How Smart is the Smart City?

Paris Marx is joined by Shannon Mattern to discuss what we miss when we see the city solely through the lens of the computer, and how other institutions and ways of knowing can help inform richer ways of understanding the city.

Shannon Mattern is a professor of anthropology at The New School for Social Research and President of the Board at the Metropolitan New York Library Council. She is the author of “Code and Clay, Data and Dirt” and “A City Is Not a Computer.” Follow Shannon on Twitter at @shannonmattern.

• Ursula K. Le Guin ranted about the meaning of the word “technology.”
• Google wanted to build a smart city in Toronto, but activists killed it.
• Gökçe Günel wrote “Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi” about the Masdar smart city project.
• Songdo was supposed to be South Korea’s city of the future. It didn’t work out.
• Kevin Rogan wrote about the human labor Sidewalk Labs was hiding.

• Why Google’s Toronto Smart City Failed w/ Josh O'Kane
• How Neoliberalism Seized the Internet w/ Dan Greene
• Tech Criticism Before the Techlash w/ Zachary Loeb
• Major Publishers Want to Shut Down Digital Lending w/ Maria Bustillos