An unflinching look at the aspiring city-builders of our smart, mobile, connected future. We live in a world defined by urbanization and digital ubiquity, where mobile broadband connections outnumber fixed ones, machines dominate a new "internet of things," and more people live in cities than in the countryside. In Smart Cities, urbanist and technology expert Anthony Townsend takes a broad historical look at the forces that have shaped the planning and design of cities and information technologies from the rise of the great industrial cities of the nineteenth century to the present. A century ago, the telegraph and the mechanical tabulator were used to tame cities of millions. Today, cellular networks and cloud computing tie together the complex choreography of mega-regions of tens of millions of people.
In response, cities worldwide are deploying technology to address both the timeless challenges of government and the mounting problems posed by human settlements of previously unimaginable size and complexity. In Chicago, GPS sensors on snow plows feed a real-time "plow tracker" map that everyone can access. In Zaragoza, Spain, a "citizen card" can get you on the free city-wide Wi-Fi network, unlock a bike share, check a book out of the library, and pay for your bus ride home. In New York, a guerrilla group of citizen-scientists installed sensors in local sewers to alert you when stormwater runoff overwhelms the system, dumping waste into local waterways.
As technology barons, entrepreneurs, mayors, and an emerging vanguard of civic hackers are trying to shape this new frontier, Smart Cities considers the motivations, aspirations, and shortcomings of them all while offering a new civics to guide our efforts as we build the future together, one click at a time.

Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia

Politics & Social Sciences

Townsend, Anthony M.

Social Sciences

W.W.Norton&Company

An unflinching look at the aspiring city-builders of our smart, mobile, connected future.
From Beijing to Boston, cities are deploying smart technology―sensors embedded in streets and subways, Wi-Fi broadcast airports and green spaces―to address the basic challenges faced by massive, interconnected metropolitan centers. In Smart Cities, Anthony M. Townsend documents this emerging futuristic landscape while considering the motivations, aspirations, and shortcomings of the key actors―entrepreneurs, mayors, philanthropists, and software developers―at work in shaping the new urban frontier.

Information Technology and the World of Work

Information technologies have become both a means and an end, transforming the workplace and how work is performed. This ongoing evolution in the work process has received extensive coverage but relatively little attention has been given to how changing technologies and work practices affect the workers themselves. This volume specifically examines the institutional and social environment of the workplaces that information technologies have created. Compilations of scholarly essays are often written by members of a particular school of thought, whose purpose is to flesh out an area of theory or methodology. Information Technology and the World of Work takes a different approach: these essays are written by diverse voices, unified in their interest in the common theme of technology and the changing workplace. The authors' goals are to present perspectives that raise as many questions as they answer, and which are accessible to a broad audience of managers, union leaders, students, and academic readers. The chapters are organized into three specific topical areas that represent aspects of workers' social and political experiences of work that are affected by technology. Part 1 addresses how information technologies affect workers' unions. Part 2 examines how information technology affects individual employees, specifically in terms of employees' sense of power and identity. Chapters in this section examine the social and psychological reactions of workers within the system. Part 3 focuses on one of the most contentious outcomes of this changed workplace, reviewing emerging policy and privacy issues that new technologies have created. Written with the intent of beginning an important discussion of these issues, this volume should provide an impetus for others to make their own contribution to the emerging dialogue on technology in the modern workplace.

Business & Money

Bennett, James T.

Taras, Daphne Gottlieb

Management & Leadership

Routledge

Sociology

For decades we have tried to build a car that will drive itself. Anthony M. Townsend's Ghost Road argues convincingly that the driverless car is a red herring. When self-driving technology infects buses, bikes, delivery vans, and even buildings, a wild, woollier, future awaits. Technology will transform life behind the wheel into a hi-def video game that makes our ride safer, smoother, and more efficient. Meanwhile, autonomous vehicles will turbocharge our appetite for the instant delivery of goods, making the future as much about moving stuff as it is about moving people. For-profit companies will link the automated machines that move us to the cloud, raising concerns about mobility monopolies and privatization of "the curb." Our cities and towns will change as we embrace new ways to get around. Ghost Road explains where we might be headed together in driverless vehicles, and the choices we must make as societies and individuals to shape that future.

Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car

Industries

A penetrating look at near-future disruption as truly autonomous vehicles arrive.

HighBridge Audio

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Townsend, Anthony M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Townsend, Anthony M.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Townsend, Anthony M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia

Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia

Information Technology and the World of Work

Information Technology and the World of Work

Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car

Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car