scholarly journals Urban robotic experimentation: San Francisco, Tokyo and Dubai

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209802091779 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aidan H While ◽  
Simon Marvin ◽  
Mateja Kovacic
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Experimental Application ◽  
Urban Contexts ◽  
The City

Advances in robotics, artificial intelligence and automation have the potential to transform cities and urban social life. However, robotic restructuring of the city is complicated and contested. Technology is still evolving, robotic infrastructure is expensive and there are technical, trust and safety challenges in bringing robots into dynamic urban environments alongside humans. This article examines the nascent field of ‘urban robotics’ in three emblematic yet diverse national-urban contexts that are leading centres for urban robotic experimentation. Focusing on the experimental application of autonomous social robots, the article explores: (i) the rationale for urban robotic experiments and the interests involved, and (ii) the challenges and outcomes of creating meaningful urban spaces for robotic experimentation. The article makes a distinctive contribution to urban research by illuminating a potentially far-reaching but under-researched area of urban policy. It provides a conceptual framework for mapping and understanding the highly contingent, spatially uneven and socially selective processes of robotic urban experimentation.

scholarly journals Street Cries and the urban ritornelle

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-80
Author(s):  
Jacob Kreutzfeldt
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Northern European ◽  
The Social ◽  
Environmental Relations ◽  
The City ◽  
Fertile Area

Street cries, though rarely heard in Northern European cities today, testify to ways in which audible practices shape and structure urban spaces. Paradigmatic for what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call ‘the refrain’, the ritualised and stylised practice of street cries may point at the dynamics of space-making, through which the social and territorial construction of urban space is performed. The article draws on historical material, documenting and describing street cries, particularly in Copenhagen in the years 1929 to 1935. Most notably, the composer Vang Holmboe and the architect Steen Eiler Rasmussen have investigated Danish street cries as a musical and a spatial phenomenon, respectably. Such studies – from their individual perspectives – can be said to explore the aesthetics of urban environments, since street calls are developed and heard specifically in the context of the city. Investigating the different methods employed in the two studies and presenting Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of the refrain as a framework for further studies in the field, this article seeks to outline a fertile area of study for sound studies: the investigation of everyday refrains and the environmental relations they express and perform. Today changed sensibilities and technologies have rendered street crying obsolete in Northern Europe, but new urban ritornells may have taken their place.

scholarly journals Ray Tracing RF Field Prediction: An Unforgiving Validation

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. M. Vitucci ◽  
V. Degli-Esposti ◽  
F. Fuschini ◽  
J. S. Lu ◽  
M. Barbiroli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ray Tracing ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Sources Of Error ◽  
3D Ray Tracing ◽  
The City ◽  
Ray Tracing Model

The prediction of RF coverage in urban environments is now commonly considered a solved problem with tens of models proposed in the literature showing good performance against measurements. Among these, ray tracing is regarded as one of the most accurate ones available. In the present work, however, we show that a great deal of work is still needed to make ray tracing really unleash its potential in practical use. A very extensive validation of a state-of-the-art 3D ray tracing model is carried out through comparison with measurements in one of the most challenging environments: the city of San Francisco. Although the comparison is based on RF cellular coverage at 850 and 1900 MHz, a widely studied territory, very relevant sources of error and inaccuracy are identified in several cases along with possible solutions.

scholarly journals Architecture as the art of creating human-friendly places

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 059-076
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Chęć-Małyszek
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
The City

The public space of a city plays a special role in the life of every human being, as it meets basic and at the same time most important needs related to safety and comfort of life. It is a combination of an idea and a technique, which for centuries has reflected the changes taking place in people's social and cultural life. While the city is a multi-layered structure with a clearly separated private and public zone, creating mutual relations between the buildings. Camillo Sitte saw the city urban spaces as a work of art, które should be designed in such a way that the inhabitants feel safe and happy, as it is not just a show-off of technical skill, but an artistic undertaking. [1] The art of designing architecture does not exist for itself, but is created for the target audience.  It provides a harmony that satisfies human needs and guarantees survival. It is an important factor influencing the development of an individual through the organization of a social living space. Urban spaces are primarily people and their needs that change over time. The first part of the article is devoted to the role of public spaces and the idea of the city as a work of art. The second part, in turn, is an attempt to define architecture as a kind of fine arts, taking into account the role it plays in the social life of Lublin's residents.  The article is an attempts to emphasize the importance of architecture in designing a human-friendly environment as an art design that meets social expectations with the use of selected examples urban space of the city of Lublin.

Life in small urban spaces of “Sanskari Nagari – Vadodara”

2021 ◽  
pp. 70-90
Author(s):  
Abhilash Kolluri ◽  
Garbhit Naik ◽  
Shubham Kaushal
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Western India ◽  
Street Life ◽  
Life Project ◽  
The Public ◽  
City Dynamics ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

This paper envisages the situation of social life in the city of, “Vadodara – Sanskari Nagari” during and post-pandemic. In the globalization hub of Western-India, the city Vadodara stands true to its name – “Sanskari Nagari”, which still celebrates its rich heritage and culture to its fullest. The social life of people in Vadodara is not only a part of their culture but also part of their routine, which can be perceived from the world’s largest “Garba-gathering”; to every day’s post office hour “Chai-meetup”; to relishing their free time playing “Ludo” by the sides of bridges across the city. With the presence of COVID-19, city people are hesitant about social gatherings and meeting people. Ultimately, life is resuming but at a slow pace and there is an urge to “reimagine” the public spaces and public behaviour so that city doesn’t lose its charm. Referring to the city assessment of William H. Whyte, the mentor of Street Life Project for Public Spaces, Pedestrian behaviour, and City Dynamics, through his book – “Social Life Of Small Urban Spaces,1980” forms the prelude for the research. This paper draws attention to similar spaces for the city of Vadodara as referred to in the book. We see what we do not expect to see, and get acquainted to see crowded spaces. Hence, this paper analyses the selected “Urban-blocks” and “Neighbourhood-spaces” of different typology and their diverse activities. Conclusion focus on the rational segregation and “re-defining” of Urban Spaces based on their safe carrying capacity.

scholarly journals A SNAPSHOT OF HAPPINESS: PHOTO ALBUMS, RESPECTABILITY AND ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY IN DAKAR

Africa ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth Buggenhagen
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Networking Sites ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Capital City ◽  
City Centre ◽  
Rural Migrants ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The City

ABSTRACTYoung women who live in the improvised urban spaces on the outskirts of Senegal's capital city, Dakar, extemporize their respectability in a time of fiscal uncertainty through personal photography. The neighbourhood of Khar Yalla is an improvised, interconnected and multilayered space settled by families removed from the city centre during clean-up campaigns from the 1960s to the 1970s, by families escaping conflict in Casamance and Guinea-Bissau, and by recent rural migrants. As much as Khar Yalla is an improvised neighbourhood, it is also a space of improvisation. When women pose for, display, and pass around portraits of themselves at key moments in their social life, whether in the medium of social networking sites or photo albums, they reveal as much as they conceal the elements of individual and social life. They index their social networks and constitute their urban space not as peripheral, but as central to the lives and imaginations of their siblings and spouses who live abroad. Photographs actively shape and construct urban spaces, which are often loud, unruly and fraught spaces with vast inequalities and incommensurabilities. How women deal with economic and social disparity, within their own families, communities, and globally, is the subject of this article.

scholarly journals Redefining the city and demolishing the rest: The techno-green fix in postcrash Cleveland, Ohio

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Akers ◽  
Vincent Béal ◽  
Max Rousseau
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
East Side ◽  
Communities Of Color ◽  
Racial Hierarchies ◽  
The City ◽  
Property Markets ◽  
Scientific Ambition ◽  
Cleveland Ohio

This paper examines the techno-environmental urban policy that emerged in Cleveland, Ohio following the financial crisis, consisting primarily of mass demolition and greening programs, we argue this techno-green fix is an urban redevelopment strategy in shrinking cities that reshapes these places into manageable islands of urban development. Demolition and green reuse accelerated displacement without gentrification in long established low-income communities of color while reinforcing the racial hierarchies in US property markets. We demonstrate how the unevenness of the demolition program mirrors earlier racialized practices while adopting the rhetoric and strategy of “smart shrinkage.” We show that behind its neutral and scientific ambition, this strategy targets the most disadvantaged areas of the inner city. The market rational of these programs reproduces old patterns of racial segregation in the city. Finally, we show that the “green” dimension of this strategy is highly ambivalent. If “greening” is publicly presented as a means to benefit marginalized areas and residents, it is also used as a way to transfer the maintenance of urban services to poor residents on the city’s east side, to erase urban spaces, and to foster market dynamics.

scholarly journals Bodies and everyday practices in designed urban environments

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-76
Author(s):  
Monica Degen ◽  
Gillian Rose ◽  
Begum Basdas
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
New Town ◽  
Shopping Centre ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Specific Material ◽  
The City

In recent years, the centres of many towns and cities have been reshaped by urban design projects, but little attention has been paid to how these transformations are experienced everyday by users of the city. In other words: how do the users of urban centers, such as shoppers, cleaners, or workers, perceive these changes, as embodied subjects in specific material environments? This paper analyses how bodies in two intensely designed urban spaces–the shopping centre of Milton Keynes, a 1960s new town, and Bedford’s recently redeveloped historic town centre–are affected by elements of the built environment. ’Affected’ is a term borrowed from Latour (2004),and the paper works with, and elaborates, some of his and others’ work on how bodies are effectuated by other entities. Such Latourian work pays a great deal of attention to how bodies are affected by both human and non-human entities of many kinds, and we examine how certain aspects of the built environment in these two towns affect bodies in specific ways. However, we also emphasise the variability in this process, in particular that bodies seem unaware–or ambivalently aware–of many entities’ affordances.

scholarly journals The Urbanization of drone warfare: policing surplus populations in the dronepolis

2016 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian G. R. Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environments ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
State Security ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
Drone Warfare ◽  
Surplus Population ◽  
The City ◽  
Capital Intensive

Abstract. This paper explores the urbanization of drone warfare and the securitization of the “surplus population”. Defined as a bloc of humanity rendered as structurally unnecessary to a capital-intensive economy, the surplus population is an emerging target for the post-welfare security state. If we now live in an age of a permanent conflict with uncertain geographies, then it is at least partly fueled by this endemic crisis at the heart of the capitalist world system. Of key significance is the contradictory nature of the surplus population. The “security threat” generated by replacing masses of workers with nonhumans is increasingly managed by policing humans with robots, drones, and other apparatuses. In other words, the surplus population is both the outcome and target of contemporary capitalist technics. The emerging “dronification of state violence” across a post-9∕11 battlespace has seen police drones deployed to the urban spaces of cities in Europe and North America. The drone, with its ability to swarm in the streets of densely packed urban environments, crystallizes a more intimate and invasive form of state power. The project of an atmospheric, dronified form of policing not only embodies the technologization of state security but also entrenches the logic of a permanent, urbanized manhunt. The paper concludes by discussing the rise of the dronepolis: the city of the drone.

Transparency and the Ambient

2021 ◽  
pp. 64-90
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Exploratory Case Study ◽  
Correlational Design ◽  
Shed Light

The purpose of this chapter is to explore transparency and the ambient in relation to evolving perspectives on smart cities and regions. As such, this chapter seeks to shed light on the importance of elements in urban environments informing urban visibilities and invisibilities for smart, responsive, and future cities. The research literature for transparency and the ambient is explored in this chapter in the context of visibilities and invisibilities in smart cities. The constructs of openness and attuning to urban spaces are used to explore transparency and the ambient. This chapter uses an exploratory case study approach in combination with an explanatory correlational design. This chapter makes a contribution to 1) the research literature for transparency and the ambient in smart cities, 2) the evolving of perspectives on smart cities and regions, and 3) the evolving of theory through formulation of a conceptual framework for transparency and the ambient in smart cities.

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