Researcher in complex systems, robotics and artificial intelligence, Carlos Moreno is a pioneer and specialist of the Human Smart City, concept that he proposed in the form of the "living city", the "living city", and that he constantly promotes on the French and international scene. In a spirit of decompartmentalization, his career is at the crossroads of research, innovation and industry.
Researcher in complex systems, robotics and artificial intelligence, Carlos Moreno is a pioneer and specialist of the Human Smart City. Far from blind enthusiasm or total rejection, he builds a critique of the techno-centric and universalist smart city. He advocates a model based on consultation and co-construction. In this talk he also develops his vision of a new model of international governance, driven by a coalition of metropolises.
While the first real experiences of smart cities, dead on arrival for the most part, have been bottomless money pits, Carlos Moreno, a researcher in the fields of complex systems, robotics, and artificial intelligence, contrasts this notion with a new vision of the “living city.” While he is aware of the importance of digital tools in the design and evolution of the urban fabric, he nevertheless criticizes the techno-centric and universalist dimension of the smart city, which erases the place of the living and its interactions, literally generating dead cities. The living city seeks to understand the other and the way that it interacts with its socio-territorial-urban environment. Technological but first and foremost human, the living city advocates relationships and exchange to bring forth new ideas and practices. It is a creative ecosystem not dictated by the vertical nature of technology or of architecture, but based on metabolic exchanges and citizens’ re-appropriation based on a DIY approach.
Caroline Goulard is a data journalist and co-founder of Dataveyes. She turns collected data into digital experiences to make it more understandable for everyone. Thanks to new ways of visualization, it is now possible to understand a population’s needs and to develop services that anticipate new uses.
Researcher and data scientist Stanislas Chaillou investigates how AI can enable architects to support and enhance their practice. A small sampler of a new book published by Éditions du Moniteur in March 2021.
François Taddei is a geneticist and co-founder, with Ariel Lindner, of the Learning Planet Institute (formerly known as CRI). Conceived as a school for the 21st century, the institute combines artificial intelligence and collective intelligence to reinvent ways of learning, teaching and doing research.
Hubert Beroche is the founder of the Urban AI think tank, dedicated to the field of urban artificial intelligence. He is the curator of the Eyes on the street lecture series, run together in partnership with the SCAI (Sorbonne Center for Artifical Intelligence), and explains here how urban AI can help us understand the city.
Contemporary architectural research is often fascinated by biological life but with an approach that goes beyond simple organic metaphors thanks to recent technological developments. Alisa Andrasek discusses the link between biology and her architectural practice, and her interest in the distribution of information in natural processes—a complexity that she tries to approach via big data. Her work in computational design is influenced by the convergence between information and materials, in an increasingly complex and open synthesis which enables it to go beyond the production of form and address the dynamic processes of matter itself. Alisa Andrasek is an architect, director and founder of the Biothing laboratory. She teaches at the Architectural Association of London.
Researcher Claire Lesieur works at the CNRS Ampère Laboratory on the Go Pro project, which applies a computational model developed for protein folding to urban environments. The shape-changing properties of proteins are put to use in an attempt to map out the opportunities for urban growth that don’t involve urban sprawl.
In the face of the promises of the prophets of artificial intelligence and the marketing of those major economic players promoting the smart city as a solution to urban ills, Jérôme Denis and David Pontille remind us of the irreducible materiality and fragility of cities. Demystifying what they perceive as a form of “neopositivism” of data, they point out that data doesn’t exist per se, and in fact must be generated and then maintained at a significant cost. As a result, data is never neutral and takes on a fundamentally political dimension. Understanding this framework leads them to promote a paradigm of maintenance and fragility, instead of the more common one of sustainability and resilience, when approaching urban realities.
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Eager to share more generously the results of its collaborations and research, PCA-STREAM publishes STREAM VOICES, its online magazine!