New Towns to Smart Cities

“Smart” typically entails the monitoring of resources, demographics, activities, spaces, and infrastructures, via ubiquitous computing, sensing networks, and new forms of governance. All scales of experience and social patterns are measured to fulfill a promise of frictionless social interaction, environmental balance, and economic development. Sometimes smart cities are fixed territories, and other times Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) are embedded into new or existing districts or neighborhoods, or into urban surveillance systems. Smart cities and their ICT infrastructures have been discussed and deployed across the globe, but their economies, efficiencies, and politics have been overlooked in most professional practices. Among the many other questions, this course asks: How is “life” represented in the smart city?