The book presents a comprehensive vision of the impact of ICT on the contemporary city, heritage, public spaces and meta-cities on both urban and metropolitan scales, not only in producing innovative perspectives but also related to newly discovered scientific methods, which can be used to stimulate the emerging reciprocal relations between cities and information technologies. Using the principles established by multi-disciplinary interventions as examples and then expanding on them, this book demonstrates how by using ICT and new devices, metropolises can be organized for a future that preserves the historic nucleus of the city and the environment while preparing the necessary expansion of transportation, housing and industrial facilities.

Over the past decade smart urban technologies have begun to blanket our cities, forming the backbone of a large intelligent infrastructure. Along with this development, dissemination of the smart cities ideology has had a significant imprint on urban planning and development. Smart Cities and Innovative Urban Technologies focuses on the concepts of smart cities and innovative urban technologies. It contains research that provides insight into spatial formations of information and communication technologies, and knowledge production practices from various perspectives—including analyses of public and private sectors together with NGOs and other stakeholders. It provides a state-of-the-art analysis from multidisciplinary point-of-view in urban studies. Contributions in this edited volume include theoretical developments as well as empirical analyses. This book will be of great use to various audiences including academics as well as practitioners, spatial developers, planners, and public administrators in order to increase understanding of the dynamics and factors effecting smart cities conceptual maturation and their physical emergence. Information generated in these chapters, particularly regarding the challenges and obstacles of smart cities and innovative urban technologies, are intended to be of benefit to the key local actors in making decision in their cities or/and peripheral locations. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Urban Technology.

This book gathers the latest advances, innovations, and applications in urban and regional planning processes and science, as presented by international researchers at the 11th International Conference on Innovation in Urban and Regional Planning (INPUT), held in Catania, Italy, on September 8-10, 2021. The overarching theme of the conference INPUT 2021 was “Integrating Nature-Based Solutions in Planning Science and Practice”, with contributes focusing on functionality of urban ecosystems toward more healthier and resilient cities, planning solutions for socio-ecological systems, technologies and hybrid models for spatial planning, geodesign, urban metabolism, computational planning, ecosystems services, green infrastructure, climate change adaptation and mitigation, rural landscapes, cultural heritage, and accessibility for urban planning. The conference brought together international scholars in the field of planning, civil engineering and architecture, ecology and social science, to build and consolidate the knowledge and evidence on NBS in urban and regional planning.

This book, first published in 1985, explores the ways in which the editors and contributors predicted the urban system, shaped by emerging technologies, would look like, both nationally and internationally. The technological changes covered include automation in the secondary sector, the effects of energy price rises and threats of shortage, and substitution effects in the energy and vehicle technology areas. Social and economic factors discussed include unemployment patterns, urban activities and lifestyles and their interactions. This title will be of interest to students of urban studies.

Smart Cities for Technological and Social Innovation establishes a key theoretical framework to understand the implementation and development of smart cities as innovation drivers, in terms of lasting impacts on productivity, livability and sustainability of specific initiatives. This framework is based on empirical analysis of 12 case studies, including pioneer projects from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and more. It explores how successful smart cities initiatives nurture both technological and social innovation using a combination of regulatory governance and private agency. Typologies of smart city-making approaches are explored in depth. Integrative analysis identifies key success factors in establishing innovation relating to the effectiveness of social systems, institutional thickness, governance, the role of human capital, and streamlining funding of urban development projects. Cases from a range of geographies, scales, social and economic contexts Explores how smart cities can promote technological and social innovation in terms of direct impacts on livability, productivity and sustainability Establishes an integrative framework based on empirical evidence to develop more innovative smart city initiatives Investigates the role of governments in coordinating, fostering and guiding innovations resulting from smart city developments Interrogates the policies and governance structures which have been effective in supporting the development and deployment of smart cities

The past two decades have seen revolutionary shifts in our ability to navigate, inhabit, and define the spatial realm. The data flows that condition much of our lives now regularly include Global Positioning System (GPS) readings and satellite images of a quality once reserved for a few militaries and intelligence agencies, and powerful geographic information system (GIS) software is now commonplace. These new technologies have raised fundamental questions about the intersection between physical space and its representation, virtual space and its realization. In Close Up at a Distance, Laura Kurgan offers a theoretical account of these new digital technologies of location and a series of practical experiments in making maps and images with spatial data. Neither simply useful tools nor objects of wonder or anxiety, the technologies of GPS, GIS, and satellite imagery become, in this book, the subject and the medium of a critical exploration. Close Up at a Distance records situations of intense conflict and struggle, on the one hand, and fundamental transformations in our ways of seeing and of experiencing space, on the other. Kurgan maps and theorizes mass graves, incarceration patterns, disappearing forests, and currency flows in a series of cases that range from Kuwait (1991) to Kosovo (1999), New York (2001) to Indonesia (2010). Using digital spatial hardware and software designed for military and governmental use in reconnaissance, secrecy, monitoring, ballistics, the census, and national security, Kurgan engages and confronts the politics and complexities of these technologies and their uses. At the intersection of art, architecture, activism, and geography, she uncovers, in her essays and projects, the opacities inherent in the recording of information and data and reimagines the spaces they have opened up.

The contributions in this volume map out how technologies are used and designed to plan, maintain, govern, demolish, and destroy the city. The chapters demonstrate how urban technologies shape, and are shaped, by fundamental concepts and principles such as citizenship, publicness, democracy, and nature. The many authors herein explore how to think of technologically mediated urban space as part of the human condition. The volume will thus contribute to the much-needed discussion on technology-enabled urban futures from the perspective of the philosophy of technology. This perspective also contributes to the discussion and process of making cities ‘smart’ and just. This collection appeals to students, researchers, and professionals within the fields of philosophy of technology, urban planning, and engineering.