Urbanism
Stuff about cities
December 26, 2014 — April 4, 2024
1 Ideas to discuss
- How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables
- Smart city versus surveillance state.
- Development externalities.
- “urbanism”
- weaponised design
- politics of play
- NIMBY
- artificial reefs
2 To read
Michael Batty’s vision at first glance is kind of capital-friendly techno-utopianism, which rings weird in my ears. I’m sure billion-dollar oligopolist public-private-partnership developments don’t need any extra cheerleading as they already have departments who are perfectly capable. But that is perhaps a necessary marketing strategy for urbanists in 21st century London, And some of the excesses of corporate smartcityland are refuted if you read past the abstract (vacuous urban dashboards etc). He devised some interesting mathematical models:
- Batty’s review editorials in Environment and Planning B.
Adam Greenfield is the guy who calls out technocapitalist utopians and will hence not get you funded. a piece for the Guardian’s “Resilient Cities” project.