Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

While many of its traditional elements, such as roads and utilities, do not change, urban infrastructure is undergoing a fascinating and necessary transformation in the wake of new information and communication technologies. This volume brings together many of the most important new voices in the fields impacting modern urban infrastructure to explore this revolutionary change in the city.

Increasingly, it is connective systems rather than built forms that bind a city together. Intelligent infrastructure confers upon a city previously unimagined levels of adaptability, with mobile telephony serving to organize people and events on the move and in real time. Beginning with a consideration of invisible networks?the sociohistorical systems that contribute to and constitute urbanity?the essays collected here examine a variety of actual tools, from handheld devices to autonomous vehicles, within a fully networked built environment: the smart city.

This book argues that knowledge of both the visible and invisible components--information, energy, sustainability, transportation, housing, and social practices--are critical to understanding the urban environment. The dynamic and diverse cast of contributors includes Mitchell Schwarzer, Frederic Stout, Anthony Townsend, Carlo Ratti of the MIT SENSEable City Lab, Mitchell Joachim of Terreform ONE, and many other innovators who are changing the urban landscape.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• 1 1. Infrastructural Intelligence
• 2 2. The Conceptual Roots of Infrastructure
• 3 3. Tinkering Toward [A]utopia
• 4 4. Phantom Tollbooth Plaza
• 5 5. Mobile Networks as Tactical Transportation
• 6 6.[Driver]less is More
• 7 7. Ubiquitous Multimodality
• 8 8. The Future of Personal Urban Mobility
• 9 9. The Automobile, the City, and the New Urban Mobilities
• 10 10. Rethinking Urban Utopias
• 12 12. The Paradox of Urban Mobility and the Spatialization of Technological Utopia
• 13 13. Networked Urbanism and Everyday Mobility in the City

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Intelligent Infrastructure is a collection of essays, written by engineers, architects, and planners, about the challenges future cities face. The work's conclusion indicates that during the next 25 years, there will be numerous changes in transportation infrastructure and mobility options, and these modifications will require "a significant investment in how cities are conceptualized and organized." Tierney (architecture, Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) has arranged the book in three parts, and each includes several essays. The first part describes the origins of infrastructure and urban form and the development of intelligent infrastructure. The second part explores several mobility systems, including autonomous, driverless cars; zipcars; vehicle sharing; and transportation systems such as Uber, Lyft, and others. The roles of smartphones, apps, computers, sensors, and other telecommunication devices are also discussed. The third part of the work examines the implications of these new options for mobility and devices on urban form. The book is a fascinating, thought-provoking revelation for future cities. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. --William J. Sproule, Michigan Technological University

Author notes provided by Syndetics

T. F. Tierney is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Director of the URL: Urban Research Lab, and author of The Public Space of Social Media: Connected Cultures of the Network Society.