Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
parking space is now a thing of the past in Santa Monica with the release of the
Santa Monica Parking app for iPhone. Santa Monica Parking—Powered by ParkMe
provides real-time parking information for the city's 28 lots, 12 structures, and
5,967 on-street metered parking spaces. The app also includes information on
privately owned parking facilities in Santa Monica.”
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Utilizing the ubiquitous access and the emergence of pervasive ICTs could
conserve scarce resources and possibly provide means for existing cities to grow
in a more sustainable and intelligent manner (Kang and Kim
2010
). The rapid
convergence of ubiquitous and cloud computing technologies, and ICTs is raising
the possibility of a dramatic transformation in the way we perceive and move about
the urban environment, and how we interact with each other in urban spaces (Kang
and Kim
2011
). I identified the following seven significant trends shifting away
from the traditional urban space to the ubiquitous technology space in the informa-
tion age:
1. From street-oriented to information-oriented,
2. From centralized information to distributed information,
3. From standardization to customization,
4. From efficiency-oriented to quality-oriented,
5. From regularity to flexibility,
6. From distance-oriented to time-oriented, and
7. From individual ownership of transportation mode to shared ownership.
In order to realize ubiquitous technology space in cities and regions, both
necessary and sufficient conditions should be met. Ubiquity is not obtained through
a property of the information itself, but by the information systems, technology and
services that make it accessible to the user and other applications and appliances.
Just as automobiles are ubiquitous due to highways and roads, electricity is ubiqui-
tous today because of the network infrastructures of the utilities that support it. Thus
a necessary condition for prevailing ubiquitous technology space is the availability
of infrastructure ubiquitously as highways and electricity networks.
A new technology being available at anywhere and at anytime implies that
services become available to help the general public utilize it without much a priori
knowledge of the technology. When automobiles first became available, only
trained professional drivers were hired to drive them. Ubiquitous access
technologies should be made and available for the general public with no profes-
sional knowledge of them just as almost everyone with driver's license can drive
automobiles these days. Thus availability of ease-of use technologies becomes a
sufficient condition for a ubiquitous technology space to be realized.
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http://www.smgov.net/departments/transportation/parking.aspx
. Accessed on May 29, 2013.
