Ben Green on The Smart Enough City

Ben Green discusses The Smart Enough City: Putting Technology in its Place to Reclaim our Urban Future.

On this episode of Technology & Prose, Ben Green joins host Nikita Aggarwal to discuss (1:17) tech solutionism and the dangers of viewing urban problems as technology problems (4:09) the shortcomings of Open Data initiatives (7:33) the unintended costs of self driving cars (12:35) the "smart city trap", and the role of technology companies in hyping up the idea of smart cities (16:49) the shelving of the Sidewalk Labs Toronto Waterfront project, public-private partnerships, privacy and privatisation of public space, #BlockSidewalk (26:05) transparency, accountability and balancing public and private governance in smart cities (30:21) predictive policing, criminal sentencing algorithms and racial discrimination in smart cities (38:41) the smart enough city, agnosticism and how to combine political and technological reform of cities.

Recorded on February 11th 2021.