Top Tech Voices Podcast S2 E6: Smart Cities & Urban Tech

I will have to watch the episode again but not sure in general that architects and technology really mix that well in real life. Every new build around here appears to be trying to simply bag the awards rather than building or improving functional spaces to live and work in. The old 'Form Over Function' vs 'Form Follows Function' problem.

Over a decade ago, I recall the city of Bristol (in conjunction with Bristol University) was doing quite a bit with smart cities and open data research 

https://www.bristol.gov.uk/council/policies-plans-and-strategies/companies-owned-by-the-council/bristol-is-open

https://opendata.bristol.gov.uk/ 

At the time, I recall that there were quite a few interesting TV programmes about the type of stuff they were doing, however it all then went pretty quiet. Data privacy issues cropped up a lot back then. People generally wanted the benefits but not at the expense of their privacy.

I've seen some interesting stuff done with conceptual urban planning with collaborative designers working remotely in real time together using the likes of BIM plus cloud services to share data. The next step appears to be to start incorporating digital twins into that data to be able to monitor real-world performance data collected over time from existing builds.

JoRatcliffe said:

Separate to the contest, I am also interested to know how you like to watch Top Tech Voices. Do you listen while you work or do you watch it on your TV? Let me know!

This video series I've been watching on a desktop at home, usually whilst stood up practising dance steps. Audio podcasts I usually save up and listen to whilst running on the gerbil wheel.

Interesting the views on architecture bringing more nature back into the urban environment, however this appears to be the exact opposite of what is currently happening here. The architects / urban planners if anything are increasing the density of the built environment at every opportunity. A lower density house with garden space is more likely to be refused a planning application than a higher density block of flats. Greenbelt land is being built upon at an increasing rate. Allocating / retaining space for nature is unlikely to provide the same income streams as high-density accommodation.

Perhaps the only realistic chance of incorporating nature into the new builds and public spaces now would be rooftop / vertical gardens and perhaps have skywalks between them. 

Also interesting the views on using nature to drive reactive systems, but given that architects currently appear to struggle to design new energy efficient homes with heating/cooling systems that just work, then this sounds rather ambitious and fraught with problems down the line.

In the 80's architects experimented with mechanical iris shutters on the likes of the Institut du Monde Arabe building in Paris, to create a kinetic façade to control light entering the building 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq6x3x3YXFY

very nice, both aesthetic and functional but over time it stopped working resulting in expensive repairs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEI4wml0F78

which raises the question of how today's world of built in obsolescence would impact reactive systems.
"Your house isn't compatible with the latest upgrade, you'll need a new one..." 

At least they had the foresight to allow the reactive panel to be accessed from the inside for ease of repair/replacement.

As for making the urban environment more resilient to climate change, then architects don't appear to have a handle yet on the current climate judging by the amount of damage every year caused by wind, rain and flooding. It appears that around two-thirds of homes in the UK fail to meet the current efficiency standards with only around two-fifths of new builds meeting current standards. Perhaps better monitoring of actual performance as opposed to relying upon predicted performance, could help steer design choices.  

​@beacon_dave You've hit on the core dilemma Carlo brought up around the 13-minute mark regarding privacy and trust. When we move tracking from the digital space to physical urban infrastructure, the stakes skyrocket. From a hardware perspective, do you think the solution to building that citizen trust relies on moving entirely toward decentralized, local Edge processing where data is strictly anonymized at the sensor node before hitting any municipal servers, or is it fundamentally a policy and governance problem that hardware can't fix?

That is a phenomenal breakdown, and you’ve highlighted a terrifyingly realistic point about 'data cross-linking' . It’s exactly like metadata analysis in cybersecurity—even if an Edge AI node strips out a citizen's MAC address or name at the sensor level, a third party can easily reconstruct identities just by cross-referencing timestamps from an automated traffic camera with local smart-meter spikes. The anonymity completely breaks down in a centralized cloud.

​Your point about municipal authorities filtering or 'smoothing out' peak readings (like long-term averaging pollution data to avoid legal negligence) is an incredible insight into why top-down smart systems inevitably face public skepticism.

​If policy is lagging so far behind the hardware rollout, do you think the only way to enforce true transparency is through immutable edge logging? For instance, if an open-source environmental sensor cryptographically signs and publishes its raw data directly to a public ledger or distributed network the moment it captures it, the authorities couldn't manipulate the averages retrospectively to hide defects or pollution spikes.

​It seems like until we build systems where the hardware itself prevents data tampering, citizen trust will remain at zero.

That is a phenomenal breakdown, and you’ve highlighted a terrifyingly realistic point about 'data cross-linking' . It’s exactly like metadata analysis in cybersecurity—even if an Edge AI node strips out a citizen's MAC address or name at the sensor level, a third party can easily reconstruct identities just by cross-referencing timestamps from an automated traffic camera with local smart-meter spikes. The anonymity completely breaks down in a centralized cloud.

​Your point about municipal authorities filtering or 'smoothing out' peak readings (like long-term averaging pollution data to avoid legal negligence) is an incredible insight into why top-down smart systems inevitably face public skepticism.

​If policy is lagging so far behind the hardware rollout, do you think the only way to enforce true transparency is through immutable edge logging? For instance, if an open-source environmental sensor cryptographically signs and publishes its raw data directly to a public ledger or distributed network the moment it captures it, the authorities couldn't manipulate the averages retrospectively to hide defects or pollution spikes.

​It seems like until we build systems where the hardware itself prevents data tampering, citizen trust will remain at zero.