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Digital Societies

Thursday, May 3rd, 2018, 10:15–19:30

Smart Cities – Beyond


the Standard Model
Symposium

A Symposium, organized by Harald Atmanspacher and Petros


Koumoutsakos, in the context of the focal topic «Digital Societies»
of the fellowship period 2016–2020 at Collegium Helveticum.
The standard model of a smart city is based on modern

Editorial
information technology: an internet of things and services
that makes urban structures and processes more efficient.
The smartness of an urban agglomeration in the standard
model mainly refers to economy, governance, mobility,
infrastructure and environment. A recent paradigm of such
a smart city, designed and constructed from scratch, is
Songdo City in South Korea.

But the standard model disregards a number of interests,


desires and needs of citizens who are supposed to live in a
smart city. It is a truism that growing efficiency in all kinds
of engineering issues alone is only part of the picture if the
human condition as a whole is at stake. The symposium
will highlight and discuss important and timely directions
in this respect, such as the surprising significance of in-
efficiencies, insights about stable and unstable dynamics,
Smart Cities – Beyond metropolitan areas in developing countries, the role of civil
societies, and the perspective of cities as cultural land-
the Standard Model scapes. After all, a number one topic for urban development
is its intelligent and critical reflection.
Program
Dr. Robert Cowley

Speakers
Thursday, May 3rd, 2018 16:15–17:30
Notes on the King’s College London
10:15 Smartification of Cities robert.cowley@kcl.ac.uk
Welcome Address Juval Portugali
Thomas Hengartner Prof. Dr. Eric Gordon
Emerson College Boston
17:30–18:15 eric@elab.emerson.edu
Coffee Break
10:20
Introduction Prof. Dr. Ludger Hovestadt
Petros Koumoutsakos 18:15–19:30 ETH Zurich
A Quantum City. hovestadt@arch.ethz.ch
Mastering the Generic
10:30–11:45 Ludger Hovestadt Prof. Dr. Juval Portugali
Finding Places. Citizen Tel Aviv University
Engagement with Data juval@post.tau.ac.il
in the Urban Context
Gesa Ziemer Prof. Dr. Gesa Ziemer
HafenCity University Hamburg
gesa.ziemer@hcu-hamburg.de
11:45–13:00
Meaningful Inefficiencies:
Designing for Democratic
Values in the Smart City
Eric Gordon

13:00–15:00
Lunch Break

15:00–16:15
Making Sense of the Smart
City’s Variety: Lessons
from China
Robert Cowley
Abstracts

Abstracts
Robert Cowley Eric Gordon
King’s College, London Emerson College, Boston

Making Sense of the Smart Meaningful Inefficiencies:


City’s Variety: Lessons from Designing for Democratic
China Values in the Smart City

Earlier commentaries on the smart city were unavoidably What makes a city smart? The idea of the smart city is
speculative. They often critiqued corporate visions of the a modern invention – a qualifier placed on the city that
urban future, variously positioning these as technocratic, suggests a distinction from what came before it. The
dystopian, and reductive in their conceptualization of smart city suggests a move from organic growth to master
both urban space and citizenship. And yet, actual smart planned, or from chaos, unpredictability, and inefficien-
city initiatives currently emerging around the world pose cy to the promise of order, predictability, and efficiency.
an analytical challenge: they are most readily characteri- As much as it describes a particular form or technology,
zed by their heterogeneity. How, then, should we reflect the smart city is a rhetorical flourish with very particular
constructively on such a “multiple object”? I will explore implications in the internet-connected age.
this question by reflecting on the way that the smart city
concept has been mobilized in China specifically. This will This talk is about the smart city in practice. I explore the
involve a consideration of how it has been “translated” tensions between the promise of the smart city and the re-
into national policy-making, and – through the case of a alities of the bureaucratic management of human relations
particular city (Wuhan) – how local actors selectively ac- and communities. I will discuss specific interventions
commodate national policies within their own agendas, in that seek to disrupt dominant approaches to governance,
the context of an ongoing digitalization of everyday urban specifically those that push the smart city from its focus
life. As well as outlining some distinctive characteristics of on efficiency and innovation, to include the messiness
the Chinese approach to the smart city, the paper will end inherent in human relations. I will present on the case
by proposing methodological implications for studying the study of the Beta Blocks project in Boston, USA, which in-
smart city elsewhere. corporates participatory processes to co-produce policies,
and is deliberately taking the time to build relationships
with constituents, ensuring that processes are inclusive
and diverse.

These tactics need to be included in an expanded defini-


tion of the smart city, which captures all the inefficien-
cies necessary for meaningful public life. I introduce the
concept of meaningful inefficiencies to capture the range of
activities and approaches taking place in smart city prac- duction of new information-communication technologies
Abstracts

Abstracts
tice that deliberately seeks to challenge the dominance of to all spheres of life including cities. The challenge, therefo-
technological efficiency in contemporary governance. re, is not to distinguish smart from dumb cities but rather
to get a better insight into, and explore the implications
of, the smartification of cities. Here we make an attempt
Ludger Hovestadt at this direction by looking at the smartification of cities
ETH Zürich from the conjunctive perspective of the notion of synergetic
inter-representation networks and information adaptation
A Quantum City. developed together with Hermann Haken.
Mastering the Generic
Gesa Ziemer
HafenCity University, Hamburg
We know the specific strengths of various cities, are aware
of their ranking, are able to discuss their density and Finding Places. Citizen
growth. But what do all cities have in common, what do we
know about the “lowest common denominator”? The “city Engagement with Data
as a species”, the “primal genetic material of the city”: this
is the subject of A Quantum City. A love letter to the city
in the Urban Context
and intellectual culture.

We are all citizens and we all constantly produce and use


Juval Portugali
different data. But who is the owner and user of our data?
Tel Aviv University In a lot of cities within democratic political systems citizen
participation is highly demanded. The goal is to include
Notes on the Smartification the local knowledge of the citizens and create an open
discourse about how we can increase life quality in cities
of Cities that become bigger and denser. For the future we will deal
with a lot of area competitions in the urban context. How
will we use public space? Where should housing take place?
Smart city is a misleading notion: It implies that for the first How could we condense the city in a good way? For such
time in human history cities are “smart” and that today’s question we also have to cooperate with the citizens and
cities can be dichotomized into smart vs. dumb cities. Both their local knowledge and different stakeholders from the
implications are erroneous: cities were always smart – the government to improve their interdisciplinary approach to
locus of the smartest human inventions, while today all the city. How can we organize citizen engagement – beyond
cities (in fact all human settlements) are in the midst of a a standardized unterstanding of a “smart city” – not only
process of smartification; not because a certain city mayor with analog methods, but also with digital tools?
has decided to “smartify” his/her city, but due to the intro-
Notes

Contact
Haldenegg

Lim
mat

Leo
Weinbergstr.

nha
rd
.
Haupt- str

str.
erg
bahnhof
elzb
Sc hm
Bahnhofbrü r.
cke enst
Bahnhofplatz/HB Tann

Central
Polybahn

Unive
rsitä
tsstr
.
Venue
ETH Zürich
Room HG E3
Rämistrasse 101
8092 Zürich

Organizers
Harald Atmanspacher, Collegium Helveticum
Petros Koumoutsakos, Collegium Helveticum and ETHZ

Registration
Since the number of participants is limited, registration is
necessary and will be processed in the order of arrival.
Please register at reservation@collegium.ethz.ch before
April 15, 2018.
Laboratorium für Transdisziplinarität
Schmelzbergstrasse 25 CH-8092 Zürich www.collegium.ethz.ch

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