This document discusses the production of urban space and the concept of smart cities. It references works by James Merrill, Dolores Hayden, and Anthony Townsend on how space is produced and for whose benefit. Examples are provided of Hayden's work documenting spaces created by marginalized communities in East Harlem and Little Tokyo. The document also references a study visualizing taxi pickups and dropoffs in New York City. Readings by Debord, Bauman, and Lynch are assigned for an upcoming field trip, with a blog post due before the trip.

1. Producing
Cities for the
Common Good
The Digital Image of the City
Digital& Computational Studies Initiative
Bowdoin College
Jack Gieseking

2. As usual in New York, everything is torn down
Before you have had time to care for it.
Head bowed, at the shrine of noise, let me try to recall
What building stood here. Was there a building at all?
Wait. Yes. Vaguely a presence rises…
With the result that back into my imagination
The city glides, like cities seen from the air,
…the dull need to make some kind of house
Out of the life lived, out of the love spent.
!
- James Merrill’s “An Urban Convalescence” (2008)

4. Space is produced.
!
!
!
Made. Created. Crafted. Designed.
Engineered. Touched. Shaped.
Rejiggered. Altered. Claimed.
Occupied. Territorialized. Defined.
&c., &c., &c.
!
!
Is the smart city different? How?

5. Hayden

6. Hayden’s
The Power of
Place
Chinese railroad workers for Union Pacific. LA Public Library 1876.

7. Hayden’s
The Power of
Place
LA 1950s. USC Bass Collection

8. Hayden’s
The Power of
Place
East Harlem 1989 / Hayden’s example of “counterspace.” Martha Cooper 1989.

9. !
!
It is now even more clear.
Space is produced.
!
!
!
!
But by whom? For whom?

10. Townsend

11. Townsend
on Smart
Cities

12. Townsend
on Smart
Cities

13. Variations on a City
for the Common Good

14. M.I.T. Senseable City Lab 2014
Where the
13,586
registered taxis
in 2011 made
170 million
pickups and
dropoffs in New
York City. Yellow
dots are pickups
and blue dots
are dropoffs.
!
- Chang and Kirsch,
“If 2 New Yorkers
Shared a Cab …"
NYTimes 9/1/14

16. Hayden’s
The Power of
Place
Little Tokyo Sidewalk Project LA, 1990s. Hayden & UCLA Architecture students.

18. Readings for Friday FIELD TRIP:
Debord, Bauman
!
!
Assignment:
Blog Post #1 due Friday, Sept. 12th
(due day before field trip 5pm)
!
!
Reading for Monday, Sept. 15th:
Lynch
DIOTC
FORTHCOMING