The USA National Building Museum is launching Intelligent Cities, a year-long initiative, to gather data and reveal new insights about urban life. The initiative will produce data, analysis, and ideas on how new technologies are shaping cities and present this information in new and revealing ways.
Intelligent Cities from National Building Museum on Vimeo.
It’ s the grassroots input about people’ s perceptions of and priorities for the built environment around them that makes Intelligent Cities particularly significant for us. Technology and access to information has reached a point where non-professionals can generate data and think deeply about where they live. Through Intelligent Cities, we have the means to share their viewpoints with experts in the design and building industries so that there is a true give and take between constituencies. Experts need input from the community and can use it to make the planning and design process more open, participatory, and democratic.
states National Building Museum president and executive director Chase W. Rynd.
Intelligent Cities explores the intersection of information technology and urban design to understand where we are, where we want to be, and how to get there. In the words of Museum curator Susan Piedmont-Palladino,
For as long as we have lived in cities we have reflected on their form, feel, and function. From the launch of the first hot air balloon to Google maps, we have developed technologies to see what we have done, what we are doing, and what we wish to do. Today, the scale and complexity of neighborhoods, towns, and cities are unprecedented, and so are our tools for understanding them.
Intelligent Cities is opening with a six-month national public outreach campaign, which will reach millions of people through advertisements in TIME and on TIME.com. The one-year initiative will include research and consultation conducted by the Museum and an advisory committee of experts, a public forum in June 2011, and a publication in Fall 2011.
Intelligent Cities is a National Building Museum project in partnership with TIME, supported by IBM, and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation