The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) is launching an EU accredited Master program in City & Technology (MaCT). In an effort of understanding the needs for the habitability of the 21st century cities and the significant role of technology for the formation of the new urban environments IAAC proposes a new Master program oriented in training Change Makers that City Government Administrations, the Industry and Communities need in order to develop projects for the transformation of the cities.
The Master program represents an effort of facilitating the exchange of knowledge and the mutual learning of urban experiences among cities.
Barcelona is considered to be at the forefront for urban strategic planning, awarded the European Capital of Innovation (“iCapital” – 2014) prize “for introducing the use of new technologies to bring the city closer to citizens” by the European Commission.
MaCT foresees new city economy and new city management models for the creation of a decentralized, productive and social city of the future.
[ic_end_intro]Master in City & Technology
BARCELONA – MUMBAI
Continuing the urban research carried out by IAAC in the last years in fields like Internet of Things, Smart Buildings, Eco and productive neighborhoods, Internet of Energy, Digital Fabrication, and Smart Cities, the Master in City and Technology addresses the question of the implementation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in different layers of the urban environment.
The program aims to develop new categories of projects, technologies and solutions that can be extended systematically to the cities of the world, thus helping them to become more efficient and more human.
Every Master Candidate will develop technological seminars, city studies, cultural analysis, and pilot projects in order to have a global comprehension of the development of Smart City Projects based in real real-life environments.
Participants will be introduced to concepts such as Open Innovation and will learn the new necessary processes and tools on how cities, surrounding regions and rural areas can evolve towards sustainable open and user-driven innovation ecosystems to boost Future Internet research and Future Internet-enabled services of public interest and citizen participation.
They will be developing research on new modes of Economic Governance based on Public-Private Partnerships and decentralized collaboration relying on the policy networks found in civil society.
Finally, Master Candidates will learn to develop and implement symbiotic systems of organization based on real time data that can be further articulated into responsive systems and metabolic organizations, where small decisions can have a large impact at an urban scale. They will learn how to make projects that integrate the design of public space and buildings, the infrastructures of services, the user interaction and the technologies of information, developing technical, social and economical skills. This will allow to develop the new economy of city services and the new models of city management that boost the potential of the Internet of Cities.
From urban planning to urban management and citizen-based services the Master in City and Technology foresee new city economy and new city management models through the creation of efficient, responsive, decentralized, productive and hyper connected systems to be implemented in order to build the city of the future.
The Master program is oriented to engineers, architects, designers, economists, sociologists, entrepreneurs and graduates related with the transformation and management of cities and technologies of information.
The program will be developed with the collaboration of companies and industry, and will form new professionals interested in leading this new field of city economy that is emerging worldwide.
WORLD OF CITIES
URBAN TRANSFORMATION
INTERNET OF CITIES
CITIES FOR CITIZENS
The next 40 years will see an unprecedented transformation in the global urban landscape. Between 2010 and 2050, the number of people living in cities will increase from 3.6 billion to 6.3 billion. Almost all of that growth will occur in developing countries. By 2025 there will be 37 megacities, each with a population greater than 10 million; 22 of those cities will be in Asia. The impacts of this new phase of urbanization on the global economy and on existing urban infrastructure and resources are already being felt. They are also spurring innovation in urban design, technologies, and services.
Trillions of dollars will be spent on urban infrastructure in this period, presenting an immense opportunity for new transport management systems, smart grids, water monitoring systems, and energy efficient buildings. Information and communication technologies will be deeply embedded in the fabric of both old and new cities and will change the way we think of city operations and how we live and work in these environments. Pike Research forecasts that the smart city technology market will grow from $6.1 billion annually in 2012 to $20.2 billion in 2020.
Metaphors based on futurism and utopianism have been used over the past two decades to describe the changing ICT-based city. The information era and the technological advances in communications allow specific planning and design ideas to get far away from futuristic approaches; concepts for the future agglomeration seek bottom-up processes where importance is not final aesthetics or final accountancies but rather than data and information that prepare the ground for the birth of an urban metabolism.
Urban environments have always stood in close relationship to the technologies of production, transport, and communications. By introducing ICT in spatial planning, it can be conceptualized as a new type of infrastructure providing for the transport of data or information. As technologies and their impacts on urban environment change, their relationship calls for new or adapted concepts, where the emerging pattern language of electronic connections tie in seamlessly with the language of physical connections.
The great challenge for a new urban metabolism lies in the capacity of the city to interact, to give and receive information among interconnected nodes of different scales and natures (infrastructure, buildings, public space elements, environmental conditions, flows). The city becomes a connective network among human beings and their activities. This is what led to urbanization in the first place: individuals clustered so that communication distances would shrink to a minimum, while the number of connective nodes increased.
The future city model gives a leading role to information and communication technologies as well as to user empowerment in terms of interaction and innovation.