In few other places will the Internet of Things be as inextricably linked with people and their everyday lives as in the modern city. Professor Carlo Ratti investigates ways in which this new technology influences our conception, the design and our way of life in cities. An architect and engineer, he works in Italy and teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he also heads the SENSEable City Lab. He is considered one of the leading thinkers on the issue of life in the “smart cities” of the future. Forbes included him in its list of “Names You Need to Know” in 2011. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Urbanization. For Ratti, the idea that objects and environments could respond to people and their actions with modern, networked technology is a long-standing dream. Thanks to the Internet of Things, this dream is becoming reality today. In our interview, Professor Ratti tells us what fascinates him so much about the interactive city and how it will affect our daily lives.
Is there a city you are especially fond of?
Carlo Ratti: There isn’t a single city, in particular, that I would consider my “perfect urban space” or that I am especially fond of. My ideal city would be a collage: the climate of Naples, the topography of Cape Town, the fusion cooking of Sydney, the architecture of Manhattan, the frenzied pace of Hong Kong, and the exuberant nightlife of Rio de Janiero!
But I am always discovering and falling in love with new cities and spaces around the globe. I generally find myself living between the cities where we have offices – London, Cambridge, Turin and Singapore – and the places where we are doing projects at any given time. Perhaps that is a collage as well.
How has the conception of the modern city changed in recent years?
C. R.: “Modern” is an interesting word. Its definition, or rather, the concept of what modern is, constantly undergoes dramatic change. The modern way of thinking about cities is more dynamic, more active than Modernism ever was.
What does that mean for the future city? I think, superficially, the city of tomorrow will not be so different from what we see today. Just as the Romans did 2000 years ago, we will need shelter, horizontal surfaces to stand on, ways of transporting and moving, etc. However, because of the new innovations in collecting and sharing information, we will lead radically different lifestyles – this, I believe, will be the greatest challenge for tomorrow ’s architects and designers. How does architecture delicately weave with new modes of living?
What role has the Internet of Things played in this?
C. R.: The Internet of Things is an exciting idea. It is only just starting, but already we can see how it will change the day to day interactions between people and their environment. Because of new technology, such as RFID tagging, we can essentially connect any object or person – from cargo ships to soup spoons – with the Internet. This might eliminate waste, for example, when we know precise product consumption information, or change how we understand ownership: why buy a new hammer when your neighbour owns one he isn’t using?
We recently did a project called Trash Track, where we tagged thousands of random pieces of trash in the city of Seattle (sneakers, coffee tins, banana peels, cellphones, etc.). Over the next weeks, we sat back and watched as the waste was transported all across the United States, revealing a shocking waste removal network. We know a great deal about the product supply chain, but hardly think about the transportation energy that goes into the things we toss out. This is the sort of data that becomes possible through the Internet of Things.
Basically, what we are beginning to see is a ubiquitous blanket of digital technologies – an enormous, intelligent, real-time infrastructure, supported by increasingly affordable smartphones and tablets. Parallel to that, open databases that anyone can read and add to are aggregating all kinds of information, and a growing network of sensors are passively generating data. As these are woven together more and more tightly by innovations in both private and public access tools, our cities are quickly becoming “computers in open air”.
Why is it so important to capture city life in so many facets as you have done in various projects at your institute?
C. R.: Knowledge of the urban environment is the only starting point for changing it. Thanks to recent technological advances, we have an unprecedented knowledge of what is happening around us, particularly in the context of the city.
Today we know how people are moving, we know where they prefer to have dinner, we know how they shop, and where their trash goes after it is thrown out. Based on these vast quantities of data, we can start to make informed decisions and design smart systems for metropolitan function. That is what we call “Sensing” and “Actuating” – a constant loop, where one feeds back into the other.
What fascinates you personally about the interactive city?
C. R.: Why must the things that surround us – the bricks, the countertops, the sidewalks – be mute? When they are designed and installed, their half-life is predetermined, and they begin the slow process of impotent decay. What fascinates me is the potential for those things to respond: a dynamic environment where, for example, your shopping cart has the same power as your iPhone to help you with groceries. What we see now is the potential for the objects and products that fill our lives to become useful tools in augmenting our every experience. Not only for efficiency or sustainability, but for community and sociability. Technology can, and must, bring people together.
What information will be recorded in the city of tomorrow?
C. R.: It’s exactly that. The information we are gathering is not about the city, per se – it is about human lives. It is the fingerprint of each and every person living in a shared space.
Almost everything we do is recorded digitally, in some form. Yet most of this data is ignored. Unless it is directly marketable, this tide of sensed human behaviour is generally forgotten, taking up server space somewhere.
What we have created is an unprecedented condition of “total recall”. We have a digital copy of the physical world, and if we choose to instrumentalise it, can find innovative ways of incorporating that fingerprint into the built environment.
How much privacy will the people in such a city sacrifice?
C. R.: Data is not strictly confined to the city – it is a broader, cultural trend. Today we spend as much time on the Internet as we do in conversation, and that offers an incredible opportunity to expand, aggregate and share ideas, no matter where you are physically located.
Each of those interactions leaves a digital trace, whether it is Facebook, Gmail, Skype, credit cards or cell phones. This shouldn’t necessarily cause worry about privacy or “big brother” – a hot-button question after events of this year. Behavioural data can be powerful when considered on the aggregated, macro scale – the larger patterns of activity and signatures of humanity – rather than individual cases of privacy.
But it does raise new questions, of the sort that our society and political system have not yet contended with: Who has access to the data? Where is it stored? Is it ever possible to forget?
Sensors everywhere – isn’t that a rather scary scenario? Do you really want to live in a city where every detail gets measured?
C. R.: Again, sensing data and making it useful for the city is a process of aggregation. In our lab we research broader trends – flows and patterns and flux – that show how humanity is collectively behaving or responding. It really has nothing to do with single bits of personal information. There isn’t anything we could do with one person’s twitter feed or their day of shopping, and we aren’t interested in recording or singling out that data.
In fact, most of what we look at is already publicly available. We are simply asking the question: How can we make the best use of existing data? How can it empower people?
What possibilities do your projects offer for improving city life?
C. R.: The common denominator for all of our projects is that they are focused on people, rather than technology. The new data or systems or digital innovations we use are nothing more than a tool for understanding people and their behaviour, and ultimately for creating more environmentally friendly and sociable cities. The bottom line is people.
In fact, we hope to partner with governments, organisations or companies to put in place “ground-up” or “open source” systems. These would allow the users themselves to become agents of change and to guide the dynamic functioning of the spaces around them. If we can create the right technical-support systems (that is, smart cities), you, and the people around you, can solve problems of energy, traffic, health care, food distribution, and education. I am confident that those solutions would be far more effective than the traditional “top-down” initiatives that only address one small issue at a time.
New “wired cities” allow their citizens to build a powerful distributed intelligence and contribute to a novel form of activism. It’s a sort of “best-fit” democratic design.
When you think about the city of tomorrow, what is better than in today’s cities?
C. R.: What surrounds you will increasingly respond to your unique signature. More importantly, it will be best-fit to the larger human patterns happening around you, which you may not even be aware of otherwise. But, as I mentioned before, cities will not appear very different. Shelter will be shelter, movement will be movement. But our lifestyles will change.