The rise of the online economy is based on the opportunities to extract value from data that is produced by digital technologies. As opposed to data brokers that gain value buying and selling personal information, this report argues for radically new ideas about how the value of our personal information can be returned back to citizens. Rather than focusing on how making money from data, it focuses on how data can benefit society as a whole, exploring the idea of ‘data commons’. The report is entitled “Common Knowledge: Citizen-led data governance for better cities” and is part of the decode H2020 project.
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Cities
Sidewalk Toronto project, developed by Sidewalk Labs, was suspended earlier this month. The company claimed “unprecedented economic uncertainty’ caused by the current pandemic.
The project consists of a highly controversial topic, due to privacy concerns. Sidewalk Labs, a Google affiliate, designed a large-scale project towards the transformation of the Waterfront of Toronto into a smart city.
What can be said about Covid-19 that hasn’ t been said already? Rather than simply talking and writing about the pandemic, Gehl staff wants to share the lived experience of it. With the support of Realdania and the City of Copenhagen, they worked with 60 surveyors in 4 cities in Denmark to observe and understand how streets and public spaces, parks and playgrounds are serving the very unique needs of the communities during this pandemic. The first results are listed in this report, both in terms of snapshots of public life during the “lock-down’ as well as highlights of the collected data. Continue reading
This book explores the opportunities for incorporating responsive technologies in spatial designs to improve the quality of public spaces. It also presents inspiring examples from a two-year practice-based study of responsive public spaces carried out by a consortium of spatial designers, interaction designers and local stakeholders, headed by the Chair of Spatial Urban Transformation of Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Continue reading
This report identifies challenges influencing the future of cities in Europe and beyond, presenting several perspectives from which to look at resolving these issues. It is an initiative of the JRC and is supported by the Commission’ s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO). The main aim is to raise open questions and steer discussions on what the future of cities can, and should be, both within the scientific and policymaker communities. Continue reading
This book focuses on the process that creates the global urban periphery, namely suburbanization, as well as the ways of life, suburbanisms, that are encountered there. Inspired by Henri Lefebvre’s demand not to give up urban theory when the city in its classical form disappears, this book is a challenge to urban thought more generally as it invites the reader to reconsider the city from the outside in. It is part of the Urban Futures series. Continue reading
This book focuses on the potential of ICT to increased possibilities for new uses and elements or even types of urban open spaces, as an important added value to the quality of life, inclusiveness and atrractiveness of the city. The editors are Carlos Smaniotto Costa, Ina Å uklje Erjavec, Therese Kenna, Michiel de Lange, Konstantinos Ioannidis, Gabriela Maksymiuk and Martijn de Waal and its is open access.
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