A City Is Not a Computer
Title | A City Is Not a Computer PDF eBook |
Author | Shannon Mattern |
Publisher | Princeton University Press |
Pages | 200 |
Release | 2021-08-10 |
Genre | Architecture |
ISBN | 069122675X |
A bold reassessment of "smart cities" that reveals what is lost when we conceive of our urban spaces as computers 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. A City Is Not a Computer 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, A City Is Not a Computer offers a visionary new approach to urban planning and design.
The Image of the City
Title | The Image of the City PDF eBook |
Author | Kevin Lynch |
Publisher | MIT Press |
Pages | 212 |
Release | 1964-06-15 |
Genre | Architecture |
ISBN | 9780262620017 |
The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.
What a City Is For
Title | What a City Is For PDF eBook |
Author | Matt Hern |
Publisher | MIT Press |
Pages | 267 |
Release | 2016-09-23 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 0262334070 |
An investigation into gentrification and displacement, focusing on the case of Portland, Oregon's systematic dispersal of black residents from its Albina neighborhood. Portland, Oregon, is one of the most beautiful, livable cities in the United States. It has walkable neighborhoods, bike lanes, low-density housing, public transportation, and significant green space—not to mention craft-beer bars and locavore food trucks. But liberal Portland is also the whitest city in the country. This is not circumstance; the city has a long history of officially sanctioned racialized displacement that continues today. Over the last two and half decades, Albina—the one major Black neighborhood in Portland—has been systematically uprooted by market-driven gentrification and city-renewal policies. African Americans in Portland were first pushed into Albina and then contained there through exclusionary zoning, predatory lending, and racist real estate practices. Since the 1990s, they've been aggressively displaced—by rising housing costs, developers eager to get rid of low-income residents, and overt city policies of gentrification. Displacement and dispossessions are convulsing cities across the globe, becoming the dominant urban narratives of our time. In What a City Is For, Matt Hern uses the case of Albina, as well as similar instances in New Orleans and Vancouver, to investigate gentrification in the twenty-first century. In an engaging narrative, effortlessly mixing anecdote and theory, Hern questions the notions of development, private property, and ownership. Arguing that home ownership drives inequality, he wants us to disown ownership. How can we reimagine the city as a post-ownership, post-sovereign space? Drawing on solidarity economics, cooperative movements, community land trusts, indigenous conceptions of alternative sovereignty, the global commons movement, and much else, Hern suggests repudiating development in favor of an incrementalist, non-market-driven unfolding of the city.
Computer Engineering for Babies
Title | Computer Engineering for Babies PDF eBook |
Author | Chase Roberts |
Publisher | |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2021-10-20 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9781735208701 |
An introduction to computer engineering for babies. Learn basic logic gates with hands on examples of buttons and an output LED.
Your Computer Is on Fire
Title | Your Computer Is on Fire PDF eBook |
Author | Thomas S. Mullaney |
Publisher | MIT Press |
Pages | 417 |
Release | 2021-03-09 |
Genre | Computers |
ISBN | 026253973X |
Technology scholars declare an emergency: attention must be paid to the inequality, marginalization, and biases woven into our technological systems. This book sounds an alarm: we can no longer afford to be lulled into complacency by narratives of techno-utopianism, or even techno-neutrality. We should not be reassured by such soothing generalities as "human error," "virtual reality," or "the cloud." We need to realize that nothing is virtual: everything that "happens online," "virtually," or "autonomously" happens offline first, and often involves human beings whose labor is deliberately kept invisible. Everything is IRL. In Your Computer Is on Fire, technology scholars train a spotlight on the inequality, marginalization, and biases woven into our technological systems.
Fundamentals of Computer Graphics
Title | Fundamentals of Computer Graphics PDF eBook |
Author | Peter Shirley |
Publisher | CRC Press |
Pages | 784 |
Release | 2009-07-21 |
Genre | Computers |
ISBN | 1439865523 |
With contributions by Michael Ashikhmin, Michael Gleicher, Naty Hoffman, Garrett Johnson, Tamara Munzner, Erik Reinhard, Kelvin Sung, William B. Thompson, Peter Willemsen, Brian Wyvill. The third edition of this widely adopted text gives students a comprehensive, fundamental introduction to computer graphics. The authors present the mathematical fo
The Road Ahead
Title | The Road Ahead PDF eBook |
Author | Bill Gates |
Publisher | Penguin Group |
Pages | 356 |
Release | 1996 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN |
In this clear-eyed, candid, and ultimately reassuring