In 2012 the architectural firm FR•EE proposed a master plan for a generic high tech city they immodestly called FR•EE City. The firm was founded by Mexican architect Fernando Romero. “Envision a place where residents are guaranteed security, healthcare and education, a city where access to information is unrestricted and innovative technologies are fully integrated…More
Tag Archives: urbanism
Bitcoin City
In 2021, the the president of El Salvador in Central America declared Bitcoin legal tender. So businesses had to accept the digital currency as well as US dollars. The country had already abandoned its own currency, the colón, in 2001. By many accounts, the move to Bitcoin has not gone well. Vendors are reluctant to…More
Urban cryptography
I’ve been investigating city life through the lens of cryptography. Here are some of the claims I think I can make on behalf of an “urban cryptography.” The most obvious contribution is that cryptography (digital encryption) addresses and resolves challenges of securing data and information flows in the city. But there’s more. Cities rely on…More
Shock and plunder
In her recent book on surveillance capitalism Shoshana Zuboff explains how digital corporations exploit our data, and us, just they claim that their products meet our needs and help us realise our dreams. “our lives are plundered for behavioral data, and all for the sake of others’ gain. The result is a perverse amalgam of…More
Encrypted city
Urban metaphors are powerful in the world of computing. The reverse is also true. Computing brings metaphors to bear on how we think of cities — as flows of data, networks, circuits, grids and an Internet of things, as if cities are made up of bits, memories (RAM), sensors, actuators, and with communication systems, inputs,…More
Sentient spaces
Sentient spaces are simply spaces containing sensors: registering heat, light, sound, impact and other signals derived from movements, properties, and other aspects of the environment. After all, the Latin sentīre is to feel (OED). Spaces saturated with CCTV coverage also contribute to spatial sentience, and spaces laced with networks, software, and storage media through which these signals pass. Add to…More
A sudden prospect
People pay a lot of money for a restaurant table, hotel room or apartment with a good view, but prospect has it’s most dramatic effect as part of a sequence. The geographer Jay Appleton (1919-2015) famously advocated that people prefer views, scenes, paintings, and by implication, landscapes, in which there’s an element of both prospect and of refuge. We are programmed biologically…More
Divided cities
Last year it was Berlin, a reunited city. See post: You are now free to move about the cabin. This year it’s Nicosia in Cyprus, still divided. All being well I’ll be able to include some pictures, videos and commentary on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Bibliography Pullan, Wendy. 2013. Spatial discontinuities: Conflict infrastructures in contested cities. In W.…More
Showing off
As well as valuing their privacy, it seems that some people want to make spectacles of themselves. Include in this category conspicuous whistle blowers exposing secrets — about covert operations that uncover other people’s secrets. Amidst concerns about the interception of text messages, voice, and phone data by GCHQ (Guardian) and ubiquitous video surveillance, spare…More
Cappuccino epidemic
There’s a surfeit of cafes in Australia, reflecting no doubt what’s happening all around the world — at least in aspirational, bourgeois euro- and anglo-centric urban and semi-urban settings. It’s a fact bound to impress itself on the returning tourist, who meets the phenomenon with some gratitude. There’s always somewhere to rest, to recuperate, it’s…More