Autonomous, Real-Time, and Dynamic configuration of public space in smart cities.
Author: Luca Lezzerini
Affiliation: Polis University
Abstract
Although there is not yet a worldwide accepted formal defnition of what a Smart City is, the concept is already very used in architecture, engineering, and human sciences and is one of the most important research and development areas of the near future. The article focuses on the observation that smart cities are near to being ready to have the capability to temporarily
reconfgure the use of their public spaces, either autonomously or in a human supervised way. A smart city can rearrange the way a portion of its public space (e.g.: squares, accessible streets, stations, parks, …) is used, directly communicating with people, vehicles, drones, road signs and other elements that use and manage the public space. This can be done autonomously by “the city” (e.g. trafc jam detection, statistical prediction, …) or under human-driven requests (e.g. large meetings or crowded events, emergencies, road works, …). Such capability is mostly made possible by technology (ICT, robotics, nanotechnologies, …) but can be improved and governed through careful urban planning and design. Ruling and leveraging such features is a very new feld in urban planning and design and is very important to efectively take advantage of the smart city paradigm regardless of the size of the smart city. In smart cities, the public space has also gained a virtual expansion through cyberspace, leading to a new concept where virtual and real spaces intersect, meet, and, often, melt together. The paper analyses the public space defnition in a smart city, its arrangement in diferent classes, and the ways of reconfguring it. Then the challenges that urban planning frst, and urban design second, must face to leverage in the best way such opportunities are explored, and a frst set of guidelines to develop a methodology for this scope is described. The paper considers both normal conditions and emergency conditions (including epidemics) and describes the principles of a new methodology to enhance urban planning, leveraging this smart city’s ability to dynamically reconfgure the public space.
Reference List
Albino, V., Berardi, U., & Dangelico, R. M. (2015). Smart Cities: Defnitions, Dimensions, Performance, and Initiatives. Journal of Urban Technology, 22(1), 3-21.
Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S., Silverstein, M. (1977). A Pattern Language. Center for Environmental Structure of Berkeley – California
Amin, A., & Thrift, N. (2002). Cities: Reimagining the urban. Malden: Polity.
Anceschi, G. (1996). Visibility in Progress. Design Issues, 12(3), 3-13.
Azizalrahman, H., Hasyimi, V., (2019). Towards a Generic Framework for Smart Cities, INTECHOPEN
Benjamin, W. (1935-1999). "Paris-Capital of the Nineteenth Century" in The Arcades Project. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Chalk, W., Cook, P., Greene, D., Herron, R., Crompton, D. (2018). Archigram the Book, Circa Pr. Dovey, K. (2008). Framing places: mediating power in built form. London: Routledge.
Dovey, K. (2016). Urban Design Thinking: A Conceptual Toolkit. London: Bloomsbury.
Duarte, F., & Firmino, R. (2009). Infltrated city, augmented space: information and communication technologies, and representations of contemporary spatialities. The Journal of Architecture, 14(5), 545-565.
Fırat, F. T. O. (2019). Imagining Public Space in Smart Cities: a Visual Inquiry on the Quayside Project by Sidewalk Toronto. Malmö University, Sweden
Forrester, J. W. (1969). Urban Dynamics. Pegasus Communications Inc.
Graham, S. D. (2005). Software-sorted Geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 562-580.
Greenfeld, A. (2017). Radical Technologies: The design of everyday life. London; New York: Verso Books.
Halegoua, G. R. (2020) Smart Cities, MIT Press
Hall, P., (2014) Cities of Tomorrow - An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design Since 1880 4e. Wiley
Hollands, R. G. (2015). Critical interventions into the corporate smart city. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society(8), 61-77.
Işın , E., & Ruppert, E. (2015). Being digital citizens. London; New York: Rowman & Littlefeld International.
Iveson, K. (2007). Putting the public back into public space. Urban Policy and Research, 16(1), 21-33.
Kitchin, R. (2015). Making sense of smart cities: addressing present shortcomings. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society (8), 131-136.
Kitchin, R., & Dodge, M. (2011). Code/space: software and everyday life. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Koolhaas, R. (2002). Junkspace. Obsolescence, 100, 175-190.
Matthew Carmona (2010) Contemporary Public Space, Part Two: Classifcation, Journal of Urban Design, 15:2, 157-173, DOI:10.1080/13574801003638111
Mitchell, W. J. (1992). The Reconfgured Eye Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Mitchell, W. J. (1995). City of bits: space, place, and the infobahn. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Mitchell, W. J. (1995). Picture theory: essays on verbal and visual representation. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Pask, G. (1975). Conversation, Cognition and Learning: Cybernetic Theory and Methodology. London: Elsevier.
Portugali, J., (2010). Self-Organization and the City. Springer
Rossi, A. (1978). L’Architettura della Città. Clup
Russo, F., Rindone, C., Panuccio, P. (2010) The process of smart city defnition at EU level. Conference Paper · September 2014 DOI: 10.2495/SC140832
Schwab, K. (2019). Foreword. Journal of International Afairs, 72(1), 13-16.
Sennet, R., (2018). Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City, Farrar Straus and Giroux
Sennett, R. (2017). The Public Realm. In S. Hall, & R. Burdett, The SAGE Handbook of the 21st Century City (pp. 585-601). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Inc.
Sitte, C., (1980). L’Arte di Costruire le Città, Jaca Book.
Sorkin, M. (1999). Introduction: Trafc in Democracy. In M.
Sorkin, & J. Copjec, Giving Ground: The Politics of Propinquity (pp. 1-18). London, New York: Verso.
Townsend, A. M., (2015). Smart Cities. Norton
