Smart Cities are cities were technologies work together with the actual space in order to improve citizens’ lives. The democracy of information accessibility in a smart city allows every dweller the possibility of shaping the future of the city. Using smart technologies consents a rediscovery and a re-invention of governments in a “more open, transparent, democratic, and responsive model”. (pg.10, Townsend, 2013)
At The Connected City Summit (https://www.re-work.co/events/connected-city ) this year, Allison Dring is presenting elegant embellishments, a decorative architectural module used as façades outside buildings, which has the power to reduce air pollution in cities. The architectural modules has been used on the wall of a hospital in Mexico City and results say it is decreasing the equivalent pollution of 1000 cars per day.
As Mexico City Environmental Secretary Tanya Muller states in the video, is that such a project needs to be tried not only by one city in one building but on a larger scale, letting it become mandatory in the construction of new building in cities. Architecture alongside the use of information technology provides thus a better sustainably. Living in such a smart city is the valuable expression of what it could mean combining infrastructures and everyday objects “to address social, economic and environmental problems”. (pg.15, Townsend, 2013)
A smart city is in constant change and being able to build future cities that might auto-sustain themselves against climate change, to name one great issue, would be fundamental. A dialogue between urban architecture and planning could lead to a better efficiency if coordinated by media. It would be interesting to see some resolutions, for example, on how “ICT’s diffusion challenged the urban/countryside dichotomy, driving towards a phase of new “urban identities”. (Tarantino and Tosoni, 2013) Could similar projects being thought also for rural environments?
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References
Tarantino, M. & Tosoni, S., 2013. Introduction: Beyond the centrality of media and the centrality of space. First Monday, 18(11). Available at: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4953 [Accessed February 7, 2014].
Townsend, A.M., 2013. Smart cities: big data, civic hackers, and the quest for a new utopia, New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company: pp cover, xi-xiv preface
Re-Work, The Connected Cities Event 2016 https://www.re-work.co/events/connected-city
Elegant Embellishments [online], http://www.elegantembellishments.net/ [Accessed: 13 February 2016]
CNN, 2013, Mexico’s Smog Eating Building, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z34sFb7VXNw [Accessed: 13 Febraury 2016]