How urban data reveals the hidden life behind cities
Urban data is an informal description for all the data that is collected in cities, about people or about things. It can be used to make our life better, but, as Black Mirror shows, our personal data (our “digital fingerprint”) can be used to make our life impossible, too
Situationists For Open City Makers
Amongst the “avant garde” revolutionary intellectuals, the situationists were one of a kind. Though they were few, they often were waging battles under the leadership of a young Guy Débord to surpass other contemporary movements such as letterism and surrealism. Their views on urbanism or automation were anticipatory.
Innovation Districts. ¿Growth or Decline?
Innovation Districts are perhaps the most visible physical manifestation of global innovation flows. Yet we don’t believe this to be the final destination. We believe that if we’re to avoid perverse effects, town planning policies that promote economic development need to be decentralized.
Sentimental Urban Planning
I watched “Interstellar” a while back, a movie in which the human race escapes from climate disaster using an artefact of theoretical physics known as a “Wormhole”. I once wrote that que the most sensible way of avoiding an environmental “Armageddon” would be to put intelligent urban planning into practice as soon as...
Smart Cities and Universities -or “Univercities”-.
Collaboration between smart cities and universities can have very positive impacts. There is a growing interest in urban matters for research and academia.
Zaha Hadid’s Pavilion Bridge: Linking Architecture and Smart City
Mobility is an essential side of any smart city strategy, as it is a smart citizenship. But, traditionally, the motor industry around Zaragoza has stood with his back turned to the city. The situation will likely change when the Pavilion Bridge opens its doors and the citizens will be able to interact with the latest developments when they walk through its exhibition rooms.
Innovation Districts: From Barcelona to Dublin, This Is What I Know
Elections for Mayor are a-coming. With the aim of shaping my contribution to the approaching campaign, I have been reflecting lately on innovation districts. Ours, the Digital Mile (Milla Digital) is unfinished. One tends to think that all innovation districts are, by definition, unfinished. But, seriously, the Digital Mile must be one...
“Zaragoza’s Open Urban Lab”. The city as a platform for innovation
From the beginning of urbanization to the end of the 20th century, the historical ability of cities to adapt its form and function to the changing needs of people have been founded on a close relationship between urban planning and infrastructures. Traditionally servicing the purposes of urban planners, the role of infrastructures in...
The Digital Mile: Past, Present and Future of Zaragoza’s Innovation District
I have been recently invited to speak at “Digital Media City (DMC) International Conference” (to be held in the capital city of South Korea on Sep, 27th-28th) about Zaragoza’s Digital Mile innovation district. Digital Media City is, doubtless, a major achievement in South Korea’s strategic move towards an...
Zaragoza Smart City: Sourcing the Code to Citizen Co-Creation
Zaragoza is a city with a long tradition of citizen activism, governed by the left over 29 of the 37 years of Spanish democracy. This has left a deep footprint in the form of an intricate network of civic associations and community centers and has sculpted a “let’s just do it” culture when, mixed with a university population of 35,000 students, many of them pursuing technical degrees, forms a perfect broth for an open source model of a smart city.
