Privacy & New Media

Shoshanna Saxe
NYT
July 16, 2018

Like a classroom full of overachieving students, cities around the world are racing to declare themselves “smart” — using sensors, data and ubiquitous cameras to make themselves more efficient, safe and sustainable. Perhaps the most famous initiative is here in Toronto, where Sidewalk Labs, a sibling company to Google, recently released a 1,500-page master plan to remake two neighborhoods with things like snow-melting roads and an underground pneumatic-tube network. 

Smart cities make two fundamental promises: lots of data, and automated decision making based on that data. The ultimate smart city will require a raft of existing and to-be-invented technologies, from sensors to robots to artificial intelligence. For many this promises a more efficient, equitable city; for others, it raises questions about privacy and algorithmic bias.

But there is a more basic concern when it comes to smart cities: They will be exceedingly complex to manage, with all sorts of unpredictable vulnerabilities. There will always be a place for new technology in our urban infrastructure, but we may find that often, “dumb” cities will do better than smart ones.

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