Smart Cities, Germaine Halegoua
Smart Cities, Germaine Halegoua
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Smart Cities

Author: Germaine Halegoua

Narrator: Wendy Tremont King

Unabridged: 5 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 03/17/2020


Synopsis

Over the past ten years, urban planners, technology companies, and governments have promoted smart cities with a somewhat utopian vision of urban life made knowable and manageable through data collection and analysis. Emerging smart cities have become both crucibles and showrooms for the practical application of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and the integration of big data into everyday life. Are smart cities optimized, sustainable, digitally networked solutions to urban problems? Or are they neoliberal, corporate-controlled, undemocratic non-places? This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers a concise introduction to smart cities, presenting key concepts, definitions, examples, and historical contexts, along with discussions of both the drawbacks and the benefits of this approach to urban life.

After reviewing current terminology and justifications employed by technology designers, journalists, and researchers, the book describes three models for smart city development and offers examples of each. It covers technologies and methods, including sensors, public wi-fi, big data, and smartphone apps, and discusses how developers conceive of interactions among the built environment, technological and urban infrastructures, citizens, and citizen engagement.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Petty Lisbon on July 29, 2021

I thought this was an informative textbook but a repetitive regular book. I liked learning about the concept of smart cities, how they are implemented, how citizens view them, and so on, but it felt like it went into list mode too often. There was no rhyme or reason for how examples would be focused......more

Goodreads review by Gabriela on July 20, 2021

This book was an impeccable read and my introduction to Smart Cities. Germaine does an exceptional job laying out a framework (models) of smart cities and assessing their design from the impact these models have on -- citizen output, stakeholder engagement, social justice, and equity. There are seve......more

Goodreads review by Matthias on August 24, 2020

This book has one major issue. It was published in the wrong book-series. The MIT Essential Knowledge series typically provides an excellent entry-point into a topic, containing 90 % knowledge and 10 % discussions of or opinions about the current state of implementation. For this book, this is switch......more

Goodreads review by Sebastian on January 23, 2021

Very dry. I'm not an expert on the topic, just a tech-savvy person and it feels like I've learned pretty much nothing (by reading this book). There's a simplistic model of smart city classification, there's a criticism of smartass BigTech that just want to sell their products, there's hype on digitiz......more

Goodreads review by Hunter on March 25, 2025

[Audiobook] This topic needs more love. Unfortunately, the love wasn’t communicated properly here. This book did a great job at presenting the benefits of Smart Cities without advocating for a surveillance state. The author actually discussed all the downsides and misuse of power that couples the adv......more