The term smart city has become a buzzword. City planners develop ubiquitous connectivity through Wi-Fi hotspots, establish science parks, introduce bike and car sharing, and push entrepreneurship. All this is happening under the flagship of becoming a knowledge city. This book investigates the digital and cognitive infrastructure of 31 cities and how they meet the demands of the knowledge society in an increasingly digitized environment.

The term smart city has become a buzzword. City planners develop ubiquitous connectivity through Wi-Fi hotspots, establish science parks, introduce bike and car sharing, and push entrepreneurship. All this is happening under the flagship of becoming a knowledge city. This book investigates the digital and cognitive infrastructure of 31 cities and how they meet the demands of the knowledge society in an increasingly digitized environment.

An unflinching look at the aspiring city-builders of our smart, mobile, connected future. From Beijing to Boston, cities are deploying smart technology—sensors embedded in streets and subways, Wi-Fi broadcast airports and green spaces—to address the basic challenges faced by massive, interconnected metropolitan centers. In Smart Cities, Anthony M. Townsend documents this emerging futuristic landscape while considering the motivations, aspirations, and shortcomings of the key actors—entrepreneurs, mayors, philanthropists, and software developers—at work in shaping the new urban frontier.

Cities in the 21st Century provides an overview of contemporary urban development. Written by more than thirty major academic specialists from different countries, it provides information on and analysis of the global network of cities, changes in urban form, environmental problems, the role of technologies and knowledge, socioeconomic developments, and finally, the challenge of urban governance. In the mid-20th century, architect and planner Josep Lluís Sert wondered if cities could survive; in the early 21st century, we see that cities have not only survived but have grown as never before. Cities today are engines of production and trade, forges of scientific and technological innovation, and crucibles of social change. Urbanization is a major driver of change in contemporary societies; it is a process that involves acute social inequalities and serious environmental problems, but also offers opportunities to move towards a future of greater prosperity, environmental sustainability, and social justice. With case studies on thirty cities in five continents and a selection of infographics illustrating these dynamic cities, this edited volume is an essential resource for planners and students of urbanization and urban change.

​This book will provide one of the first comprehensive approaches to the study of smart city governments with theories and concepts for understanding and researching 21st century city governments innovative methodologies for the analysis and evaluation of smart city initiatives. The term “smart city” is now generally used to represent efforts that in different ways describe a comprehensive vision of a city for the present and future. A smarter city infuses information into its physical infrastructure to improve conveniences, facilitate mobility, add efficiencies, conserve energy, improve the quality of air and water, identify problems and fix them quickly, recover rapidly from disasters, collect data to make better decisions, deploy resources effectively and share data to enable collaboration across entities and domains. These and other similar efforts are expected to make cities more intelligent in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, productivity, transparency, and sustainability, among other important aspects. Given this changing social, institutional and technology environment, it seems feasible and likeable to attain smarter cities and by extension, smarter governments: virtually integrated, networked, interconnected, responsive, and efficient. This book will help build the bridge between sound research and practice expertise in the area of smarter cities and will be of interest to researchers and students in the e-government, public administration, political science, communication, information science, administrative sciences and management, sociology, computer science, and information technology. As well as government officials and public managers who will find practical recommendations based on rigorous studies that will contain insights and guidance for the development, management, and evaluation of complex smart cities and smart government initiatives.​

Why technology is not an end in itself, and how cities can be “smart enough,” using technology to promote democracy and equity. Smart cities, where technology is used to solve every problem, are hailed as futuristic urban utopias. We are promised that apps, algorithms, and artificial intelligence will relieve congestion, restore democracy, prevent crime, and improve public services. In The Smart Enough City, Ben Green warns against seeing the city only through the lens of technology; taking an exclusively technical view of urban life will lead to cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality. He proposes instead that cities strive to be “smart enough”: to embrace technology as a powerful tool when used in conjunction with other forms of social change—but not to value technology as an end in itself. In a technology-centric smart city, self-driving cars have the run of downtown and force out pedestrians, civic engagement is limited to requesting services through an app, police use algorithms to justify and perpetuate racist practices, and governments and private companies surveil public space to control behavior. Green describes smart city efforts gone wrong but also smart enough alternatives, attainable with the help of technology but not reducible to technology: a livable city, a democratic city, a just city, a responsible city, and an innovative city. By recognizing the complexity of urban life rather than merely seeing the city as something to optimize, these Smart Enough Cities successfully incorporate technology into a holistic vision of justice and equity.

City. The smart city is based on innovative urban planning, which itself is based on smart technologies that not only make cities safer and cleaner, but also (and especially) more efficient. But is this actually making cities any better? In this book, Maarten Hajer and Ton Dassen (PBL) argue for `smart urban planning, thereby providing a counterweight to the uncritical embrace of the smart city. Smart urban planning aims at finding solutions to what twentieth-century urban planning forgot: the metabolism of cities, i.e. the wide variety of incoming and outgoing streams that connect urban life with nature. This metabolism is visualized in 50 infographics, giving us answers to questions such as: what do cities live off of? How much water, food, construction materials, and other materials do they use? What amount of those materials do they dispose of? How effective is the metabolism? This book makes an appeal for `global-network urban planning, in which technology is not a panacea, but instead is anchored in social innovations. Smart about Cities Bron: Flaptekst, uitgeversinformatie.