Lubna Alli

Reading: 

A City is Not a Computer.

Mattern, S. 2017.

The idea of optimization is one that is usually associated with an all encompassing technology update of sorts, and often times we are familiar with a system optimization that is offered on our mobile and laptop devices. This is an ideology that is on the rise—to upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. On a much larger scale, Mattern writes about this same optimization at the city level, providing an argument against urban intelligence. She highlights the monstrosity of the business intelligence intervention in the city space, predicating that its infiltration forgets the urban designers, planners, and scholars who have been doing the same work on the ground for years. The romanticization of the smart city rhetoric paired with the lack of transparency within smart city building (not just in data but in process) is also critiqued, insinuating a disruption and implicit overthrow of the fundamental democratic principles in governance.

Mattern moves on to suggest interdisciplinary consultation on those who think about the management of information and the production of knowledge. She is not anti-smart cities, but she is most definitely critical of its implications. She concludes by arguing that we must recognize the shortcomings in models that presume the objectivity of urban data and conveniently delegate critical, often ethical decisions to the machine. She ends with a phrase that sticks; “city making is always, simultaneously, an act of city-knowing—which cannot be reduced to computation.” This then begs the question of knowing. Who knows? Who earns the right to know? And, is it possible to know it all? Considering the implications of knowing, it does not come as a surprise that the implications surrounding this urban intelligence are loud and clear. Knowledge is power, which is exactly why the hesitation for smart city intervention by various actors is apparent.