Redefining Smart City, what is it about

We are a group of 5, postgraduate students at City, University of London, working on a creative project with a smart city as the main topic. The end result will be a design of a service, product, or infrastructure that brings a new experience of a city and creates a better life for the citizens.

This blog serves as a medium to share our methods approach and thoughts exploring the smart city project. It will capture our thinking process, generating and challenging ideas, teamwork dynamic, and most importantly taking time to reflect on each process. It will be a mix collection of real-life observations, personal experiences, design exercises, articles, paper researches, and other supporting materials.

Illustration by Miguel DavillA

Documenting pieces from our weekly progress from the most absurd ideas, thoughts, arguments, and disagreements could be challenging especially sharing them with others. You might possibly see a disoriented content or they might feel scattered in a sense of themes exploration. However, this is our workbook, set of scribbles that we can hopefully learn from the process as a design team, reflect on our thoughts and behavior as an individual and a unit, moreover creating something meaningful and feasible to a better city life.

Our readings on Smart Cities has shown that the main emphasis is on technology and the use of big data collected from sensors. One writer writes about the possibility of collecting data from 'human sensors' rather than automated ones. Several of the speakers on the Smart City podcast spoke about the importance of being led by the needs of the city and its inhabitants and not by the technology and its sales people. Another critical factor which relates to this, is the need to get the buy in of the users.

Let's have fun!