Tag Archives: smart city

Seminar 3: Sustainable Connected Cities and the London Living Labs Project

The Programmable City Project is happy to welcome Dr David Prendergast who will discuss Sustainable Connected Cities and the London Living Labs Project.

Time: 16:00 – 18:00, Wednesday, 19 February, 2014

Venue: Room 2.31, 2nd Floor Iontas Building, North Campus NUI Maynooth (Map)

ProgCitySeminar3-poster-FINAL

Abstract: Cities offer many opportunities to innovate with technologies, from the infrastructures that underlie the sewers, to computing in the cloud. How though can we integrate the technological, economic and social needs of cities in ways that are sustainable and human-centred? How do we inform, develop and evaluate systems and services that enhance the quality of city life for diverse publics? This talk discusses the approach taken by the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities and provides an overview of key projects including the ambitious London Living Labs programme conducted in association with the UK Future Cities Catapult.

Bio: Dr David Prendergast is a social anthropologist and a Principal Investigator in the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities with Imperial College and University College London. He also holds the position of Visiting Professor of Healthcare Innovation at Trinity College Dublin. His research over the last fifteen years has focused on later life-course transitions and he has authored a number of books and articles on ageing, health, technology and social relationships. During his career David has been involved in several major research projects including: a multi-year ethnography of intergenerational relationships and family change in South Korea; the provision of paid home care services in Ireland; a three year ESRC study into death, dying and bereavement in England and Scotland; and Intel’s Global Ageing Project which explored the expectations and experiences of growing older around the world. After receiving his PhD from Cambridge University, Dr Prendergast held research posts at the University of Sheffield, and Trinity College Dublin.

Discussion of ProgCity research: MIT Sloan Management Review

Rob Kitchin’s paper – The Real-Time City? Big Data and Smart Urbanism – is discussed in an article by Renee Boucher Ferguson just published in the MIT Sloan Management Review: Smart Cities and Economic Development: What to Consider. The article considers points of concern and recommendations with regards to smart city initiatives.

Paper: The Real-Time City? Big Data and Smart Urbanism

The first published output of the Programmable City project was a working paper by Rob Kitchin, presented at the ‘Smart Urbanism: Utopian Vision or False Dawn’ workshop at the University of Durham, 20-21 June 2013, and published on the Social Science Research Network.

Abstract

‘Smart cities’ is a term that has gained traction in academia, business and government to describe cities that, on the one hand, are increasingly composed of and monitored by pervasive and ubiquitous computing and, on the other, whose economy and governance is being driven by innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship, enacted by smart people. This paper focuses on the former and how cities are being instrumented with digital devices and infrastructure that produce ‘big data’ which enable real-time analysis of city life, new modes of technocratic urban governance, and a re-imagining of cities. The paper details a number of projects that seek to produce a real-time analysis of the city and provides a critical reflection on the implications of big data and smart urbanism.

Access paper