I’ve been invited by ESAP – Escola Superior Artística do Porto – to speak on the subject of SmarterCities and in representation of IBM. I just came back from New York (was there for a week) and actually got some ideas about technology, urbanism and how people interact with them all from observing a city that is in several ways quite different from the one I’m from. In particular – and this is also something I seen in the MoMA – the relationship between people, their environment and how laws, technology advances and economical changes can have such an impact on the daily lives of city dwellers.
Two particular examples come to mind: the impact of the NY zoning laws in the development of a particular city outlook, namely high-rise buildings, and also (and completely unrelated) how Umberto Eco has this constant fascination with Paris’ sewers (which are large and form an almost underground city in themselves) and how due to technology – namely, FTTH – these sort of physical, “hard” infrastructure blocks gain a whole new level of interest and usefulness.