Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
and transparency involve their organizations, be it businesses, institutions, com-
munities or universities.
Planning in the cloud-based information age requires new maps, new sensors to
detect obstacles, new tools for tracking the direction, but especially new eyes to
not lose sight of the horizon.
8.2
Planning the City of Collective Intelligence
Everyday, we witness the application of new information and communication
technology (ICT) to various areas of urban daily life: time management, traffic
control, distribution and location of services, bureaucracy streamlining, dissemi-
nation of knowledge and communication, monitoring of the environment, not to
mention the surrogate social and professional relationships of social networks.
Technological innovation applied to production processes, remote home automa-
tion, explosion of mobile communications and the so-called ''internet of things'' in
which many objects are interconnected and exchange information, are made
available with ever-increasing pervasiveness for services' delivery and efficient
management. In this way, urban services are enhanced and contribute to manage
urban complexity, thus ensuring communications, relationships, dissemination of
knowledge and culture benefiting citizens. We have entered the Open Data age,
characterised by a daily increase in the number of databases and maps—often from
institutional sources—available in digital format, not only intended for traditional
institutional users or experts, but available for multiple uses, open to all potential
users and for unpredictable uses. The diffusion of ICT throughout urban planning
and urbanism processes marks the transition from a merely instrumental role in
land management to a quality role in the management of transformations and in the
participation, interpretation and orientation of new urban scenarios, as occurred
with the BMW Guggenheim Lab held in New York, Berlin and Mumbai in search
of
the
100
Urban
Trends
for
a
better
urban
future,
then
presented
at
the
Guggenheim Museum in 2013.
ICT advantages within planning and management processes are especially clear
today, as maps, data and assessment models are increasingly becoming a common
heritage: the integration of web and wiki technologies with GIS applications is a
very fruitful way to improve the chances of constructive interaction between cit-
izens, policy makers and the wise skills at stake within the urban planning pro-
cesses. On cloud technologies, popular among professional and consumers alike,
allow regular updates directly from the source through a steady integration of
decentralized databases. Georeferenced systems are central to decision-making
processes at local and regional level, facilitating decisions of institutional and
entrepreneurial actors, for example by sharing land knowledge, encouraging fast-
tracking of administrative procedures. Shared databases can encourage public-
private partnerships and project financing by making data, information and
feasibility studies available to technical offices or by ensuring multi-utilities
