Smart[er] Cities


The vision of a Smart City is currently fostered by a technologically-enhanced worldview of the urban condition, whereas traditional and modern communication infrastructure, mainly the transport and ICT infrastructures, fuel sustainable urban growth and the quality of urban life. Smart cities are envisioned as wired and ICT-driven cities, saturated with embedded sensors, actuators, digital screens, hand-held devices and smart phones and all sorts of embedded and situated computing devices, with connectivity as the source of their growth and the driver of their effective performance.

With the objective of developing alternative models of urbanization within the context of technologically-enhanced cities, the course will address the emerging areas of Smart[er] Knowledge and Smart[er] Health, exploring the new opportunities offered by innovative technologies for the redefinition of knowledge creation and distribution for ecosystems of innovation, and for the enhancement of health solutions and wellbeing behaviors for healthier practices. The course will investigate how new models of networks, enhanced immersive and interactive spaces, and novel computational technologies can contribute to tackle pressing questions of learning and healthcare through the lens of the design of smart architectures, infrastructures and ultimately artifacts, as well as technologically retrofitting or repurposing our built environments.

Smart[er] Knowledge
Education will be the critical determinant of success for 21st century communities. Smart[er] Knowledge involves a community that aims to adapt and innovate within a specific urban context, yet as part of a global network. Such territories need to have a high capacity for learning and innovation built into their population, institutions of knowledge production, and traditional and modern communication infrastructure. The Smart[er] Knowledge research and applied track aims to rethink and redesign the role of universities in a more participative, democratic, dynamic and yet functional way, developing an effective integration between academia, institutions, industries and citizens under new models of “University City.”

Smart[er] Health
Health challenges have seen a sharp increase in diversity, scale, and complexity over recent decades. Aging populations, obesity, self-destructive lifestyle choices of the urban population in areas such as nutrition, mobility, etc., and ailing urban environments all take their toll on outdated healthcare systems. While discouraging, these challenges also present ample opportunities for research and innovation. It is the role of designers to synthesize this vast range of emerging fields of inquiry into user-centered systems, spaces, and objects made to make wellbeing present and dynamic through experience and feedback. Effective strategies will be investigated to better integrate healthcare facilities within the city. The Smart[er] Health research and applied track aims to identify the role of the city in developing practices and spaces for better health.

The course is organized around four dimensions:
(1) literature review of Smart Cities
(2) analytical case study of proposed or practiced smart city solutions
(3) rigorous investigation of urban problems that can be addressed by smart city solutions
(4) hands-on approach towards proposing, designing, developing, and prototypically implementing ITC-driven, networked and integrated solutions to smarter cities

The course is part of an academic collaboration with the University of Bergamo.