(NOT SO) SMART CITIES

NEW YORK TIMES | Technologies have become more highly sophisticated than they were during Jane Jacobs time. And “smart technologies” such as smart power grids, cyber security and intelligent traffic and surveillance systems are being further developed to make our cities “smarter.” Yet New York Times op-ed columnist Greg Lindsey considers, the smartest cities are the ones that embrace openness, randomness and serendipity, as Jane Jacobs herself observed. Can these characteristics be replicated by technology? Researchers seem to think so.