Decoding The City

The MIT based SENSEable City Lab under Carlo Ratti is one of the research centers that deal with the flow of people and goods, but also of refuse that moves around the world. Experience with large-scale infrastructure projects suggest that more complex and above all flexible answers must be sought to questions of transportation or disposal. This edition, edited by Dietmar Offenhuber and Carlo Ratti, shows how Big Data change reality and, hence, the way we deal with the city. It discusses the impact of real-time data on architecture and urban planning, using examples developed in the SENSEable City Lab. They demonstrate how the Lab interprets digital data as material that can be used for the formulation of a different urban future. It also looks at the negative aspects of the city-related data acquisition and control. The authors address issues with which urban planning disciplines will work intensively in the future: questions that not only radically and critically review, but also change fundamentally, the existing tasks and how the professions view their own roles.

Mysteries and folkways of New York City revealed in an entertaining collection of graphic art The life and legend of New York City, from the size of its skyscrapers to the ways of its inhabitants, is vividly captured in this lively collection of more than 250 maps, cross sections, flowcharts, tables, board games, cartoons and infographics, and other unique diagrams spanning 150 years. Superstars such as Saul Steinberg, Maira Kalman, Christoph Niemann, Roz Chast, and Milton Glaser butt up against the unsung heroes of the popular press in a book that is made not only for lovers of New York but also for anyone who enjoys or works with information design.

It's time for America to move beyond zoning, argues city planner M. Nolan Gray in Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. With lively explanations, Gray shows why zoning abolition is a necessary--if not sufficient--condition for building more affordable, vibrant, equitable, and sustainable cities. Gray lays the groundwork for this ambitious cause by clearing up common misconceptions about how American cities regulate growth and examining four contemporary critiques of zoning (its role in increasing housing costs, restricting growth in our most productive cities, institutionalizing racial and economic segregation, and mandating sprawl). He sets out some of the efforts currently underway to reform zoning and charts how land-use regulation might work in the post-zoning American city. Arbitrary Lines is an invitation to rethink the rules that will continue to shape American life--where we may live or work, who we may encounter, how we may travel. If the task seems daunting, the good news is that we have nowhere to go but up

A fan's travel guide to the Parisian areas depicted in Dan Brown's bestseller includes tours through the Louvre, the Ritz, Chartres, and other locales, in a reference complemented by a glossary of terms, introductions to the themes and controversies in the book, and detailed maps.

How data science and the analysis of networks help us solve the puzzle of unintended consequences. Social life is full of paradoxes. Our intentional actions often trigger outcomes that we did not intend or even envision. How do we explain those unintended effects and what can we do to regulate them? In Decoding the Social World, Sandra González-Bailón explains how data science and digital traces help us solve the puzzle of unintended consequences—offering the solution to a social paradox that has intrigued thinkers for centuries. Communication has always been the force that makes a collection of people more than the sum of individuals, but only now can we explain why: digital technologies have made it possible to parse the information we generate by being social in new, imaginative ways. And yet we must look at that data, González-Bailón argues, through the lens of theories that capture the nature of social life. The technologies we use, in the end, are also a manifestation of the social world we inhabit. González-Bailón discusses how the unpredictability of social life relates to communication networks, social influence, and the unintended effects that derive from individual decisions. She describes how communication generates social dynamics in aggregate (leading to episodes of “collective effervescence”) and discusses the mechanisms that underlie large-scale diffusion, when information and behavior spread “like wildfire.” She applies the theory of networks to illuminate why collective outcomes can differ drastically even when they arise from the same individual actions. By opening the black box of unintended effects, González-Bailón identifies strategies for social intervention and discusses the policy implications—and how data science and evidence-based research embolden critical thinking in a world that is constantly changing.

deCoding Asian Urbanism explores the current discourse and creation of innovative architecture and urban interventions that are effectively transforming the spatial and operational landscape of the complex Asian city. The book highlights efforts that strategically embrace the rapid growth and the cultural and physical complexity of the built environment in Asia. While the scale and pace of 21st-century urbanization are staggering and unprecedented, new urban development in Asia alone in the next two decades will likely exceed the urban growth worldwide of the last two hundred years. While Asian cities have historically drawn on their history and regional culture, this critical assimilation has been vastly superseded by the sheer velocity of urban growth inspired by external/global/western models.The phenomenal growth of Asian cities remains a challenge to their infrastructure, existing resources, and the roles that have traditionally constituted city-making in the broadest sense. Essays by some of the most prominent architects, historians, sociologists, urban designers, and activists across the globe provide unique perspectives on the diverse complexity of the Asian city. The book is extensively illustrated with project images, analytical diagrams, maps, and selected photographs. The essays and illustrations complement transcripts and images of spirited panel discussions from a symposium at Harvard University's South Asia Institute that reveal contemporary thinking and practice of design and planning in Asian cities.deCoding Asian Urbanism focuses on those critical interventions that go beyond globalization to achieve a substantive systemic innovation in the Asian City. The book is organized into three sections: Decoding the City, Mediating the City, and Transforming the City. These sections present the context, consider a strategic approach, and present transformational projects that revitalize, renew, and transform the complex urban environment and illustrate their key principles. The urban condition, the historical context, the proposed program, and the stated objectives of stakeholders are considered elements that inform and guide the formal and spatial responses.

Have you ever wondered: Why you keep opening your phone for updates? Why it’s easy to be a couch potato in front of the TV but is extremely difficult to do early morning exercise? Why New Year resolutions fail? Why you hate your boss? Why your wife goes shopping? Why people take selfies? Why children won’t listen? Why parents shout at them? Why some people are climate change deniers while others deny biodiversity crisis or extinction crisis? Why there is no consensus yet on what to do for them? Why some people are Republicans/Democrats? Why some support Modi while others are Left-liberals? Why people hate or have become intolerant to ideologies that oppose their core beliefs? Why people troll on Twitter? Why people follow some people while blocking others? How beliefs form? How they evolve? How they make our mind biased into thinking in one direction and making wrong choices? Why it is difficult to think out of the box? Why different people perceive the same things differently? How people get disillusioned into believing any nonsense? When repeated often, why it forms an illusion of reality in their mind? Decoding Human Psyche aims to answer many such questions related to human psychology. It aims to help you understand why people believe what they believe and behave the way they behave – to master the art of understanding people and relations and making sense of the world around us and make better choices. The book also looks at “how this psychological crisis (delusional tendency) is at the core of causation of all the crises like climate change that humanity is facing.”

This book introduces readers to the anthropology of urban life in Africa, showing what ethnography can teach us about African city dwellers’ own notions, practices, and reflections. Social anthropologists have studied city life in Africa since the early 20th century. Their works have addressed a number of questions that are relevant until today: What happens to rural people who move to the city? What kinds of livelihoods do they pursue? How does city life affect moralities and practices connected with gender roles, marriage, parenthood, and intergenerational relations? In which social situations are ethnic and other collective identifications relevant? How do people make a home in the city? What forms of authority and leadership become relevant in urban governance? How do people talk about city life? This book asks what anthropologists have come to learn about Africans’ views on city life. It provides a critical acclaim of ethnographies in English, French, and German and elucidates anthropology’s contribution to understanding city life in Africa. It highlights the significance of female, African and Diaspora scholars for an emerging urban anthropology of Africa. The chapters are organized according to everyday activities of city dwellers: moving, connecting, governing, working, dwelling, and wayfinding. The book will be an essential read for students and researchers of social anthropology, African and urban studies, but also for professionals in research and development organizations, thinktanks, and other institutions concerned with urban Africa.