Smart cities and big data may be the hot topics of today, but the implications of how the city is being wired, how it is generating new data, how this data might force new theories and models relevant to our understanding, how we might use our strategic models and intelligence to plan the city, building on this new understanding – these are all crucial questions to be explored. In one sense, all this is part of a world that is fast becoming digital in all its dimensions, where we can develop our understanding and our design ideas digitally, using representations and data that are also digital and developing new ideas for the future which will be implemented and will change the digital basis of everyday urban and social life. Our need to understand how all these dimensions are coalescing, merging, complementing, and substituting for one another has never been more urgent. It constitutes a major challenge for planning and design in the near future.
In addition to interesting, reading a piece from M. Batty has always been pleasurable! This is Michael Batty’s editorial for the journal of Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 2012: MBatty editorial
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