Cognitive cities: Technological utopia or urban revolution?

Abstract

The technological advances of the last two decades, particularly on electronic devices and computer science, opened a wide range of potential applications. As a consequence, human actions in several fields have been decisively impacted. The proliferation of electronic devices, both of personal use as collective, and connected online, favored to provide an extensive piece of information. Individual and collective demands could be used to manage an urban infrastructure more efficiently. Therefore, the concept of urban structures with underlying intelligence emerges, the intelligent cities. A further step was the proliferation of gadgets and apps, which allow an unprecedented growth on the amount of available data. Once combined with artificial intelligence algorithms they support autonomous decisions in real time on the management of the urban infrastructure, the cognitive cities. This could represent a major urban revolution, with a major improvement on the quality of life. On the other hand, the management of this collective urban structure autonomously brings major ethical and moral questions. This investigation discusses the technologies that brought this urban revolution, and the challenges of humanity to establish the limiting parameters to use those technologies. Additionally, this investigation also addressees the new urban environment, discussing the role of technology in society.