By Sam Rega
Two major projects have kicked off in New York City and Chicago, part of a broader global trend toward using high technology — the latest in sensors and infinitesimal tracking and measuring devices — to create “smart cities.”
The projected savings of these global initiatives: $20 billion by 2020.
Last spring, NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress partnered with New York City’s Hudson Yards neighborhood — in the far west 30s of Manhattan — to build the nation’s first “quantified community.” The 17 million square feet of commercial and residential land, currently in Phase 1 development, will track data on air quality, pedestrian traffic, energy production and consumption, and the health and activity levels of workers and residents. There will be a school, hotel and 14 acres of public space along with an on-site power plant and central waste-management system. Phase 2 will begin next year, with the community completed by the mid-2020s…
…Meanwhile, in Chicago, the Array of Things (AoT) project, launched last summer in partnership with the city, has set out to “smarten” Chicago by placing sensors everywhere. “Our objective here is to publish (free and open) environmental data about the city,” says Charlie Catlett, who heads up the AoT project. The project is led by researchers from the Urban Center for Computation and Data of the Computation Institute, which is a joint initiative of Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago…