_Rethinking the Smart City: A Primer

Dublin Art and Technology Association and Provisional University
March 24th, 2014, 7pm – 9pm

Speakers: Adam Greenfield, with an introduction by Rob Kitchin
Respondents: Aphra Kerr (NUIM), Jim Merricks White (NUIM) Rachel O’Dwyer (TCD)

It’s generally understood that a smart city refers to integrated information and communication technologies, embedded sensor networks and smart girds rapidly becoming part of the infrastructural fabric of our cities, and contributing to its overall function and management. But the smart city is not just an informational overlay. It extends to a broader rationality for resource management (water, energy, transport, air), for governance and agency administration, and for economic stimulation.

While this is significant, various factors seem to have prevented extended public discussion about smart cities. This might be because planning for the smart city is still limited to academic research institutions and government initiatives. It might also be the case that the disciplinary approach to the smart city means it doesn’t always join up with other relevant discussions about urban planning and policy, resource management and the right to the city currently taking place, even though we share and articulate many of the same concerns. We therefore see this event as a primer for more ongoing discussion on the smart city, as it relates to these broader issues and particularly as it relates to Dublin City.

What are we talking about when we talk about the smart city? What limitations are there to the way that the smart city is currently articulated? What alternatives might exist?

Patrick Bresnihan on The Day the Earth Caught Fire

The Day the Earth Caught Fire is a strangely prophetic British film made in 1961, a year before the Cuban missile crisis. At a time of mounting fear about the prospect of nuclear apocalypse, the plot centers on an accidental event in which two nuclear tests are set off simultaneously at the two poles – one by the Russians, and one by the Americans. The impact of the two explosions shifts the earth's axis, bringing on extreme weather events and forcing the earth towards the Sun.