Author(s)	John Lorinc
Publisher	Coach House Books
Publication Year	2022

ISBN: 9781552454282

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Dream States

Name: Dream States
SKU: 9781552454282
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Smart Cities, Technology, and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias

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Is the ‘smart city’ the utopia we’ve been waiting for?

The promise of the so-called smart city has been at the forefront of urban planning and development since the early 2010s, and the tech industry that supplies smart city software and hardware is now worth hundreds of billions a year.

But the ideas and approaches underpinning smart city tech raise tough and important questions about the future of urban communities, surveillance, automation, and public participation. The smart city era, moreover, belongs firmly in a longer historical narrative about cities — one defined by utopian ideologies, architectural visions, and technological fantasies.

Smart streetlights, water and air quality tracking, autonomous vehicles: with examples from all over the world, including New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Portland, and Chicago, Dream States unpacks the world of smart city tech, but also situates this important shift in city-building into a broader story about why we still dream about perfect places.

Contributors

John Lorinc

John Lorinc is a Toronto freelance journalist and editor. He writes about cities, politics, business, climate change, and local history for various media, including Spacing magazine, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, The Walrus, Corporate Knights, and, previously, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Readers’ Digest. John has won numerous National Magazine Awards for his journalism and was the 2019–20 Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy, which produced a series of ten articles on smart cities that were the basis of Dream States. He is the author of three previous books, including The New City (Penguin, 2006), and has co-edited several Coach House uTOpia anthologies, including The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto’s First Immigrant Neighbourhood (2015) and Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer (2017).

Chapter	Contributors	Pages	Year	Price
Introduction The introduction looks towards the future of the post-pandemic city. View	John Lorinc	13	2022	$1.30
Connections The Technology of Cities: Part 1 explores how urban development intersects and is shaped by the larger political, social, and technological advancements happening around it. Topics discussed … View	John Lorinc	9	2022	$0.90
Engineering the City The Technology of Cities: Part 2 explores the physical building and engineering of cities. Topics discussed include construction, city-building technology, building blocks, hygiene, bridges, … View	John Lorinc	9	2022	$0.90
Water and Sewage: The Original Urban Networks The Technology of Cities: Part 3 explores the original urban networks, water and sewage systems. Topics discussed include the London Fire of 1666, water pumps, sewers and urban health. View	John Lorinc	10	2022	$1.00
City Lights The Technology of Cities: Part 4 explores the history of lighting cities. Topics discussed include Billboards, gas lighting, electric lighting, darkness and crime, industrialization, public … View	John Lorinc	13	2022	$1.30
Cities, Communications Technology, and the Feedback Dilemmas The Technology of Cities: Part 5 explores the dilemma of cities during the Cold War. Topics discussed include nuclear war, de-urbanization, Cold War anxieties, commercialization, telephones, and more. View	John Lorinc	12	2022	$1.20
Smart City Tech: A Primer The Dream of the Smart City: Part 1 explores the tech needed to create a smart city. Discussing topics including what makes technology ‘smart’, ‘machine learning’ … View	John Lorinc	18	2022	$1.80
Smart Cities and the Origins of Utopian Urbanism The Dream of the Smart City: Part 2 explores the origins of utopian urbanism. Topics discussed include history of urban planning, the history of ghetto’s, Bauhaus and the Garden City … View	John Lorinc	16	2022	$1.60
Planning Smart Cities The Dream of the Smart City: Part 3 explores planning smart cities. Topics discussed include transportation, census data, what is meant by urban ‘blight’, public and city … View	John Lorinc	15	2022	$1.50
Smart Cities, Big Data, and a Question of Trust The Dream of the Smart City: Part 4 discusses questions of personal data. Topics discussed include open access, data and privacy, data bias, open data, and municipal dashboards. View	John Lorinc	17	2022	$1.70
Smart City Tech and the Promise of Green Cities The Dream of the Smart City: Part 5 explores the possibility of green cities with smart innovation. Topics discussed include post-industrial cities, climate change, pollution, urban … View	John Lorinc	16	2022	$1.60
The Quagmire of Mobility Tech The Dream of the Smart City: Part 6 explores urban mobility. Topics discussed include electrification, transportation, bike-share programs, walkability, the use of public space, autonomous … View	John Lorinc	17	2022	$1.70
Function Creep and Surveillance The Dream of the Smart City: Part 7 explores the role of surveillance in smart cities. Topics discussed include CityIQ, the use of cameras, widespread surveillance, ‘function … View	John Lorinc	13	2022	$1.30
The Special Case of AI and Big Data–Based Policing The Dream of the Smart City: Part 8 explores data-based policing. Topics discussed include facial recognition, surveillance networks., data-intensive policing technologies, and algorithms. View	John Lorinc	17	2022	$1.70
The Utopianism of Smart City Megaprojects The Dream of the Smart City: Part 9 explores megaprojects. Topics discussed include profits, the rise of entrepreneurial urbanization,’ the quasi-privatized new cities, and the examples of … View	John Lorinc	11	2022	$1.10
The Politics of Smart Cities The Dream of the Smart City: part 10 explores the politics of smart cities. Topics discussed include politics, think tanks, Privacy Legislation Reform, Regulatory Procedures, Data Governance, … View	John Lorinc	17	2022	$1.70
Science, Technology, and Pandemic Cities Conclusion: part 1 explores the role of science and technology in pandemic cities and the lessons learned during the Covid-19 pandemic. View	John Lorinc	15	2022	$1.50
How Technology is Reshaping the Post-Pandemic City Conclusion: part 2 explores how technology can be used in reshaping the post-pandemic cities. View	John Lorinc	12	2022	$1.20

Dream States

Smart Cities, Technology, and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias

Contributors

John Lorinc

Welcome