A common theme from science fiction is a vision of a world where humans do less work and machines do more. Why have we not yet reached that point?
Cities and their residents’ needs in public space have changed, but the type and function of the furniture are stuck in the past.
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With cities becoming more dense and housing more crowded, people rely more than ever on well-designed public spaces, so why hasn’t the furniture changed with the times?
Among Australia’s eight largest regional cities, Hobart is very inwardly connected.
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Knowing a city’s professional network ratio helps to understand how connected its inhabitants are to other markets, customers and ideas. All support innovation, adaptation and city growth.
Disruptive technology is starting to transform our cities, societies and lives.
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Smart city thinking makes good use of rapidly developing technology to help make cities work better, easier-to-navigate, safer, healthier and more enjoyable places to live.
Part of Mumbai’s character is in its chawls, which could soon become history with the state government’s push to replace them with high-rise towers.
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Developing principles to create cities that are good for all is not easy. Who decides what is good? And for whom? We desperately need a big and general public discussion about this.
Geelong’s relatively high creative industries score, coupled with a robust rate of business entries, provides a solid foundation for steady growth.
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Regional cities can be as effective at generating jobs and growth as their big five metro cousins. But they must identify and build on their strengths to be investment-ready.
When the smart city looks inhuman: a robot police officer from Dubai greets guests at last November’s Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona.
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The corporate world has taken the lead in promoting various creative/smart city visions, which struggle to be inclusive, let alone entrust citizens with control over their lives.
Central Queensland University and James Cook University are part of the Townsville City Deal signed by three tiers of government in December 2016.
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Universities can lead the way in creating opportunities for the economic development of regional cities and outer metropolitan areas under new City Deals.
Brisbane cycle path signage: Slow!
Michael Coghlan
Smart cities are usually optimised like a business for speed and efficiency. Placemaking can slow down cities to improve health and wellbeing and promote more democratic engagement of citizens.
Aspiring ‘smart cities’ like Barcelona have worked to build their profile – it recently hosted the Smart City Expo World Congress – but Australia may benefit from not having rushed in.
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Smart cities do more than develop products to increase productivity and prosperity. Mayors, CEOs and leaders engage entire communities in shaping the future of cities.
Design will make the difference between smart city projects offering great promise or actually reinforcing or even widening the existing gaps in unequal ways their cities serve residents.
How we imagine ‘the city’ plays a very large role in how we shape it.
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Like a 5D movie on speed, the city today defies conventional boundaries. This raises new questions about what we imagine to be ‘the city’ – and how we as a democratic community can shape it.
Melbourne is powered by the coal-fired stations of Gippsland, which illustrates the problems with any urban strategy that neglects regional roles and interests.
AAP/Julian Smith
City-centric thinking arguably obscures connections between ‘humans’ and ‘nature’, and ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ or ‘wild’. Growing evidence of the depths of these links is testing the concept of ‘urban’.
Transit value capture is used in Hong Kong.
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