Cities of the Future

How the world's wealthiest cities can beat back climate change.

New York and Chicago launch bike-sharing programs next spring, a big jump for creating a cycling culture in American cities. Life for urban dwellers will be better. Here's why.

The Guardian reported last week that there are tens of thousands of people in Spain participating in over 300 “time banks and alternative currency systems.” Locals rack up labor hours, deposit them with community organizations online or in person, and trade them to others for goods and services.

Check out David Harvey’s enlightening new book, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. Introduction by Neal Gorenflo, Publisher of Shareable One of the legacies of ...

Reposted from: http://www.socialcitiesoftomorrow.nl/

Social Cities of Tomorrow is organised by The Mobile City (an international research group on mobile media and urban design), Virtueel Platform (the Dutch e-culture knowledge institute), and ARCAM (the Amsterdam Centre for Architecture).

Partners

International conference & workshop in Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Conference: 17 February 2012
Preconference workshop: 14-16 February 2012

Our everyday lives are increasingly shaped by digital media technologies, from smart cards and intelligent GPS systems to social media and smartphones. How can... (read more here on:  http://evolutionarycities.com/2011/11/28/announcing-feb-2012-event-social-cities-of-tomorrow/

As cities are facing growing demands and shrinking resources, they have to find new ways of solving problems.

Cities are obviously more than just the sum of their physical assets — roads and bridges, offices, factories, shopping centers, and homes — working more like living organisms than jumbles of concrete. Their inner workings even transcend their ability to cluster and concentrate people and economic activity. As sociologist Zachary Neal of Michigan State University argues in his new book, The Connected City, cities are made up of human social networks.

Does the design of streets, for example, influence who our friends are?

What are the key factors that shape the networks of a connected city?

To what degree do influential people matter to the connected city? 

"Sentiment analysis" of social media could change the way you report potholes forever.

The challenge for cities is how they might parse social media sentiment about not just one dish detergent (or one frequently Googled query during flu season), but about numerous interlocking indexes of civic life. Are parents in Chicago supportive of the teachers’ strike? What are New York subway riders saying about that new trash program? Or Los Angelenos about the crackdown on pot dispensaries? Is there a flare-up of graffiti concern on the west side of the city? Or a collision on the east side about to erupt into an all-out traffic jam?

“What is the one thing you can do to make a city more sustainable? That’s easy. Stop asking the question: What is the one thing you can do to make a city more sustainable?” How we should really be tackling the debate and issue is by first recognizing that cities are hyper-complex and none exactly alike. Meaning, every single one will have different solutions and every single one will need different solutions as it changes over time. Although these complexities and diversities sound like a strain on our ability to combat the problems faced, Warren Karlenzig argues that the dynamics and inter-connections of urban areas are what give them their “strength against shocks and stresses”. They are our gift and our curse.

Collective Intelligence--Cities as Global Intelligence Platform [video]