Rodrigo José Firmino

Pervasive Technologies and Urban Planning in the Augmented City

AS information and communication technologies (ICT) become ubiquitous in cities, there is a growing interest in initiatives that integrate the virtual and the physical in a manner that recognizes that cities are complex spatial entities being constantly re-constructed and redefined according to social and political interactions between their objects, elements, and actors. These initiatives to create, improve, and deploy new technologies are most frequently accomplished by the private sector. The public sector, meanwhile does little to oversee the implementation of these initiatives, does not provide alternatives, and does not develop its own initiatives. The main point of this paper is to show, through a study of Brazilian cities, that the discipline of urban planning is absent in discussions about public actions on physical and electronic spheres. The intermingling of physical and electronic space, resulting in what some scholars call “augmented space,” has redefined the way we conceive, use, plan, and control physical space in cities. This kind of augmentation is directly related to the expansion of our ability to communicate and “be present” in multiple and non-contiguous spaces with the same intensity, an ability made possible by using increasingly sophisticated information and communication technologies (ICTs). These augmented spaces, where physical and electronic elements are intrinsically Aurigi Firmino 2005 Graham Graham and Dominy Graham and Marvin Manovich

Infiltrated city, augmented space: information and communication technologies, and representations of contemporary spatialities

Augmented reality and augmented spaces have recently been linked to the widespread use of sophisticated technologies. This can also be described as the intensification of our communication skills which have been related to apparent unlimited possibilities of experimenting with and perceiving space with our bodies and minds, when connected with technological tools. However, by contrast with expanded experiences of the past at a personal level (such as in religion, magic, metaphysics or the arts), contemporary technological augmentation is becoming embedded into our daily lives to such an extent that we are starting to take this mixture of digital technologies and the built environment for granted. In this essay, we argue that, because of this influence on our interactional capabilities, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) might act as catalysing forces transforming various experimental and spatial dimensions of cities and urban places. In order to capture, interpret and understand these transformations in urban spaces, places and territories, we tentatively articulate the experimental and epistemological works of two contemporary Brazilian thinkers about urban studies. Lucrécia Ferrara and Nelson Brissac Peixoto inspire our arguments with their critical views about how urban space can be understood through its various interpretations, and how perceptions of it can be stimulated through artistic provocations of disquieting feelings of strangeness.

Planning the unplannable: How local authorities integrate urban and ICT policy making

THE idea that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been dramatically changing many aspects of contemporary society is no longer new. The influence of such technologies on our daily activities, as well as the ways we perceive and use space, has attracted the interest of a wide variety of researchers from different backgrounds, and this also has increased the interand multi-disciplinarity of studies concerning space. Particularly within urban studies, concepts, ideas, predictions, models, and metaphors have been mushrooming as researchers have tried to re-conceptualize the city with regards to the information revolution. The “networked city,” the “galactic metropolis,” the “informational city,” the “post-Fordist city,” the “aterritorial city,” and the so-called “post-industrial city” and “post-modern city,” are just a few names that have been given to this urban phenomenon. Recent references to the city relate the constant and rapid development of ICTs to the re-definition of notions of space, time, distance, territory, landscape, mediation, presence, and immersion—virtual, physical, and real. According to Moss and Townsend, “information systems are permitting new combinations of people, equipment, and places; as a result, there is a dramatic change in the spatial organization of activities within cities and large metropolitan regions.” Lojkine Batten Drewe Townsend Lewis Castells Lipietz Painter

Learning from Failures: Avoiding Asymmetrical Views of Public Transportation Initiatives in Curitiba

Curitiba, in Brazil, is known for the pioneering deployment of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in the 1970s, and its system became a reference model worldwide. However, from its very beginning, Curitibas BRT competed with rail projects, from subway to light rail vehicles (VLT). These projects have been defended by many municipal technicians over the years as better solutions for urban transportation. From 1952, when the last tram ran in the city, up to 2009, when the municipality concluded a bid for a new subway project, eight projects were developed as attempts to resume rail transportation in town. In spite of the failure of all those projects, this article proposes that the major innovations in the BRT in Curitiba had their origins in those unimplemented rail projects, through technical and political advances that resulted from controversies, conflicts, and alliances among the main relevant social groups and artifacts involved during this period.

“Not just portals:” virtual cities as complex sociotechnical phenomena

because they are virtual representations of physical communities, cities, or regions created by information and communication technologies (ICT). However, there is still no universally agreed-upon understanding of virtual cities. Most of the attempts to describe these phenomena are speculative, extremely metaphorical, and deal only partially with their complex effects while ignoring some of their important aspects. For instance, some research on virtual cities looks at design aspects of cities’ Web sites on the Internet, while other studies are concerned with the virtual reality (VR) or three-dimensional modeling (3D) possibilities for urban simulation. It is not that there are methodological or theoretical mistakes in such generalizations. In these cases, however, it should be noted that the concept of virtual cities is not limited to Web sites or VR experiments. Consequently, there is an evident epistemological confusion around the topic of virtual cities that needs further clarification. The phenomenon of virtual cities cannot be reduced to simplistic technological applications for computer simulations (mainly led by the development of CAD—computer-aided design—systems) and Web design on the Internet. Virtual cities are, in fact, driven by

Private video monitoring of public spaces: The construction of new invisible territories

The idea of smart cities is to a great extent based on the belief of planners and city managers that substantial (and instrumental) use of information and communication technologies in the management of urban functions can make cities work better. This is also part of the coordinated discourse adopted by planners, managers and politicians around the world in an attempt to position their cities in the fierce competition for revenue, jobs and people. In this paper we will concentrate on gaining an understanding of informational territories built to support surveillance and control of public spaces. We seek to question this relation by making reference to several specific uses of information and communication technologies for surveillance purposes and to discuss it from the point of view of definitions of territory. Our goal is to discuss the fact that, under the ‘mantra’ of smarter cities and on the grounds of public security, there is a scattering of micro and macro informational territorial elements that overlap to undermine the meaningfulness of urban public spaces.

Urban Phantasmagorias: Cinema and the Immanent Future of Cities

Cities experienced profound changes in the early 20th century, mainly as a result of industrialization. Along with architects and urban planners, fiction writers played a part in shedding light on some perverse or still unknown consequences of technology on society. Cinema is probably the first industrial art form and was from its beginning deeply involved in the creative portrayal of these changes. This ever-present urban imagery, rooted in concrete aspects of a changing reality and supported by existing and fictional technological systems, forms what we call urban phantasmagorias. This article develops this theoretical approach through a brief analytical review of some of the emblematic films that have anticipated shifts in our cities and lifestyle, influenced by the emerging technologies of their time, focusing on Metropolis (1927), Blade Runner (1982), Alphaville (1965), and The Matrix (1999).

Fear, Security, and the Spread of CCTV in Brazilian Cities: Legislation, Debate, and the Market

Latin America has shown itself to be a fertile ground for the proliferation of surveillance cameras, especially in retail and in small-scale private security (homes, condominiums, shopping malls, etc.). In Brazil, this proliferation has occurred for three main reasons: the absence of specific legislation regulating how these systems are used; the limited scope of the debate about the deployment of surveillance technology and the implications of its widespread use; and a growing atmosphere of urban fear that affects the way people live in and move around large and medium-sized cities. In a study carried out in Brazil and Mexico and funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), various aspects of the use of surveillance technologies were mapped and described, focusing on existing legislation, related studies, research centers, current technologies and the market. In this article we present some of the results of this research as they relate to the proliferation of video surveillance in Brazil. The Brazilian market for video surveillance, which has grown steadily since the 1980s, is now booming, reflecting the growing interest this technology holds for the (property and personal) security market as well as the real estate market. Over the past 30 years, this interest centered on public areas with large numbers of people, such as parks, squares, and major commercial streets, or private spaces such as shopping malls, sports centers, and event centers. However, in recent years there has been an expansion in the security market as a result of the gentrification of large residential areas in medium-sized cities and metropolitan regions in Brazil. A consequence of these developments in the real estate market has been, indirectly, a growth in the use of CCTV systems as crime- and violence-prevention tools by small, medium-sized, and large private security companies targeting all social classes. In this study, we highlight the following aspects of video surveillance in Brazil: regulation of the use and proliferation of CCTV; involvement of the scientific community through debate and academic training; and the technologies used in electronic surveillance as a response to a growing demand by the urban security and real estate markets.

The spatial bonds of WikiLeaks

Abstract This article analyses control of the Internet from a spatial perspective, on the intersection of social and political geography, and law. Inspired by the story of WikiLeaks and its leader Julian Assange, who is presently confined in a room of a diplomatic mission, this article examines such control through a spatial perspective, using the example of the paradoxical coexistence of whistle-blowing, aided by modern technology, and efforts to control the circulation of information on the Internet. Modern states can and do exercise their sovereignty normally upon a rather precisely delimited portion of land, while a variety of actions performed on the Internet remain rather hard to be associated with a single location on Earth. We use here a variety of spatial concepts, but in particular territory (and jurisdiction) and place as parameters for understanding the link between sovereignty (and, more precisely, control), resistance, and the Internet. This article demonstrates the importance of these spatial concepts for the policy and practice of Internet governance.

A cidade e a construção sociopolítica do planejamento urbano-tecnológico

The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has been rapidly growing in the fields of urban planning and management. While, traditionally, the process of sociopolitical construction of urban technologies follows a sectorial andfrag-mented logic, now there is a growing need for a more comprehensive approach with integrated urban strategies. For an understanding of this possible need, we must rebuild the history of facts and episodes of ICTS deployment from the point of view of the social groups involved, their interests and specific activities, and relationships between all these aspects. This type of analysis takes into consideration the theory of social construction of technology, in order to produce a historical narrative of the case studies, from the perspective of social and political construction. Thus, in this paper, we analyze critically different urban strategies of ICT appropriation and their characteris TICS, as well as the sociopolitical process in which they have been created