This course introduces you to ideas about how computers, computation, and electronic communications are being rapidly introduced into the fabric, operation and design of the contemporary western city. This focus on new information and communications technologies (ICT) and the city have coalesced in the notion of the ‘smart city’ where the focus is on how cities are becoming ‘more intelligent’ which consists of various services which enable populations to improve their ways of life, their economic productivity and their social interactions. The topics are relatively well defined and to an extent stand-alone in that they are relatively self contained between the topics although there is a strong historical imperative to the chronology of the lectures and a focus on how geography and space are informing ideas that are underpinning the smart city.
The lectures will first follow a historical chronology of how ICT has developed from their origins in digital computing to the current all-pervasive use of computers and communications in contemporary cities. They will be organized into six distinct sessions with approximately 2 lectures per session, and they will deal with different topics involving transport, data, services, digital representation (in 2D and 3D), forecasting, participation and media. Examples will be drawn largely but not exclusively from world cities like London. The six sessions will be organized according to the topics ordered as follows:
I. THE CONTEXT FOR SMART CITIES
1. A Walk Through the Smart City Examples of How the City is Being Automated and Instrumented. A Very Quick History of the Development of Wireless, TV, Computers, the Internet and Real Time Control in the City
2. Turing’s Legacy How Computers got Started, Miniaturization, and the Convergence with Telecommunications. The Underlying Technologies, Hardware, Software, Data and Orgware, Network Computation
II. SMART CITIES ARE ABOUT INFORMATION: FROM ATOMS TO BITS
3. The Wired City: The Computable City Automating, Instrumenting, Measuring, and Sensing How We Locate and Move in the City: Where the Hardware Really Resides
4. Urban Information Systems: From Small to Big Data The Origins of Information, Transactions Processing, Municipal Information Systems, GIS and Interoperability: the Emergence of Big Data
III. NETWORKS AND FLOWS
5. Material, Electronic and People Networks Cities as Flow Systems, Coupled Networks, Materials, People, Energy and Information Flows
6. Sensing, Representing, and Simulating Flows in the City Automating, Instrumenting, Measuring, and Sensing How We Locate and Move in the City. A Digression into Confidentiality, Privacy and the Surveillant Society
IV. CITIES AS SERVICES DELIVERY
7. Services Through the Web Providing Web Access. Collecting Real Time Data, Embedding Computers into the Built Environment, Retail Services, Public Services, Information About Travel
8. From Web Mapping to City Dash Boards Integrating Data, Open Data, Coordinating Services, Emergency Response and Location-Based Services, Web Mapping, Real Time Sensing and Real Time Information Systems
V. THE VIRTUAL CITY: REPRESENTATION, MODELLING, AND PREDICTION
9. The Virtual City: GIS, 3D and Virtual Reality Representations The Development of 2D maps to 3D Environments, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Serious Visual Gaming
10. Urban Simulation and Prediction Building Mathematical Models of the City, The Science of Cities, and the Synthesis of Simulation with Representation, Data Driven Models, Prediction and Forecasting
VI. DIGITAL PARTICIPATION AND SOCIAL MEDIA
11. The Participatory City Making Cities Smarter, Coupling Networks, Services and People, New Forms of Electronic Community
12. Social Media and the City The Rise of the Handheld Device, Social Networks, Email and Rapid Communications, Extracting Social Data from Text Messaging Background
Reading
The (this) web site http://www.spatialcomplexity.info/ is where the lectures will be placed is and a taste of the material is available there with some key background readings.
