Yesterday the Programmable City project was officially launched by the Minister for Research and Innovation, Sean Sherlock, TD. The event was a great success, with some very interesting papers from our guest speakers, Siobhan Clarke, Martin Dodge, Adam Greenfield, Peter Finnegan, Tim Reardon, and Matt Wilson (program here). We hope to put up videos of the talks shortly, along with slides. We were very fortunate to have an engaged audience, who asked some interesting questions and thanks to everyone that attended. The event received some media attention.
Rob Kitchin presented a Bellwether Lecture at the Oxford Institute Institute on February 28th entitled ‘The Real Time City? Big Data and Smart Urbanism’. OII have just uploaded the webcast of the full lecture. The written version of the paper was recently published in Geojournal (visit GeoJournal website or Download). Kitchin, R. (2014) The real-time city? Big data and smart urbanism. GeoJournal 79(1): 1-14.
We have 3 great launch events coming up and you are invited! See below.
Official Programmable City Project launch is Tuesday March 25th, starting at 9:45 AM, with a break for lunch, and ending at 4PM. We have a great lineup of international and local speakers. Sean Sherlock, TD., Minister for Research and Innovation will officiate the launch in the afternoon. Details here! We need a count for lunch so Be sure to RSVP via EventBrite.
2. On March 24th, 7-9 PM, in the eveing we are supporting a Public Event: Rethinking the Smart City: A Primer, organised by Provisional University & Dublin Art & Technology Association. Adam Greenfield will be speaking, Rob Kitchin will provide introductions and Aphra Kerr (NUIM), Jim Merricks White (NUIM) Rachel O’Dwyer (TCD). Come to , Corner of Fenian Street 7 Westland Row, Dublin 2. Read more details here! Space is limited so please .
3. Also, in the afternoon of March 24th, between 2-4PM, we have a Reading Seminar Mapping, Data & Urban space – w/Matthew Wilsonat NUIM, Room 2.31, 2nd Floor, Iontas Building, North Campus, NUI Maynooth (Map). Read details here.
The Programmable City project is excited to be supporting an upcoming public discussion with Adam Greenfield around the concept of the smart city.
When: March 24th 7pm – 9pm Where: Dunlop Oriel House, Corner of Fenian Street 7 Westland Row, Dublin 2 Map:Speakers: Adam Greenfield, with an introduction by Rob Kitchin Respondents: Aphra Kerr (NUIM), Jim Merricks White (NUIM) Rachel O’Dwyer (TCD)
Admission is free but places are limited. To book go to .
It’s generally understood that a smart city refers to integrated information and communication technologies, embedded sensor networks and smart girds rapidly becoming part of the infrastructural fabric of our cities, and contributing to its overall function and management. But the smart city is not just an informational overlay. It extends to a broader rationality for resource management (water, energy, transport, air), for governance and agency administration, and for economic stimulation.
While this is significant, various factors seem to have prevented extended public discussion about smart cities. This might be because planning for the smart city is still limited to academic research institutions and government initiatives. It might also be the case that the disciplinary approach to the smart city means it doesn’t always join up with other relevant discussions about urban planning and policy, resource management and the right to the city currently taking place, even though we share and articulate many of the same concerns. We therefore see this event as a primer for more ongoing discussion on the smart city, as it relates to these broader issues and particularly as it relates to Dublin City.
What are we talking about when we talk about the smart city? What limitations are there to the way that the smart city is currently articulated? What alternatives might exist?
Biographies:
Adam Greenfield is a writer, urbanist and founding director of New York City-based design practice Urbanscale. His work focuses on the intersection of design, technology and culture, with a strong interest in urban form and metropolitan experience. Greenfield is the author of Everyware: the Dawning age of Ubiquitous Computing (New Riders, 2006) and Against the Smart City (The city is here for you to use) alongside Nurri Kim (Do Projects, 2013). Adam is also Senior Urban Fellow at LSE Cities.
Rob Kitchin is a professor and ERC Advanced Investigator in the National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. His book ‘Code/Space’ (with Martin Dodge) won the Association of American Geographers ‘Meridian Book Award’ for the outstanding book in the discipline in 2011. He is currently a PI on the Programmable City project, the Digital Repository of Ireland, and the All-Island Research Observatory.
Over the past few years there have been a proliferation of city benchmarking indexes and data tools that enable the comparison of different phenomenon across cities. A recent Jones Lang LaSalle report details 150 of them. Such indexes are composed of composites of key indicators and are proported to give an indication of city performance vis-a-vis other locales and to judge how city administrations and policies are fairing. Below are some links to some interactive city benchmarking sites that allow the comparison of selected cities. Our interests in such benchmarking is in the politics of indicator selection and the formulation of indices, and how the data are employed, a topic that we’ve just started to examine on the ProgCity project.
You are invited to participate in our Reading Seminar with Dr. Matthew W. Wilson on Mapping, Data and Urban space, as part of our Launch event. Dr. Wilson (Harvard University and University of Kentucky) focuses his research on the intersection of critical human geography and geographic information science, as part of an evolving research agenda in ‘critical GIS’.
