Atlas of the Senseable City

A fascinating exploration of how the growth of digital mapping, spurred by sensing technologies, is affecting cities and daily lives
 
What have smart technologies taught us about cities? What lessons can we learn from today’s urbanites to make better places to live? Antoine Picon and Carlo Ratti argue that the answers are in the maps we make. For centuries, we have relied on maps to navigate the enormity of the city. Now, as the physical world combines with the digital world, we need a new generation of maps to navigate the city of tomorrow. Pervasive sensors allow anyone to visualize cities in entirely new ways—ebbs and flows of pollution, traffic, and internet connectivity.
 
This book explores how the growth of digital mapping, spurred by sensing technologies, is affecting cities and daily lives. It examines how new cartographic possibilities aid urban planners, technicians, politicians, and administrators; how digitally mapped cities could reveal ways to make cities smarter and more efficient; how monitoring urbanites has political and social repercussions; and how the proliferation of open-source maps and collaborative platforms can aid activists and vulnerable populations. With its beautiful, accessible presentation of cutting-edge research, this book makes it easy for readers to understand the stakes of the new information age—and appreciate the timeless power of the city.

About the authors

Antoine Picon, an architect and historian, is the G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Carlo Ratti, a practicing architect, is professor of urban technologies and director of the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Reviews

“Throughout history, we have used maps to highlight the essential features that determine how our cities work. In this Atlas, Antoine Picon and Carlo Ratti have assembled a beautiful exposition of how the digital world brings the city alive through the power of maps.”—Michael Batty, author of Inventing Future Cities
 
“As our cities become increasingly digital, new technologies and maps increasingly inform our very sense of how we live. Picon and Ratti’s Atlas of the Senseable City takes us deep inside this urban reality—a revolution in urban cartography—and what it means for the ways we work, live, and connect in our communities.”—Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class
 
“Atlas of the Senseable City offers a state-of-the art survey of mapping techniques and an intellectual way of understanding the purpose and possibilities of mapping. It is a very important contribution to one of the leading subjects of our time. Any person who works in the field of data and its impact on cities should have this book on their bookshelf.”—Gary Hack, author of Site Planning: International Practice