What Makes a City Intelligent? You Do
For as long as we have lived in cities we have reflected on their form, feel, and function. From the launch of the first hot air balloon to the creation of geospatial information software, we have developed technologies that enable us to assess what we have done, what we are doing, and what we wish to do. Today, the scale and complexity of neighborhoods, towns, and cities are unprecedented, and so are our tools for understanding them. Intelligent Cities, an initiative of the National Building Museum, supported by its partners TIME and IBM and funded by The Rockefeller Foundation, explores the intersection of information technology and urban design to understand where we are, where we want to be, and how to get there.
See the Intelligent Cities Forum
Intelligent Cities on the Neighborhood
Walking and biking to elementary school used to be common. Now, they're rare. What happened? We started building fewer, bigger schools between neighborhoods. We built new wide roads to reduce congestion on the way to school. We thought schools would be safer away from Main Street, with its sidewalks of commerce and distractions. We can see the consequences now, making connections between those decisions and rising health problems. With better information, can we make our neighborhoods intelligent? We can.
by National Building Museum curator Susan Piedmont-Palladino
Intelligent Cities on the Home
Information surrounds us. With satellite global positioning technology we can see hot roofs, storm water run-off and where traffic is crawling. But there’s more. There’s a relationship between the health of our waterways and how we travel to work. There’s a connection between the size of our homes and how much energy we use. Intelligent Cities aims to reveal these connections, to make them visible and actionable... because informed people make better decisions.
by National Building Museum curator Susan Piedmont-Palladino
Visit National Building Museum's Intelligent Cities website to learn more
Visit Intelligent Cities Channel on TIME.COM
