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| Opera goers in Copenhagen can park their cars in a very fancy underground parking (Photo: Carr 2024; and thank you Gene Desfor for the hint!) |
For me, the Nordic Geographers Meeting in Copenhagen got going bright and early on Day 1 with a packed session on "Tech and the City" organized by Maja de Neergaard and Adriana de La Pena Espinosa, who presented on, respectively, 'pilotism' in the aftermath of smart city tech, and the Ciudad Creativa Digital in Mexico. It was also a great pleasure to finally meet and listen to Guy Baeten and Carina Listerborn. For my part, I presented some work on data center expansion as led by Google and Amazon.
Another highlight was listening to Federico Cugurullo present his new book, "Artificial Intelligence and the City" that he edited together with Federico Caprotti, Matthew Cook, Andy Karvonen, Pauline McGuirk and Simon Marvin. (One would also do well to follow his fantastic work on The Line in Saudi Arabia!) Published by Routledge, “AI and the City” is a must-read for contemporary urban planners. Unlike the endless catalogue of new technologies that are emerging that can potentially be applied in urban environments, and unlike the hype around AI that is unfolding today, this book thinks about the links between the myriad of artificial intelligences, their developers, the institutional networks that might embed them, and then different kinds of urban path dependencies that evolve from decisions around implementation. In this way, one has to think not just about the kinds of technological solutions that might be applied to certain urban problems, but more broadly about questions concerning the kind of cities do we want to live in, and how can this be achieved. Thank you Andy, for inviting me to the discussion panel with Lorena Melgaco, Ramon Ribera Fumaz, Maja de Neergaard, and Johanna Yipull.
Another highlight was listening to Federico Cugurullo present his new book, "Artificial Intelligence and the City" that he edited together with Federico Caprotti, Matthew Cook, Andy Karvonen, Pauline McGuirk and Simon Marvin. (One would also do well to follow his fantastic work on The Line in Saudi Arabia!) Published by Routledge, “AI and the City” is a must-read for contemporary urban planners. Unlike the endless catalogue of new technologies that are emerging that can potentially be applied in urban environments, and unlike the hype around AI that is unfolding today, this book thinks about the links between the myriad of artificial intelligences, their developers, the institutional networks that might embed them, and then different kinds of urban path dependencies that evolve from decisions around implementation. In this way, one has to think not just about the kinds of technological solutions that might be applied to certain urban problems, but more broadly about questions concerning the kind of cities do we want to live in, and how can this be achieved. Thank you Andy, for inviting me to the discussion panel with Lorena Melgaco, Ramon Ribera Fumaz, Maja de Neergaard, and Johanna Yipull.
