[1st-mile-nm] Stop Saying 'Smart Cities'

[Mimbres Communications]

Digital stardust won’t magically make future cities more affordable or
resilient.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/stupid-cities/553052/

...the cities of the future won’t be “smart,” or well-engineered, cleverly
designed, just, clean, fair, green, sustainable, safe, healthy, affordable,
or resilient. They won’t have any particularly higher ethical values of
liberty, equality, or fraternity, either. The future smart city will be the
internet, the mobile cloud, and a lot of weird paste-on gadgetry, deployed
by City Hall, mostly for the sake of making towns more attractive to
capital.

Whenever that’s done right, it will increase the soft power of the more
alert and ambitious towns and make the mayors look more electable. When
it’s done wrong, it’ll much resemble the ragged downsides of the previous
waves of urban innovation, such as railways, electrification, freeways, and
oil pipelines. There will also be a host of boozy side effects and toxic
blowback that even the wisest urban planner could never possibly expect.



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Kurt Albershardt  |  Mimbres Communications, LLC  |  575-342-0042
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