Rethinking the Smart City: A Primer

When: March 24th 7pm – 9pm

Where: Dunlop Oriel House, Corner of Fenian Street 7 Westland Row, Dublin 2.

Map: http://bit.ly/1i7YapE

Speakers: Adam Greenfield, with an introduction by Rob Kitchin

Respondents: Aphra Kerr (NUIM), Jim Merricks White (NUIM) Rachel O’Dwyer (TCD)

Admission is free but places are limited. To book go to http://bit.ly/O7zu6h

It’s generally understood that a smart city refers to integrated information and communication technologies, embedded sensor networks and smart girds rapidly becoming part of the infrastructural fabric of our cities, and contributing to its overall function and management. But the smart city is not just an informational overlay. It extends to a broader rationality for resource management (water, energy, transport, air), for governance and agency administration, and for economic stimulation.

While this is significant, various factors seem to have prevented extended public discussion about smart cities. This might be because planning for the smart city is still limited to academic research institutions and government initiatives. It might also be the case that the disciplinary approach to the smart city means it doesn’t always join up with other relevant discussions about urban planning and policy, resource management and the right to the city currently taking place, even though we share and articulate many of the same concerns. We therefore see this event as a primer for more ongoing discussion on the smart city, as it relates to these broader issues and particularly as it relates to Dublin City.

What are we talking about when we talk about the smart city? What limitations are there to the way that the smart city is currently articulated? What alternatives might exist?

This event is in association with the Programmable City Project, NUIM.

Biographies:

Adam Greenfield is a writer, urbanist and founding director of New York City-based design practice Urbanscale. His work focuses on the intersection of design, technology and culture, with a strong interest in urban form and metropolitan experience. Greenfield is the author of Everyware: the Dawning age of Ubiquitous Computing (New Riders, 2006) and Against the Smart City (The city is here for you to use) alongside Nurri Kim (Do Projects, 2013). Adam is also Senior Urban Fellow at LSE Cities.

Rob Kitchin is a professor and ERC Advanced Investigator in the National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. He has published widely across the social sciences, including 21 books and over 130 articles and book chapters. He is editor of the international journals, Progress in Human Geography and Dialogues in Human Geography, and for eleven years was the editor of Social and Cultural Geography. His book ‘Code/Space’ (with Martin Dodge) won the Association of American Geographers ‘Meridian Book Award’ for the outstanding book in the discipline in 2011. He is currently a PI on the Programmable City project, the Digital Repository of Ireland, and the All-Island Research Observatory - See more at: http://www.nuim.ie/people/rob-kitchin#sthash.KaYJkZvo.dpuf