This course (first taught in fall 2023) explores the interplay of cities and technology: both the reason that tech innovation concentrates in cities (tech clusters) and the transformative impact of technologies on urban life (smart cities). (1) How do cities provide the environment to creatively generate technological innovations? and (2) How do technologies enable cities to thrive and concentrate people, businesses and culture in small spaces? The overall theme is the dynamic interaction between place, urban form, technological innovation, and economic development.
We begin with the evolution, planning, design, funding, and future of high-tech clusters. What are their economic advantages (higher levels of innovative learning-and-interaction, synergies across firms and sectors, higher wages and job advancement, a critical mass of entrepreneurial activity and venture capital), as well as the social and environmental costs (e.g., on housing affordability, labor markets, open space, pollution, inequality, traffic)?
We contrast government versus private-driven tech clusters, and explore the role of research universities as hubs and instigators of tech parks. We trace the shifting geography of these tech centers: starting on the East Coast but later migrating south and west; moving from industrial cities to modern, campus-like suburban settings; and the recent “back-to-the city” push to build urban “innovation districts.” Overall, why do people, businesses, capital and ideas tend to cluster together in specific locations at specific historical moments, then break apart and recombine elsewhere?
We then turn to the rise of “smart cities.” What is the promise and dangers of treating cities as if they are computer networks? We examine privacy, surveillance, sensors and big data; NextGen urban mobility (automated vehicles, Uber/Lyft; etc.); Generative AI-driven urban planning/design.