In 21st Century urban planning, the term ‘Smart Cities’ is frequently bandied about. It’s the ultimate urban utopia of most urban planners and policy-makers in the UK and elsewhere in the World. Today “[h]ardly a week passes without a mayor somewhere in the world unveiling a “smart-city” project—often at one of the many conferences hailing the concept”. Although, city-scale experiments have already been designed and implemented the smart cities model has been largely criticised, contested and challenged by many because of its techno-centric approach to complex physical, social, environmental and economic urban systems.
Directed and Produced by: Gynna Millan, Illiany Hamdan and Roderick Selfridge
Many thanks to:
The Crystal Exhibition for facilitating the recording inside the 'Sustainable Cities' Exhibition. thecrystal.org
The Centre for Advance Spatial Analysis, UCL for their projects CityDashboard citydashboard.org/london/ and Pigeon Simulator bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24498100
Future Cites Catapult futurecities.catapult.org.uk
Opensensors.io opensensors.io
Rewired State rewiredstate.org
and all the people who happily gave us their perspectives on the topic.
Special thanks to Paul Tickell for comments and feedback and Linda O'Halloran for helping us navigate the smart citizens out there.
Archive footage from Archigram 1964 archigram.net and William H. Whyte 1988 youtu.be/2Je6Dko6mm4