For Immediate Release: December 20, 2011
Media Contacts: Emma Filar, Marketing & Communications Associate
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National Building Museum Releases Intelligent Cities Book
Intelligent Cities
By Susan C. Piedmont-Palladino
Curator, National Building Museum
Professor, Virginia Tech’s Washington Alexandria Architecture Center
A project by the National Building Museum; National Building Museum 2011,120 pages.
“Truly intelligent cities must go beyond efficiency gained through technology and use technology to mobilize for resiliency…New software and information systems can and do help us to better understand things, but only human brains can make the cognitive leaps to recombine ideas and generate the radical innovations to address the most important challenges.” – from the Forward by Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation.
With contributions from experts in research, design, and technology, the Intelligent Cities book offers an interdisciplinary look at the complex relationship between city form and technology. This wide-ranging and readable book summarizes the National Building Museum’s year-long Intelligent Cities initiative, which was an exploration of how data and information technology impact the way cities look, feel, and function.
Award-winning, original infographics commissioned by the museum and thought-provoking essays enrich the discussion of new—and not so new—issues of technology and urban form. Intelligent Cities looks at the most ubiquitous of today’s technologies, such as the telephone and the computer, and offers new insight into their impacts on human settlement and society.
“For as long as we have lived in cities we have reflected on their form, feel, and function writes Chase W. Rynd, president and executive director of the National Building Museum. “From the launch of the first hot air balloon to geospatial information software, we have developed technologies to see what we have done, what we are doing, and what we wish to do.”
Author and editor Susan C. Piedmont-Palladino draws on contemporary and historic sources to illustrate the ways that information and communication technology can make our metropolitan areas more efficient, equitable, and healthy. She has produced a book that is accessible to the general reader, while at the same time offering new perspectives to the expert.
Intelligent Cities is an initiative of the National Building Museum in partnership with TIME, supported by IBM, and funded by The Rockefeller Foundation.
Contents
1. What makes an intelligent city?
2. Technology and cities
3. The invisible city: representing the unseen
4. Designing space, buildings, and inclusion
5. Challenges to change
6. Constructing collaboration
7. Conclusions
Afterword
About the Contributors
Mark Cleverley is director of strategy for IBM’s Global Government Industry, advising public
sector customers and IBM teams on potentials, challenges and best practices in the evolving
use of new technologies.
Laura Kurgan is an Associate Professor of Architecture, Director of Visual Studies,
and Co-Director of the Spatial Information Design Lab (SIDL) at the Graduate School of
Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University.
William Lucy is the Lawrence Lewis Jr. Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning,
School of Architecture, University of Virginia.
Ceasar L. McDowell is Professor of the Practice of Community Development at MIT,
Director of the global civic engagement organization Engage The Power and Senior Fellow
at the Egan Urban Center at DePaul University.
Susan Piedmont-Palladino is an architect, a professor of architecture at Virginia Tech’s
Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center, and a curator at the National Building
Museum.
Dr. Judith Rodin is the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the world’s leading
philanthropic organizations.
Chase W. Rynd is the president and executive director of the National Building Museum.
Laura Solano is a landscape architect and principal of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates,
Inc.
Erik Steiner is an Oregon-based information visualization designer and cartographer whose
professional career has been dedicated to building interactive tools to help people make
sense of the world.
Richard Stengel is the managing editor of TIME, overseeing the U.S. print edition, its
three international editions, TIME For Kids, and all of TIME’s digital properties including
TIME.com.
The National Building Museum is America’s leading cultural institution dedicated to advancing the quality of the built environment by educating people about its impact on their lives. Through its exhibitions, educational programs, online content, and publications, the Museum has become a vital forum for the exchange of ideas and information about the world we build for ourselves. Public inquiries: 202.272.2448 or visit www.nbm.org. Connect with us on Twitter: @BuildingMuseum and Facebook.
