Clockwork City, Responsive City, Predictive City and Adjacent Incumbents
This is the in-depth version of my column posted in Dezeen on 30 October 2014, around the impact of predictive analytics on cities. This version was posted at cityofsound.com on 3 November 2014, and particularly uses new transport startups as the pivot for its arguments, as transport (or transit, or mobility) is a fundamental aspect of city services currently being transformed, disrupted and contested through such dynamics. The arguments get usefully tangible when we’re looking at Uber, Lyft, Bridj, alongside MTA, Transport for London and MBTA. This also features a bit of a Q&A with Bridj CEO Matt George — I’ve posted a fuller version of that separately. I now realise that, completely unintentionally, this is a follow-on to a piece on ‘transport informatics’ I posted around seven years ago.
Clockwork City
For the last 150 years or so, we’ve run our cities like clockwork.
I don’t mean that as a compliment, a suggestion of flawless efficiency. Just that we’ve designed, planned and run our cities based on regulated industrial rhythms, bound to pre-digital engineering and organisations, and we still do.
We expect a rush hour at the beginning and end of work-week days, and planners intensify mass…
