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Extreme urbanism: live here at your peril
(Photo by O Palsson) In “The Triumph of the City“‘ Edward Glaeser argues that efficient cities should be built up around elevators, rather than built out around cars. As a resident of Birmingham, the...
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Ten ways to pay for a Smarter City (part two)
(Photo of the Brixton Pound by Charlie Waterhouse) As I wrote recently, cities across the world are pursuing Smarter City strategies for common reasons including demographics, economics and the...
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Zen and the art of messy urbanism
(Children playing in the “Science Garden” outside Birmingham’s Science Museum at Millenium Point; part of the new Eastside City Park, a vast urban space surrounded by education, culture and...
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The six steps to a Smarter City; and the philosophical imperative for taking...
(Photo of digital lights in “The Place” in Beijing by Trey Ratcliff) (This article originally appeared in September 2012 as “Five steps to a Smarter City: and the philosophical imperative for taking...
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Smart ideas for everyday cities
(Artist’s impression of the new Birmingham City University campus, currently under construction alongside Millennium Point and the new Eastside City Park. Image by Birmingham City University.) The...
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An address to the United Nations: science, technology and innovation for...
I was honoured this week to be asked to address the 16th session of the United Nations’ Commission on Science and Technology for Development in Geneva on the topic of Smarter Cities. I was invited to...
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Smarter City myths and misconceptions
(A good example of a technology dilemma: do smartphones encourage social interaction, or inhibit it?. Photo by LingHK) Part of my job is to communicate the ideas behind Smarter Cities, and to support...
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Seven steps to a Smarter City; and the imperative for taking them (updated...
(Interior of the new Library of Birmingham, opened in September 2013. Photo by Andy Mabbett licensed under Creative Commons via Wikimedia Commons) (This article originally appeared in September 2012 as...
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Information and choice: nine reasons our future is in the balance
(The Bandra pedestrian skywalk in Mumbai, photo taken from the Collaborative Research Initiative Trust‘s study of Mumbai, “Being Nicely Messy“, produced for the 2012 Audi Urban Futures awards) The 19th...
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No-one wants top-down, technology-driven cities. They’d be dumb, not smart.
(William Robinson Leigh’s 1908 painting “Visionary City” envisaged future cities constructed from mile-long buildings of hundreds of stories connected by gas-lit skyways for trams, pedestrians and...
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Let’s not get carried away by self-driving cars and the sharing economy: they...
(Cities either balance or create tension between human interaction and transport; how will self-driving cars change that equation? With thanks and apologies to Tim Stonor for images and inspiration)...
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Why Smart Cities still aren’t working for us after 20 years. And how we can...
(The futuristic “Emerald City” in the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz“. The “wizard” who controls the city is a fraud who uses theatrical technology to disguise his lack of real power.) (I was recently...
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