Smart cities are making the headlines of newspapers and symposia on urban planning. Rightly or wrongly, they—sometimes simultaneously—intrigue or concern people. Cities situated at the fringe of the world that have barely been founded are universally known even before having any residents. Whatever their potential, this overexposure is a sign of the times; reflective of our concerns with the way that technology will affect our lifestyles. In his study of smart cities, Richard Sennett compares Songdo, Masdar and Rio to promote a vision in which technology will improve coordination and collaboration, as opposed to preconception, circumscription and control—actions that would render cities barren.
Richard Sennet is a historian and sociologist. He teaches at the London School of Economics and at Columbia University.
The Guardian,
December 4th, 2012
Let’s hope Rio de Janeiro, rather than Songdo or Masdar, is the inspiration for the jamboree of computer geeks, politicians, and urban planners from around the world that London is hosting this week.
At the Urban Age conference, they will discuss the latest big idea in high tech: the “smart city.” Doing more than programming traffic, the smart city’s computers will calculate where offices and shops can be laid out most efficiently, where people should sleep, and how all the parts of urban life should be fitted together. Science fiction? Smart cities are being and, they have become a model for developers in China, and for redevelopment in Europe. Thanks to the digital revolution, at last life in cities can be brought under control. But is this a good thing?
You don’t have to be a romantic to doubt it. In the 1930s the American urbanist Lewis Mumford foresaw the disaster entailed by the “scientific planning” of transport, embodied in the super-efficient highway choking the city. The Swiss architecture critic Sigfrid Giedion worried that after World War II efficient building technologies would produce a soulless landscape of glass, steel, and concrete boxes. Yesterday’s smart city, today’s nightmare.
The debate about good engineering has changed now because digital technology has shifted the technological focus to information processing; this can occur in hand-held computers linked to “clouds,” or in command-and-control centers. The danger now is that the information-rich city may do nothing to help people think for themselves or communicate well with one another.
Imagine that you are a master planner facing a blank computer screen and that you can design a city from scratch, free to incorporate every bit of high technology into your design. You might come up with Masdar, in the United Arab Emirates, or Songdo, in South Korea. These are two versions of the stupefying smart city: Masdar the more famous, or infamous; Songdo the more fascinating, in a perverse way.
Masdar is a half-built city rising out of the desert, whose planning—overseen by the master architect Norman Foster—comprehensively lays out the activities of the city, the technology monitoring and regulating the functions from a central command center. The city is conceived in Fordist terms—that is, each activity has an appropriate place and time. Urbanites become consumers of choices laid out for them by prior calculations of where to shop or to get a doctor most efficiently. There’s no stimulation through trial and error; people learn their city passively. “User-friendly” in Masdar means choosing menu options rather than creating the menu.
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What we are currently calling AI has, in fact, very little to do with intelligence, although it does indeed make use of tremendous memory capabilities and computing power. The leading figure of French robotics, Bruno Maisonnier, is engaged in the challenge of developing an AI operating like a brain, using very little energy and data, while also being capable of justifying decisions. Would this be an AI with self-learning capabilities?
Artificial intelligence has taken center stage in the prospective narratives of the city, yet Bruno Maisonnier emphasizes the need to differentiate “weak” AI, which is less about intellect than computing power, from the perspective of an “organic” AI, developed following the model of the brain and social insects, and which would be capable of carrying out highly complex tasks with low data and energy needs, of self-learning, and making rational arguments. In spite of the risks inherent in implementing any new technology before its use is regulated, AI heralds real progress for our societies, in particular, through optimizing the efficiency of genetic engineering.
Hubert Beroche is the founder of the Urban AI think tank, dedicated to the field of urban artificial intelligence. He is the curator of the Eyes on the street lecture series, run together in partnership with the SCAI (Sorbonne Center for Artifical Intelligence), and explains here how urban AI can help us understand the city.