Forbes has a list of America’s most wired cities.
1. Seattle
2. Atlanta
3. Washington, D.C.
4. Orlando, Fla.
5. Boston, Mass.
6. Miami, Fla.
7. Minneapolis, Minn.
8. Denver, Colo.
9. New York, N.Y.
10. Baltimore, Md.
Since 2007, Forbes has measured cities’ wired quotient by computing the percentage of Internet users with high-speed connections and the number of companies providing high-speed Internet. Since many urban residents access the Internet by wi-fi, we also measure the number of public wireless Internet hot spots in a particular city
This strikes me as a poor way to determine whether a city is truly “wired.” A better measure would come from how cities and their residents use the technology. An emerging area of research focuses on the development of augmented cities.
Here a good description of the augmented city concept:
Augmented Space and Augmented Reality attempt to fill physical space with additional electronic and visual information. In contrast to Virtual Reality, were physical space becomes irrelevant, Augmented Space and Augmented Reality aim to use technologies to melt together digital and physical space. (Manovich 2002)
Has anyone come up with a good index for the level of city augmentation? Probably a bit too theoretical for Forbes. Anyway…here are some good articles on the concept.
Wellman, B. (2001). “Physical Place and Cyberplace: The Rise of Personalized Networking”. In International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 25(2), 227-252. Oxford: Blackwell.
Aurigi, A. (2006). “New Technologies, Same Dilemmas: Policy and Design Issues for the Augmented City”. In Journal of Urban Technology, 13(3), 5-28. London: Routledge.
Mitchell, W. (2007) Intelligent Cities. UOC Papers
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Comments 4
King Politics — January 23, 2009
Thanks for this. Augmented Cities is a new concept for me. Of course, I live in a town with two main home internet supplier and very few wifi hotspots, so all these newfangled terms are new to me.
jose marichal — January 24, 2009
But Oxford has southern charm :-)
kenneth M. Kambara — January 25, 2009
This is more fun. I totally agree with you, but I'd have to think about proper benchmark dimensions for augmented cities. How to gauge the interface between place & space. Sure, there are "technographics" à la Forrester {example:: Gen Y Survey, but what about blogging, placeblogging, SMS density and SNS ties in a local geography, events listed on SNS, etc. I'm hooked on Last.fm, which I'll be posting on soon. It brings people together on musical affinities, but relates back to geographies, in terms of events, but really could do a better job of linking users to place. {For example, allowing location (city, state/province/region, country) to be clickable tags.} I didn't see you on it, José, but I expect you to "love" {heart icon} tracks from Luscious Jackson.
jose marichal — January 25, 2009
Sounds like a potential research project :-) Who is writing up the grant application?