SMART CITIES – * city group

"[A] timely and necessary guide to this age of the Franken-city."

—Daniel Brook, New York Times Book Review

From Beijing to Boston, cities are deploying smart technology—sensors embedded in streets and subways, Wi-Fi broadcast airports and green spaces—to address the basic challenges faced by massive, interconnected metropolitan centers. In Smart Cities, Anthony M. Townsend documents this emerging futuristic landscape while considering the motivations, aspirations, and shortcomings of the key actors—entrepreneurs, mayors, philanthropists, and software developers—at work in shaping the new urban frontier.

Buy the Book

Smart Cities is available from these retailers.

IndieBound

W.W. Norton

Little City Books

WORD Bookstores

Amazon

For bulk orders we recommend Porchlight.

Critical Acclaim

Anthony Townsend’s terrific book looks at the historic relationship of urban and industrial development to new technologies.

—Architecture Today

“An entertaining history of urban planning’s visionaries and villains, the technological breakthroughs and the spectacular failures that brought us to this crossroads.”

—The Nation

“[Townsend] has written a generous book in clean prose, one that will engage both advanced geeks and cyber-dolts.”

—New Scientist

Compelling…Townsend begins a conversation.

—Nature

About the Author

Dr. Anthony Townsend works at the intersection of urbanization and digital technology. His first book, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers and the Quest for A New Utopia was published by W.W. Norton & Co. in 2013.

Anthony is the founder of Star City Group, a strategy consultancy and planning studio that works with industry, government and philanthropy on smart city planning, innovation districts, and automated vehicle policy.

He holds a Ph.D. in urban and regional planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He lives in Jersey City, New Jersey.