ARC 327—Smart Cities and Urban Intelligence

What makes a city smart, and why would we want to live there? This course examines the contemporary paradigm of the smart city and its implications for everyday urban life. In an age of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data, we have the ability to collect, aggregate, analyze and integrate information about the urban environment in ways that enable us to better visualize, model and predict urban processes, simulate probable outcomes, and lead to more efficient and sustainable cities. Yet while AI-driven systems and their attendant data practices are frequently cited for their potential to make cities better places to live, they have also been criticized for their capacity to do harm by further exacerbating existing social and environmental injustice. This course critically examines the smart city paradigm and studies alternate models for urban intelligence-some longstanding, some more recent­-that shift the focus from instrumental approaches to solving urban problems with technology to the generative roles that citizens can play in shaping more just and equitable forms of urban life.