Equality in the City: Imaginaries of the Smart Future(Mediated Cities)

A compelling critique of “smart city” rhetoric. Equality in the City engenders a timely debate about what future cities might look like and what their concerns should be. Using a multi-disciplinary perspective, it features acclaimed scholars whose work investigates the proposed networked, digital technologies that ostensibly affect planning policies, control infrastructures, and deliver and manage city services and systems. The contributors offer insights into how future cities might be envisaged, planned, and executed in order to be more equal.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Susan Flynn   Section 1: Urban Crisis 1.     Locked down in the neoliberal Smart City: A-systemic technologies in crisis. Eleanor Dare, Reader in Digital Media, Royal College of Art   2.     If (equality). Delfina Fantini von Ditmar, Lecturer in Digital Research, Royal College of Art   3.     Reading Lefebvre’s right to the city in the age of the internet. Alan Reeve. Reader in Urban Design, Oxford Brookes University   4.     Universities, Equality and the Neoliberal City. Richard Hayes. Vice-President, Waterford Institute of Technology   Section 2: City Design   5.     Universal Smart City Design. Eoghan Conor O’Shea, Lecturer in Universal Design and Architecture. Institute of Technology, Carlow, Ireland   6.     The Design and Public Imaginaries of Smart Street Furniture. Justine Humphry, University of Sydney; Sophia Maalsen, University of Sydney; Justine Gangneux, University of Glasgow; Chris Chesher, University of Sydney; Matt Hanchard, University of Glasgow; Simon Joss, University of Glasgow; Peter Merrington, University of Glasgow; Bridgette Wessels, University of Glasgow   7.     Co-creating Place and Creativity Through Media Architecture: The Instabooth. Glenda Caldwell, Associate Professor of Architecture, Queensland University of Technology   8.     Narratives, inequalities and civic participation: A case for 'more-than-technological' approaches to smart city development. Carla Maria Kayanan, Post-Doctoral Fellow, University College Dublin; Niamh Moore-Cherry, Associate Professor of Urban Governance and Development in the School of Geography, University College Dublin and Alma Clavin, Post-Doctoral Fellow, University College Dublin   Section3: Spatial Humanism   9.     Building Participatory City 2.0; Folksonomy, Taxonomy, Hyperhumanism. Carl Smith, Director of the Learning Technology Research Centre (LTRC) and Principal Research Fellow Ravensbourne University London; Fred Garnett, London Knowledge Lab and Manuel Laranja, Senior Associate Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Lisbon     10.  Psychogeography: reimagining and re-enchanting the smart city. Adrian Sledmere, Lecturer in Cultural Studies, University of the Arts, London    11.  Afterword Rob Kitchin, Professor of Human Geography, National University of Ireland, Maynooth

About the Author :
Dr. Susan Flynn is a lecturer at the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland.   

Review :
'One of the strengths of this book is that its authors bridge familiar planning and broader urban studies theory with the contemporary challenges of new technology deployment. This bridging helps ground our engagement with the complexity of new technologies in our long-standing obligation to equitably evaluate how new changes in communities will affect all of our residents. Planners reading this book will gain insight into how we might engage our residents in civic conversations about new technology adoption. [...] Individually and collectively, these chapters will help planners think more critically about the challenges and opportunities new technologies bring before we implement them. Equality in the City has many chapters that could be used in planning theory classes, allowing learners to see how the planning and urbanism theories that have long informed our practice also shed important light on new trends.'