smart city

Article: Critical Imagination

Bottom-up Turned Inside Out

Decision-making in urban development today isn’t defined by the needs of empowered citizens but by two mutually supporting mechanisms: big corporate interests and retreating governments. Rather than a political vision of how life in cities ought to be organized, contemporary planning resembles a managerial task that coordinates flows of money, materials, people, and information. Paradoxically, […]
Article: Critical Imagination

Urban Branding and the Violent Ghosts of the Politics of Representation

City branding is a relevant issue among urban policy makers. In a nutshell, it refers to the promotion of the image of a city, mostly in order to attract tourists, investments, mega-events, such as the Olympic games, and new wealthy residents, such as the members of the so-called ‘creative class’.1 This commentary will summarize some […]
Article: Critical Imagination
Superstudio - Continuous Monument

Continuous Monuments and Imaginable Alternatives

In 1969, Superstudio, a radical Italian design group, made a proposal for what they called the ‘Continuous Monument’. It was a homogenous block of architecture that would encircle the earth depicting the global and total dimension of design and architecture of that time. We currently live in the time of a similar monument that harvests […]
Article: Wishful Thinking

Public Anagrams

Public Anagrams is based on the manipulation and subversion of mainstream slogans describing well-known public art and urban development paradigms and strategies, such as “smart cities” or “urban regeneration”. By mixing up letters and by turning upside-down the slogans, the artist aims at raising critical awareness about the hidden outcomes of urban development strategies. Slogans […]
Article: Critical Imagination
Alberto Vanolo - Amateur Cities- All Cities are Beautiful

Smart City or The serial reproduction of an urban vision

A couple of months ago I bought a brand new video game console, Sony’s well known PS4. Despite being almost 40, I enjoy video games very much, and I also think that they are relevant cultural products to be carefully considered in the social sciences (I often use such an argument in order to justify […]