A Smarter Toronto


Book Description




Smart Cities


Book Description

Transforming cities through digital innovations is becoming an imperative for every city. However, city ecosystems widely struggle to start, manage and execute the transformation. This book aims to give a comprehensive overview of all facets of the Smart City transformation and provides concrete tools, checklists, and guiding frameworks.




The Smart Enough City


Book Description

Why technology is not an end in itself, and how cities can be “smart enough,” using technology to promote democracy and equity. Smart cities, where technology is used to solve every problem, are hailed as futuristic urban utopias. We are promised that apps, algorithms, and artificial intelligence will relieve congestion, restore democracy, prevent crime, and improve public services. In The Smart Enough City, Ben Green warns against seeing the city only through the lens of technology; taking an exclusively technical view of urban life will lead to cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality. He proposes instead that cities strive to be “smart enough”: to embrace technology as a powerful tool when used in conjunction with other forms of social change—but not to value technology as an end in itself. In a technology-centric smart city, self-driving cars have the run of downtown and force out pedestrians, civic engagement is limited to requesting services through an app, police use algorithms to justify and perpetuate racist practices, and governments and private companies surveil public space to control behavior. Green describes smart city efforts gone wrong but also smart enough alternatives, attainable with the help of technology but not reducible to technology: a livable city, a democratic city, a just city, a responsible city, and an innovative city. By recognizing the complexity of urban life rather than merely seeing the city as something to optimize, these Smart Enough Cities successfully incorporate technology into a holistic vision of justice and equity.




The Routledge Companion to Smart Cities


Book Description

The Routledge Companion to Smart Cities explores the question of what it means for a city to be ‘smart’, raises some of the tensions emerging in smart city developments and considers the implications for future ways of inhabiting and understanding the urban condition. The volume draws together a critical and cross-disciplinary overview of the emerging topic of smart cities and explores it from a range of theoretical and empirical viewpoints. This timely book brings together key thinkers and projects from a wide range of fields and perspectives into one volume to provide a valuable resource that would enable the reader to take their own critical position within the topic. To situate the topic of the smart city for the reader and establish key concepts, the volume sets out the various interpretations and aspects of what constitutes and defines smart cities. It investigates and considers the range of factors that shape the characteristics of smart cities and draws together different disciplinary perspectives. The consideration of what shapes the smart city is explored through discussing three broad ‘parts’ – issues of governance, the nature of urban development and how visions are realised – and includes chapters that draw on empirical studies to frame the discussion with an understanding not just of the nature of the smart city but also how it is studied, understood and reflected upon. The Companion will appeal to academics and advanced undergraduates and postgraduates from across many disciplines including Urban Studies, Geography, Urban Planning, Sociology and Architecture, by providing state of the art reviews of key themes by leading scholars in the field, arranged under clearly themed sections.




Sixteen Shades of Smart: How Cities Can Shape Their Own Future


Book Description

Smart cities are a fast-growing species, and a fascinating field for new experiments in a number of critical areas, ranging from urban planning, sustainable energy, and transport strategies to social integration and talent attraction, to name a few. As leaders and citizens around the world continue to assess, design, implement and improve on ways to create better cities, they often find themselves confronted with a multitude of decisions and a wide range of partial solutions to specific problems such as traffic congestion, waste management and crime. Unfortunately, they have precious few tools to enable them to define the strategies required and take advantage of the experience of other smart cities around the world. In such a context, metrics can play a significant and constructive role: by quantifying efforts and results, they increase the ability of decision-makers to identify where their priorities should lie as well as the relative merits of various approaches.




Smart Cities


Book Description

In the age of global climate change, society will require cities that are environmentally self-sufficient, able to withstand various environmental problems and recover quickly. It is interesting to note that many "smart" solutions for cities are leading to an unsustainable future, including further electrification, an increased dependence on the Internet, Internet of Things, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence, and basically any technology that leads us to consume more electricity. This book examines critical topics in Smart Cities such as true sustainability and the resilience required for all cities. It explores sustainability issues in agriculture and the role of agri-technology for a sustainable future, including a city’s ability to locally produce food for its residents. Features: Discusses safety, security, data management, and privacy issues in Smart Cities Examines the various emerging forms of transportation infrastructure and new vehicle technology Considers how energy efficiency can be achieved through behavioral change through specific building operations Smart Cities: Critical Debates on Big Data, Urban Development and Social Environmental Sustainability brings awareness to professionals working in the fields of environmental, civil, and transportation engineering, urban planners, and political leaders about different environmental aspects of Smart Cities and refocuses attention on critical urban infrastructure that will be necessary to respond to future challenges including climate change, food insecurity, natural hazards, energy production, and resilience.




Smart Cities in Canada: Digital Dreams, Corporate Designs


Book Description

"Smart cities" use surveillance, big data processing and interactive technologies to reshape urban life. Transit riders can see the bus coming on a map on their phones. Cities can measure and analyze the garbage collected from every household. Businesses can track individuals' movements and precisely target advertisements. Google's failed Sidewalk Labs proposal in Toronto, which drew sharp criticism over surveillance and privacy concerns, is just one of the many smart city projects which have been proposed or are underway in Canada. Iqaluit, Edmonton, Guelph, Montreal, Toronto and other cities and towns are all grappling with how to use these technologies. Some cities have quickly partnered with digital giants like Uber, Bell and IBM. Others have kept their distance. Big tech companies are hard at work recruiting customers and shaping – sometimes making – public policy on data collection and privacy. Smart Cities for Canada: Promise and Perils is the first book on smart cities in Canada. In this collection, experts from across the country investigate what this new approach means for the problems cities face, and expose the larger issues about urban planning and democracy raised by smart city technology. This is a valuable, timely, independent‐minded book for Canadians.




Digital (In)justice in the Smart City


Book Description

In the contemporary moment, smart cities have become the dominant paradigm for urban planning and administration, which involves weaving the urban fabric with digital technologies. Recently, however, the promises of smart cities have been gradually supplanted by recognition of their inherent inequalities, and scholars are increasingly working to envision alternative smart cities. Informed by these pressing challenges, Digital (In)Justice in the Smart City foregrounds discussions of how we should think of and work towards urban digital justice in the smart city. It provides a deep exploration of the sources of injustice that percolate throughout a range of sociotechnical assemblages, and it questions whether working towards more just, sustainable, liveable, and egalitarian cities requires that we look beyond the limitations of "smartness" altogether. The book grapples with how geographies impact smart city visions and roll-outs, on the one hand, and how (unjust) geographies are produced in smart pursuits, on the other. Ultimately, Digital (In)Justice in the Smart City envisions alternative cities – smart or merely digital – and outlines the sorts of roles that the commons, utopia, and the law might take on in our conceptions and realizations of better cities.




Cognitive Computing and Big Data Analytics


Book Description

A comprehensive guide to learning technologies that unlock the value in big data Cognitive Computing provides detailed guidance toward building a new class of systems that learn from experience and derive insights to unlock the value of big data. This book helps technologists understand cognitive computing's underlying technologies, from knowledge representation techniques and natural language processing algorithms to dynamic learning approaches based on accumulated evidence, rather than reprogramming. Detailed case examples from the financial, healthcare, and manufacturing walk readers step-by-step through the design and testing of cognitive systems, and expert perspectives from organizations such as Cleveland Clinic, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, as well as commercial vendors that are creating solutions. These organizations provide insight into the real-world implementation of cognitive computing systems. The IBM Watson cognitive computing platform is described in a detailed chapter because of its significance in helping to define this emerging market. In addition, the book includes implementations of emerging projects from Qualcomm, Hitachi, Google and Amazon. Today's cognitive computing solutions build on established concepts from artificial intelligence, natural language processing, ontologies, and leverage advances in big data management and analytics. They foreshadow an intelligent infrastructure that enables a new generation of customer and context-aware smart applications in all industries. Cognitive Computing is a comprehensive guide to the subject, providing both the theoretical and practical guidance technologists need. Discover how cognitive computing evolved from promise to reality Learn the elements that make up a cognitive computing system Understand the groundbreaking hardware and software technologies behind cognitive computing Learn to evaluate your own application portfolio to find the best candidates for pilot projects Leverage cognitive computing capabilities to transform the organization Cognitive systems are rightly being hailed as the new era of computing. Learn how these technologies enable emerging firms to compete with entrenched giants, and forward-thinking established firms to disrupt their industries. Professionals who currently work with big data and analytics will see how cognitive computing builds on their foundation, and creates new opportunities. Cognitive Computing provides complete guidance to this new level of human-machine interaction.




Blue-green Province


Book Description

In Blue-Green Province, Mark Winfield takes a long overdue look at the crucial relationship between Ontario’s environmental policy and its politics and economy. Covering the period from the Progressive Conservative "dynasty" that dominated Ontario politics from the mid-1940s to the mid-1980s, through the subsequent Peterson, Rae, Harris, Eves, and McGuinty governments, Winfield offers a trenchant analysis of the effects on Ontario’s environment and politics of these administrations’ dramatically different ideologies. Timely and original, Blue-Green Province is the first comprehensive study of environmental policy in Ontario. It will be welcomed by anyone with an interest in Ontario’s environmental and economic future.