Retrieving the spatial imaginary of real-time cities

The twenty-first century is widely recognized as the century of the city, and in this intensive phase of urbanization ICTs are set to play an increasingly central role. Technology-led ‘ smart city ’ growth paradigms are becoming an integral part of the language of urbanization policy, enabling global technology vendors such as IBM, Cisco, HP and Siemens to position their services as core enablers of urban innovation. As broadband networks become increasingly ubiquitous, and networked ‘ anywhere/anytime ’ devices proliferate, the experience of internet connectivity is changing dramatically, no longer a ‘ place to visit ’ but an increasingly pervasive, integral part of everyday urban life. The proliferation of networked devices within everyday urban environments has given rise to a plethora of new spatial metaphors that attempt to grapple with the hybrid material/informational spaces of advanced mapping technologies – including, just to name a few, terms like ‘everyware’, augmented space’, an internet of things’, ‘responsive environments’, ‘sentient cities’, ‘smart cities’, ‘locative media’, ‘situated urbanism’, and ‘network publics’.