The programmable city

摘要

Software is essential to the functioning of cities. It is deeply and pervasively embedded into the systems and infrastructure of the built environment and in the management and governance of urban societies. Software mediates how we understand and plan cities, how we manage urban services and utilities, and how we live urban lives. As a result, across a diverse set of everyday tasks-domestic chores, work, shopping, travelling, communicating, governing, and policing-software makes a difference to how social, spatial, and economic life takes place. Such is software's capacities and growing pervasiveness that some analysts predict that we are entering a new phase of 'everyware' (Greenfield, 2006); that is, computational power will be distributed and available at any point on the planet.