{"id":784,"date":"2014-10-08T16:39:28","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T21:39:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/digital-computational-studies-2430-fall-2014\/?p=784"},"modified":"2014-10-08T16:39:28","modified_gmt":"2014-10-08T21:39:28","slug":"democratic-participation-in-smart-infrastructure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/digital-computational-studies-2430-fall-2014\/uncategorized\/democratic-participation-in-smart-infrastructure\/","title":{"rendered":"Democratic Participation in Smart Infrastructure"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I think of a smart city, I think of infrastructure that promotes well-coordinated and convenient movements of people, resources and ideas. This improved convenience, however, comes with decisions about what entities will be structurally (both literally and figuratively) supported. In \u201cTraffic in Democracy,\u201d Sorkin reveals the ways in which the city \u201corganizes its prejudices and privileges physically,\u201d namely by outlining how Giuliani\u2019s New York was physically organized to prioritize the car.[1] This organization creates a social hierarchy that becomes imbedded in society. Sorkin describes the importance placed in \u201cflow\u201d in New York \u2013 increased speed to save time \u2013 and how this results on slower moving bodies deferring to faster ones.[2] This is not inherent, but rather structural. Denmark, for example, has infrastructure that heavily supports the bike as dominant. Bikes have their own lanes, traffic lights, and bridges. In Denmark, the car is the last priority, and their new \u201csmart\u201d technology is in accordance with this. They are developing what is known as a \u201cgreen wave<\/a>,\u201d or traffic lights that will give cyclist continuous green lights during rush hour.[3] \u00a0As Portland transforms into a \u201csmart\u201d city, it should consider updating existing technology to act in accordance with more pedestrian-friendly practices.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, many decisions about physical infrastructures \u2013 such as size of roads, capacity for public transportation, etc. \u2013 have already been made. Luckily, the advent of \u201csmart\u201d infrastructure, principally virtual infrastructure, has the opportunity to develop and organize itself more democratically. Jiminez discusses the potential for democratization of cities through \u201copen technology,\u201d with equal opportunity to access data and recreate the urban landscape.[4] We must be wary however, of how democratic they may prove to be. Individuals with no access to technology will be entirely isolated from this new form of infrastructure.<\/p>\n

While this may seem to be an unusual parallel, \u201cPeople as Infrastructure\u201d made me think of ways in which people can serve as a different type of infrastructure in a \u201csmart\u201d city. In Johannesburg, interconnected networks of individuals acting as special economic and social links make difficult urban conditions more manageable.[5] The \u201csmart\u201d city also presents opportunities for increasingly large social networks that rely on collaboration and specialized knowledge. While an app may be the medium for information sharing, it is the individual\u2019s initiative to, for example, report the location of a traffic jam, that makes up the content of the new technology. People will, in a virtual world, become a much larger participant in infrastructure than they were in the age when infrastructure was purely the sidewalks and power lines.<\/p>\n

[1] Sorkin, Michael. \u201cIntroduction: Traffic in Democracy.\u201d In\u00a0The People, Place and Space Reader,<\/em>\u00a0edited by Jen Jack Gieseking, et al, New York: Routledge, 2014.\u00a0413.<\/p>\n

[2] Sorkin, Michael. \u201cIntroduction: Traffic in Democracy.\u201d In\u00a0The People, Place and Space Reader,<\/em>\u00a0edited by Jen Jack Gieseking, et al, New York: Routledge, 2014.\u00a0411.<\/p>\n

[3] “The Green Wave Spreads,”\u00a0Copenhaganize.com<\/em>, October 6th, 2008,\u00a0http:\/\/www.copenhagenize.com\/2008\/10\/green-wave-spreads.html.<\/p>\n

[4] Jim\u00e9nez, Alberto Cors\u00ed\u00adn. \u201cThe right to infrastructure: a prototype for open source urbanism.\u201d\u00a0Environment and Planning: Society and Space<\/em>\u00a032 (2014): 342-362.<\/p>\n

[5] Simone, AbdouMaliq. \u201cPeople as Infrastructure.\u201d In\u00a0The People, Place, and Space Reader<\/em>, edited by Jen Jack Gieseking, et al, New York: Routledge, 2014. 241-246.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I think of a smart city, I think of infrastructure that promotes well-coordinated and convenient movements of people, resources and ideas. This improved convenience, however, comes with decisions about what entities will be structurally (both literally and figuratively) supported. In \u201cTraffic in Democracy,\u201d Sorkin reveals the ways in which the city \u201corganizes its prejudices … Continue reading Democratic Participation in Smart Infrastructure<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post-5-infrastructure-reflections","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p50q0U-cE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/digital-computational-studies-2430-fall-2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/digital-computational-studies-2430-fall-2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/digital-computational-studies-2430-fall-2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/digital-computational-studies-2430-fall-2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/digital-computational-studies-2430-fall-2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/digital-computational-studies-2430-fall-2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/digital-computational-studies-2430-fall-2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/digital-computational-studies-2430-fall-2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/digital-computational-studies-2430-fall-2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}