The Relevance of Informational Infrastructures in Future Cities

Cities around the world are installing digital architectures of sensors, computational cores and telecommunications in the urban fabric, transforming existing infrastructure systems into multi-functional informational and services platforms in the process. The fast pace of digitization is often hard for cities to fathom, many of which are challenged by a silent privatization of the informational value of public spaces and the under-development of the potential of 21st century digital infrastructures due to a mono functional non-inclusive process of design. This is compounded by the power behind large-scale data ecosystems, which when paired with technologies such as machine learning will have profound impact over our future urban services and lifestyles. Cities need to adapt their design mentality and institutional models, but it is through social participation, and open technology standards that true inclusive synthesis of the future digital systems that enable our interactions with cities and allow for the myriad of new services and experiences can be achieved.

 

The Relevance of Informational Infrastructures in Future Cities
Ricardo Alvarez

The Journal of Field Actions

Special Issue 17 | 2017 : Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in the City

Source: journals.openedition.org