially in the last decades, and a wider link with them would raise more critical topics: resistance to invasive applications, software production processes, democratic or autocratic use of technology, ownership,…. Precisely, Everyware (and other, of course) shows some clear design options to avoid a mere passive role people seem to have in a vision of software/life interaction in which everything is inevitable.

Anyhow, there is a growing need to understand the role of technology in everyday life going beyond celebratory songs and acritical utopian visions and this book is an open door to do so.

Week picks #15

URBAN IXD

UrbanIxD is a Coordination Action project, running from 2013-2014, for the European Commission under the Future and Emerging Technologies programme. This Coordination Action will define a coherent multidisciplinary research community working in the domain of technologically augmented, data-rich urban environments, with particular focus on the human activities, experiences and behaviours that occur within them (Interaction Design).

A transformation is taking place in how our cities work. Cites are being laced with sensors and mobile technologies that are generating a myriad of urban informatics experiences. A digital landscape overlays our physical world and is expanding to offer ever-richer experiences. In the cities of the future, computing isn’t just with us; it surrounds us, and it uses the context of our environment to empower us in more natural, yet powerful ways.

By employing a Critical Design methodology the UrbanIxD project will provide an opportunity to re-think what intelligent connected communities of the future might actually look like. It will question the premise of the smart city and will develop a community of researchers with a shared commitment to the foregrounding of the human experience in the field of Urban Interaction Design.

TUMML

Tumml is an urban impact accelerator supporting early stage companies developing innovative consumer products and services that improve urban living. Tumml connects entrepreneurs with funding, mentors, and a community of people dedicated to urban impact. Join us and be part of the urban impact revolution!

The first Tumml cohort will run from June 2013 through September 2013. Applications for the Summer 2013 cohort will open in March 2013.


Week picks series features every Friday some initiatives and projects I found or want to highlight on this blog. It will help me to track new findings from community groups, startups or local governments working and delivering solutions relevant to the issues of this blog. I often bookmark them or save them on Tumblr while I wait to use them. Maybe this a good way.

Daily scenes in an intelligent city

@manufernandez
These lines will surely seem naive, but I cannot resist sharing them. In the face of the abundance of sophisticated promises surrounding the idea of the intelligent city, to offer up daily anecdotes as proof that the intelligent city goes beyond the idea of technology could appear frivolous.

Take the example of public transport. We strive to create solutions that provide real-time automated information processing for users, offering screens and mobile phone applications to show waiting times, updating maps to locate the transportation fleet in the city, SMS warning systems, etc. We want instant information in real time in order to decide to catch the bus at one stop or another, to accelerate or adjust our pace in order to arrive before its passage.

And a woman sees the bus at the stop and starts to run to try and reach it. Will she make it? Does she run because she has looked at her mobile and it has advised her that the bus is about to leave? No, simply that she has it in sight and has noticed that all the passengers have already boarded. There are just 30 meters between her and a 30 minute wait for the next one. And she makes it onto the bus, thanks to two intelligent actions: a group of kids gave way upon seeing her begin to run, assisting in her heated race. And a lady, waiting for another bus, has approached the bus on the verge of leaving and has asked the driver to wait, pointing to the woman who had less than 10 meters to go when the bus seemed to accelerate.

A metro comes to the station. The digital screens announce it is about to resume its movement. Hurried passengers swipe their tickets with "invisible" information about the type of ticket, the station of origin, the tariff they have paid. Some even approach with their smart cards, which include a system connected to their banks in order to pay for trips without the need to recharge them or buy tickets. Four exit doors, that only open if the passenger has a valid ticket. They are the same four doors available for entry. Thirty people exit and occupy all the doors, making it impossible to enter for the two people waiting outside, who had seen the metro arrive. They will miss the train, even now with their smart cards. But among those leaving a person has stopped and instead of validating his exit ticket, has decided to move out of the doorway. He makes those inside wait, in order to allow the people that want to board the train to do so. These two people are at last able to board the train, without knowing exactly how they have managed to do so.

A red light for pedestrians. With its LEDs and automated from an integrated city transportation control center. A young man waits for the light to turn green, on a street where cars circulate at about 50 km/h. He waits and notices, instinctively, that a small child approaches. Mechanically, almost without thinking, he extends his arm and stops the child in his path, on the verge of entering the crosswalk. He does not know what caused him to extend his hand, but while he thinks about it, the light turns green and he begins to walk, while the child's grandparents approach and one explains to the child not to let go of his hand.
Nine at night, time to take out the trash. The yellow dumpster is filled with waste. The man thinks doubtfully: Should I leave the bag next to the container? Should I leave it in the blue container? He thinks a second longer. He decides to take it back upstairs and try again the next day.

A playground. A chaos of shouts, bikes, balls, running children and adults chatting in different circles. Nobody knows it, but a child cries because she cannot find her mother, and on the other side of the park, a father looks uneasily for his daughter, who he has not seen for some time. It is a poorly lit park, but at least there are security cameras. A youth rapidly crosses the park, in a hurry. But he sees the child and stops. Speaking with her, he discovers that she is lost. He is an adult, a stranger speaking with a child. He stays with her until her father appears, scared, barely able to thank the young man as the youth leaves looking at his watch. He will arrive a little late for his appointment.

In either of these situations and increasingly, technology is present. Not the technology that we today call smart, but artifacts in the broadest sense. A bench in the street is also technology. The smart promise - in real time, ubiquitous, etc. - is just an additive that we can include thanks to technological advances. But in none of these cases is it decisive in resolving everyday situations, those real experiences of people who share city life and provide real solutions to other people living in the same city. When I wrote that the intelligence of a city is on the streets, I referred mainly to these situations. It is not a polar opposite to technological sophistication. On the contrary, it is a reminder that this sophistication needs to consider daily life in the city in order to avoid falling into the trap of technological determinism or to think that technology will solve people's everyday problems.

Every day, in every street, thousands of voluntary and involuntary acts facilitate (or hinder) life. The attitude of care and the awareness of sharing a common space are, in all cases, the most relevant aspects of these stories. I do not know if they are intelligent behaviors, but they are relevant. Including these key ideas in the design of technological solutions for urban functions is essential so that these solutions are user-oriented, are proportionate to the actual scope and reach that technological solutions can offer, are understandable and have a useful urban function. Including these types of features in technological projects implemented in cities would help to better understand how cities function, how citizens behave and how to integrate unpredictability as an essence of urban life.
See also:

• The intelligence of a city is on the streets
• A compilation of resources on smart cities
• Sentient City. El futuro del espacio urbano
• Everyware, la tecnología que ya está aquí y en todos lados
• Smart City. Tecnologías emergentes para el funcionamiento urbano
• De la ciudad sostenible a la smart city. No perder la perspectiva
• Smart City. Más allá de la gestión energética inteligente y las tecnologías digitales
• Smart city. Estrategia comercial empresarial y marca de nuevos desarrollos urbanos
• Smart City como movilización de capacidades tecnológicas locales y oportunidades industriales
• Smart city. Implicaciones políticas y sociales
• Laboratorios urbanos sin personas. Del barrio alemán en Utah a la Ciudad smart en Nuevo Mexico
• Libro. From social butterfly to engaged citizen

The intelligence of a city is on the streets

@manufernandez
I recommend listening closely to this speech by Adam Greenfield, founder of Urbanscale and one of the people with the clearest ideas about the role technology can play in urban life. As a pioneer of urban computing, his book Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing -you can read a review I wrote some weeks ago- is a reference on ubiquitous computing and its presence in constructed environments. A brief work in the form of an interview, Urban Computing and its Discontents, is also required reading for anyone approaching these issues, in order to understand the dilemmas in the interaction between the digital and physical space in a city. They are works that have been around long enough to understand, in the first place, that nothing falling under the label of smart city is new (here you have a good selection of books on the subject in the last ten years that gives some perspective) and, in second place, let us see how many promises have been fulfilled and how much there has been and remains of exaggerated optimism about the value of digital technologies in cities.

Smart City is an expression I try to avoid, precisely because in its current state it has only served to confuse things. I prefer to speak of technologies for urban services when I think of improving public services, and civic empowerment enabling technologies when it comes to new forms of digital intervention in the collective creation of the city or simply in city life experiences. That is all about. Furthermore, it is an absolutely misleading expression and those who use it more often recognize they do not know its meaning. It is necessary to scale down to street level for example, in order to understand the value of technology in daily life. To see the city from above as the generic idea of a smart city does, allows us to see certain needs (energy distribution networks, traffic flows, etc.), but it does not provide sufficient clarity to see the real life of the city and its citizens. And that life takes place on a smaller scale, which is where we can discover small daily interactions among people and between people and urban services, and find new innovations that are really necessary and that have better chances of success. It is this scale that allows us to understand what real needs we have to use public transport more, what real obstacles exist to creating viable business models for automated real-time parking information systems. The street is a dynamic space where we can find more daily applications that permit us to use the full potential of the city in its interaction between the physical and the digital. Some time ago, Dan Hill called it the street a platform.


Adam Greenfield on Another City is Possible / PICNIC Festival 2011 from PICNIC on Vimeo.
We have new players speaking intensely about the city and promising it will be smart. They are newcomers to the discussion about cities and are acting with exaggerated optimism and an almost total lack of perspective on the cities the seek to serve. An avant-garde rhetoric to which they add sustainability objectives in order to legitimize their business strategies, but without knowing hardly anything about urban ecology, urban sociology or even the social life of public spaces. Neither do different industries seem to agree. About this, Anthony Townsend raises an idea that I think is fundamental when it comes to focusing on the technological developments that companies want to make in smart cities:

But have only the foggiest notions about what people might do with it. It's a vision of the city driven by a product. We've made that mistake before. In the 20th century, when we let General Motors convince us to design our cities around cars. We can't make that mistake again.

It is clear that companies working with any kind of techonology that can improve urban services have to focus on their products for sale. But it is not enough to add certain additional technologies or redress existing products with a more sophisticated covering. If we really want to contribute to a better urban development, it will be necessary to design these products taking labs to the streets and meet the people that are expected to interact with them. There we will find non-technological design variables that will be decisive in ensuring the products are useful. Yes, Masdar, Incheon or Songo are large projects that give us an idea of the nature and scale with which we are capable of intervening in this territory. But they are no more than contradictory ideas to the very concept of cities as places with memory, history and conflict. They are only examples of an exaggerated technological optimism and an unjustified pessimism about the cities we have; and we lose sight of the primary goal, which is none other than to have better conditions to satisfy the opportunities and capabilities of the people who live there. Lavasa (India) is the perfect example to explain the disconnect between urban and smart, as it is being sold.

In 2011 I counted more than ten events of a certain category in Spain, where the main theme was smart cities. And in all of them an integrated perspective of the city was lacking, a broad vision of the city as a place and not as mere space over which to deploy sophisticated networks or to develop mobile applications. Events where slogans, examples and promises are repeated, mixing equal portions of the umpteenth reinvention of social networks, smart grids, or the latest sensor applications, in a crescendo difficult to understand and in which everything, anything, can bear a #smartcity label. But there is little trace of how to socially address the general use of video surveillance and facial recognition technologies, of how to deal with the sustainability of energy models beyond using technology, of how to understand an intelligent urban mobility model, for example.

Yes, we have the data. Yes we have important technological advances. We have, even trademarked, an urban operating system. But none of that will work, however much is bet, without an understanding of cities in their contexts. Like the failed futuristic visions of years ago. We speak of cities, naturally, because that is where the future of this urban world is headed. But let's put things in perspective before we make mistakes in the ways that daydreams about cities of the future have always been wrong. Start with Jane Jacobs. Any paragraph of The death and life of great American cities can be read today and implications found about the real value of technology in the city. Because the fascination produced by beautiful renderings of new cities in remote corners of the world, the interest awakened by any new iphone application, the potential contained in the release of public data, or the innovative character of smart grids are nothing without context. And the context is urban and is noticeably absent in most of the claims surrounding the smart city.
The best example of this is that news that, like many others, circulated uncritically a few months ago. Nothing less than a city without people in the New Mexico desert, built as a smart technology laboratory for cities. Accepting this kind of thinking is to move away from an open research model where technologies are test with users. Go into the street, which is the primary laboratory, and you will find more answers as to how to guide the development you undertake.

The real intelligence of cities lies is in the almost miraculous, unstable, spontaneous order of city life. The social relationships between people generate the functional intelligence of cities. Imperfect, conflicting, disastrous at times, always open to improvement. Technology only facilitates certain processes, and the logic of collective life will defeat any attempt to implement systems that exceed the required level of sophistication. The technology which gives intelligence to the city and makes things work is invisible and has to do with diversity, reciprocal trust, finding another or the ability to appropriate and build the city together. Technological determinism inevitably collides with the unpredictability and complexity of urban life if technologically sophisticated top-down strategies are employed at a time, furthermore, of budget constraints for local authorities.
See also:

• Sentient City. El futuro del espacio urbano
• Everyware, la tecnología que ya está aquí y en todos lados
• Escenas cotidianas en una ciudad inteligente
• La inteligencia de la ciudad está en la calle
• Smart City. Tecnologías emergentes para el funcionamiento urbano
• De la ciudad sostenible a la smart city. No perder la perspectiva
• Smart City. Más allá de la gestión energética inteligente y las tecnologías digitales
• Smart city. Estrategia comercial empresarial y marca de nuevos desarrollos urbanos
• Smart City como movilización de capacidades tecnológicas locales y oportunidades industriales
• Smart city. Implicaciones políticas y sociales
• Laboratorios urbanos sin personas. Del barrio alemán en Utah a la Ciudad smart en Nuevo Mexico
• Libro. From social butterfly to engaged citizen

Image taken from *USB* in Flickr under CC BY-SA 2.0 license