The heuristics of agency: on computation, big data & urban design

Big Data and urban design have found themselves in a contentious relationship. At the time of writing, more authors have published books writing against so-called Smart Cities than for them, despite the obvious opportunities for material and resource savings that data-driven design offers. The seemingly sole advocates for an urban strategy of ubiquitous sensors are multinational corporations like Cisco and Microsoft, as they manufacture urban conditions oriented around ideas of efficiency and resource use while appearing to ignore privacy and social engagement. As the Internet of Things (IoT) is heralded as “The next big thing”, the emergence of IoT on an urban scale and its requisite Big Data collection has been met with controversy.1