Shaping Smart for Better Cities powerfully demonstrates the range of theoretical and practical challenges, opportunities and success factors involved in successfully deploying digital technologies in cities, focusing on the importance of recognizing local context and multi-layered urban relationships in designing successful urban interventions. The first section, ‘Rethinking Smart (in) Places’ interrogates the smart city from a theoretical vantage point. The second part, ‘Shaping Smart Places’ examines various case studies critically. Hence the volume offers an intellectual resource that expands on the current literature, but also provides a pedagogical resource to universities as well as a reflective opportunity for practitioners. The cases allow for an examination of the practical implications of smart interventions in space, whilst the theoretical reflections enable expansion of the literature. Students are encouraged to learn from case studies and apply that learning in design. Academics will gain from the learning embedded in the documentation of the case studies in different geographic contexts, while practitioners can apply their learning to the conceptualisation of new forms of technology use. Demonstrates how to adapt smart urban interventions for hyper-local context in geographic parameters, spatial relationships, and socio-political characteristics Provides a problem-solving approach based on specific smart place examples, applicable to real-life urban management Offers insights from numerous case studies of smart cities interventions in real civic spaces

An unflinching look at the aspiring city-builders of our smart, mobile, connected future. From Beijing to Boston, cities are deploying smart technology—sensors embedded in streets and subways, Wi-Fi broadcast airports and green spaces—to address the basic challenges faced by massive, interconnected metropolitan centers. In Smart Cities, Anthony M. Townsend documents this emerging futuristic landscape while considering the motivations, aspirations, and shortcomings of the key actors—entrepreneurs, mayors, philanthropists, and software developers—at work in shaping the new urban frontier.

Smart cities are a fast-growing species, and a fascinating field for new experiments in a number of critical areas, ranging from urban planning, sustainable energy, and transport strategies to social integration and talent attraction, to name a few. As leaders and citizens around the world continue to assess, design, implement and improve on ways to create better cities, they often find themselves confronted with a multitude of decisions and a wide range of partial solutions to specific problems such as traffic congestion, waste management and crime. Unfortunately, they have precious few tools to enable them to define the strategies required and take advantage of the experience of other smart cities around the world. In such a context, metrics can play a significant and constructive role: by quantifying efforts and results, they increase the ability of decision-makers to identify where their priorities should lie as well as the relative merits of various approaches.

Scaling the Smart City: The Design and Ethics of Urban Technology engages with the smart city as a problem of scale. It disentangles the smart city from its corporate and technocratic strong hold by presenting an accessible design framework that productively aligns philosophical thinking on technology with foundational technical understandings of urban technology and smart system design. Scaling the Smart City: The Design and Ethics of Urban Technology complements and mediates between critical social theory perspectives of the smart city and technically comprehensive case studies. It examines these case examples and critiques design prototypes by threading the overarching principles of the smart city through urban, spatial, and personal scales. The knowledge and know-how to design and create urban technologies and smart cities is steadily moving from a niche field to a core industry competency. Scaling the Smart City: The Design and Ethics of Urban Technology outlines a unique cross scalar design framework, developed to teach smart cities design to designers and engineers. It unpacks the "backbox" of smart city initiatives and demystifies physical computing system design concepts. The book’s analysis of real-world case examples and design prototypes aims to demonstrate how design thinking and practice can better engage with the ethical implications of creating urban technologies and smart systems for society. It uses a clear, accessible, and instructive style of writing that synthesizes relevant scholarship and concepts to develop the reader’s foundational understanding of the contemporary smart city paradigm. It also explores the ethical implications of urban technologies and smart city initiatives. This book is an invaluable resource for readers in the established fields and professions of design, architecture, urban design, and city planning as well as the emerging fields of urban technology and urban interaction design. Connects theory and practice to extend understanding of urban technologies and smart cities Leverages real-world case examples and design prototypes to explore critical philosophical and ethical questions around the implications of technology in the urban and built environment Provides an accessible and illustrative guide to technical principles of urban sensing and sense making apparatus foundational to the design of urban technology and smart cities Utilizes visual iconography and diagramming to illustrate urban technology concepts, configurations, sequences, interactivity, and technical systems

Are you future ready? The world we see now is very different from that of 25 years ago. Who would have thought by click of a button a taxi will stand in front of your house. Who would have imagined through YouTube each one of us has the power to travel the world with a single click. And the pace of change is accelerating the world in the next five to ten years. Shape up to Smart cities is the blue print of what is coming. Why some countries are better prepared than others, why some cities set the pace of innovation and how people can better prepare from what is coming than just be passive observer for a rude shock. I wrote this book precisely to answer the above questions. This is the first comprehensive book on Smart cities. Electric vehicles, Smart meters and Smart buildings are coming in the way of doing our business. It is time to get ready for these big changes and not left behind. All these concepts are explained in simple terms with no high technical jargon. These powerful concepts strongly connect to smart city initiatives. India, China, US, EU and many other countries are investing lots of resources and money in building the smart cities. It is time for all of us to be part of this discussion. Be Smart in Smart Cities.

The topic of streets and street design is of compelling interest today as public officials, developers, and community activists seek to reshape urban patterns to achieve more sustainable forms of growth and development. Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities traces ideas about street design and layout back to the early industrial era in London suburbs and then on through their institutionalization in housing and transportation planning in the United States. It critiques the situation we are in and suggests some ways out that are less rigidly controlled, more flexible, and responsive to local conditions. Originally published in 1997, this edition includes a new introduction that addresses topics of current interest including revised standards from the Institute of Transportation Engineers; changes in city plans and development standards following New Urbanist, Smart Growth, and sustainability principles; traffic calming; and ecologically oriented street design.