Madinat Al-Irfan is the name of the new planned city Oman is trying to develop. Located to the west of Muscat, Oman’ s capital, near the international airport, the city has already built by the government a convention center and a few hotels on the 1,500-acre site. Mimi Kirk has published a critical review in CityLab about this project. Continue reading
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Cities
Brent D. Ryan has detailed his perspective on urban design in a new book, “The Largest Art: A Measured Manifesto for a Plural Urbanism’, calling for a more pluralistic, democratic vision of the city. The book has been recently published by the MIT Press and the author is an associate professor of urban design and public policy in MIT’ s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Continue reading
This article aims to highlight central challenges faced by planners of smart cities, integrated with ICT, providing a framework to assess the impact of ICT on the form and function of cities, through its effect on people’ s spatial behavior patterns. It demonstrates that the ability to simulate individual agents’ behavior through Agent-Based Models (ABM) and how it is affected by enhanced spatial awareness facilitated by ICT, could result in a new understanding of how a city is used, making visible less predictable use patterns and contributing to a more accountable design of urban form and function by planners.