Over the past decades, cities across the continent, both big and small are striving to be economically competitive, provide a high quality of life and create a place that people are proud to call home...

1. WHY WHATYOUTHINK IS NOT HAPPENING?
URBAN SETTINGS AND SOCIAL CONTEXT
MISMATCHEDTOPICS
by SKENDER KOLLCAKU
(Milan IT, 07/2017)

2. Be proud to call it home
“Over the past decades, cities across the continent, both
big and small are striving to be economically
competitive, provide a high quality of life and create a
place that people are proud to call home.”
"Why what you think is not happening? Urban settings and
social context mismatched topics" by Skender Kollcaku
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3. Design a city which is not a computer
"Why what you think is not happening? Urban settings and
social context mismatched topics" by Skender Kollcaku
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4. Capturing the “urban intelligence”
“Urban intelligence” is more than information storage,
processing and transmission
While we assist to the following:
• attempts to program urban infrastructure in a predictive and
ordered manner,
• starting from a zero existing block (building in the Internet era),
• planning all spatial solutions through digitization and visualization,
• centralize control in repetitive physical centers,
• local administration announces which demand scrutiny (politicians’
decisions impact us all - bureaucracy)
"Why what you think is not happening? Urban settings and
social context mismatched topics" by Skender Kollcaku
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5. Design socially interactive neighborhoods
Real-life case:
I come from Kavaje, a small city in Albania. I lived near a big glass-
production factory till 2001 (“Fabrika e qelqit”). At the time, my
parents got unemployed after the Communism regime crashed and
the factory closed. My mother preserved her passion for hand-made
glassy objects.
• What if she opened a small shop with such products?
• What if she starts learning interested people about the glass
production and creative art?
• How can the local community benefit from this?
• What is the symbolic and social value for the place itself (“social
optimization” concept)?
"Why what you think is not happening? Urban settings and
social context mismatched topics" by Skender Kollcaku
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6. After breaking the glass (the “Fabrika e
qelqit” case)
“Fabrika e qelqit” (Kavaje, Albania) was an important factory where
quality glass was produced. More than 1.200 employees used to
work there.
"Why what you think is not happening? Urban settings and
social context mismatched topics" by Skender Kollcaku
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7. Where to fit the city cultural memory?
"Why what you think is not happening? Urban settings and
social context mismatched topics" by Skender Kollcaku
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Perfomative
knowledge
Ambient data
Rituals,
celebrations
Dance and
artistic events
Crowd
happenings
Non semantic
information
Identity and
city vital
organs
Quality public
realm

8. Being (not) so smart
• Cities made of persistent terrains, and reliable environmental
contain patterns that anchor all the unstructured data and image
streams
• Numerous autonomous vehicles and pervasive cameras and
sensors
• Advertising projects from important service players (public Cloud
providers, multinational telecommunication operators…)
• Gathering huge amounts of data, but using them only to control
the “inner” side of our cities
• Not considering privacy and security as a monumental concerns
• Lack of measuring the value of symbolic places (fixed architectures)
• Considering City-as-a-Service
"Why what you think is not happening? Urban settings and
social context mismatched topics" by Skender Kollcaku
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9. Local community’s simple point of view
“How many years should I wait, before seeing public
buses with support for pregnant women, transit in my
neighborhood?”
"Why what you think is not happening? Urban settings and
social context mismatched topics" by Skender Kollcaku
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10. The challenge is being on time
With the rise of technological innovation and IoT, many things have
changed, but:
• Slowly (give objectives in a limited quantity of time)
• Existing technology, but still not applied
• “Social” life of the connected objects (yet too many policies and
standards)
• Unidirectional (in terms of profitability for businesses)
• Discriminatorily (some areas, usually city centers, are preferred
than others)
• Forms of media communication (oral histories, physical and
electronic records, archives, monuments…)
"Why what you think is not happening? Urban settings and
social context mismatched topics" by Skender Kollcaku
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11. What to artificialize intelligently?
Illustration: Port of Hamburg, Germany's biggest seaport
"Why what you think is not happening? Urban settings and
social context mismatched topics" by Skender Kollcaku
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12. Still not happening: altering the contexts
• Capability of transmitting a complex culture from generation to
generation
• Enlarge the intellectual assets (examples: libraries)
• Community wisdom
• City as a complex organism that can learn
• Different approach from data-driven models when discussing
about ethics (being careful when delegating decisions to machines)
• Long-term exposure to places (living for years in a neighborhood
knowing its character)
• Sensory experiences (feeling community expressions and
orientation; emotive conditions, anger, happiness, expectations…)
"Why what you think is not happening? Urban settings and
social context mismatched topics" by Skender Kollcaku
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13. Crowd happenings and art generation to
feed the cultural heritage
"Why what you think is not happening? Urban settings and
social context mismatched topics" by Skender Kollcaku
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Illustration: Street art in a children park , round Bovisa quartier (Milan, Italy)

14. Thank you!
by SKENDER KOLLCAKU
(Milan IT, 07/2017)
keywords:
Milano, smart city, technology, IoT, urban innovation, city, Internet, Big Data, social, project,
community, urban planning, future, connectivity, urban design, analytics, artificial intelligence,
infrastructure, city-as-a-service, neighborhood, interactive, public administration, art, heritage, local
"Why what you think is not happening? Urban settings and
social context mismatched topics" by Skender Kollcaku
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