Cities that listen

The Smart Cities of the future can exist in many different scenarios: either focusing on technologies that will allow energy savings and an increased efficiency of city life, or rather, as in the case of the reconstruction of L'Aquila, as a series of strategies for revival.

Cities that listen, cities that are listened to. Smart Cities is a hot topic and for this very reason, its identity is far from being defined. The issue can be approached from many points of view. The most common one — relating to European Commission funded projects — focuses on energy savings and an increased efficiency of city life. The European Smart Cities initiative, under the auspices of the carbon-minimising EC SETIS Program, proposes significant savings in three areas: buildings, transportation and energy networks. Companies like IBM and Cisco Systems have already initiated specific divisions and pilot projects in these fields. Other projects emphasize different aspects of the transformation of urban landscapes in this indubitably desirable scenario.

In this sense, some interesting prospects emerged at the Triennale in Milan during the Media City: New Spaces, New Aesthetics conference organized under the direction of Yale professor Francesco Casetti. The three-day seminar explored the impact of media on the transformation of the city's physiognomy. "Media is not just a tool for transmitting information within and out from urban space," said Casetti. "Being able to provide constant environmental monitoring that guides citizens' movements and choices and keeps them connected, has become a new form of social organization that fosters a stronger sense of participation, enabling new forms of citizenship."

The most striking aspect of this evolution is, of course, the pervasive use of screens to communicate with citizens. But the most profound and long-lasting changes are perhaps the less visible ones made possible by the convergence of media and functions in smaller and more portable devices. If it is true, as Giuliano Noci of the Politecnico di Milano contends, in 2013 there will already be more smartphones than personal computers. "The city," said the professor "will become an important medium that will provide various opportunities for content and services no longer related to physical space but rather to 'life contexts' that depend on an individual's specific situation at any given time of day." Thus, in various places, there will be an increasingly evident convergence of functions that might also conflict with one another. This was highlighted by Milan's Università Cattolica professors Ruggero Eugeni and Maria Grazia Fanchi during a seminar attended by many influential guest including Kurt W. Forster of Yale, Chiara Giaccardi from the Università Cattolica and Mario Abis of the Triennale board of directors.

The guest of honor was University of Southern California professor Henry Jenkins, promoter of a "bottom-up" concept of smart cities in which citizens themselves take steps to improve the life of the city. The American scholar is the author of several books; the best known, Convergence Culture (NYU Press, 2006), outlines the elements of new and ubiquitous digital communications created and managed by users. Jenkins proposes the idea of a "new civic ecology" that not only focuses on the transmission of information but that takes into account rituals that reinforce a sense of social and cultural belonging, referring to a distinction made by media scholar James Carey.

"For me, civic ecology is the way citizens shape the information that circulates and how they use it for decisions," said Jenkins. This can come about on various levels depending on how the tools of communication are used. To achieve the hoped-for scenario, it is necessary to maximize the circulation of important and credible information and make citizens more aware of it and willing to use it firsthand. One example is a Boston program, New Urban Mechanics, that seeks to promote a form of "Participatory Urbanism" that gives citizens the possibility to report problems of various kinds — especially regarding traffic — and help shape services tailored to their needs. One such service is Where's my school bus, an app that displays the exact location of the school bus on smartphones or computers. There are also a number of projects spearheaded by the MIT Center for Civic Media proposing real "data therapy" for citizens who learn techniques for collecting and presenting data. But since man does not survive on algorithms alone, Jenkins points out that there are also projects like VozMob (Mobile Voices), a platform created to collect and share stories of migrant workers who live in Los Angeles — via telephone.

In Italy, a response to the exciting experiments mentioned by Jenkins can be seen in proposals for the reconstruction of L'Aquila, where the symposium Smart Cities and Participatory Reconstruction was held at the same time as Media City: New Spaces, New Aesthetics. Its goal was to encourage projects and "bottom-up" ideas to help revitalize the city of Abruzzo. Here technology does not risk becoming an invasive and sometimes unjustified force on urbanism, but rather a serious engine for revival. Stefania Garassini

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