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“Smart” starts with context

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Imagine two marketing people sitting across a table from a data analyst. Marketing wants “simple numbers,” they say, and the analyst understands. The three of them know all the past conversations, the questions that arose and were answered, the points that got made, the conclusions or unresolved questions that remained.

Easy enough. But now with the rise of so-called “smart cities,” where the data spigots open and everyone with any point of view at all takes part, things can get into a mess. There, the starkly disparate points of view, which in business get talked through in relative calm, really show teeth.… Read the rest ““Smart” starts with context”

A fun, lively path to smarter cities

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San Francisco-area designer Steve Pepple wondered whether data could help him explore neighborhoods — on the way to helping city planners build better, perhaps “smarter” cities.

He describes in a fun post on Medium, a genuine “data story,” how he set out to help people find “pockets of activity, vibrance, and new things.”

First, he joined a do-it-yourself project called Sense Your City. Sensors around the world reaped “hyper-local data about environmental conditions, such as noise, dust, light, and pollutants.” That data led to “pockets of activity, vibrance, and new things.” In San Francisco, he writes, “you could see when the fog rolls in.”… Read the rest “A fun, lively path to smarter cities”

improved urban decision making

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…the smart city movement is less about technology and more about improving the way decisions are made in large urban areas, where the demand for services is increasing and the availability of resources is diminishing.”

Michael Flowers, as interpreted by Mike Barlow in a 2015 O’Reilly report, Smart Cities, Smarter Citizens. Flowers is now chief analytics officer at Enigma.io.