A well written essay here via Building a Smarter Planet:

Excerpt:

We don’t dwell on physical city infrastructure much either — unless we’re momentarily captivated by an architectural facade or, more commonly, inconvenienced by some lapse in the expected service. [...] It is a decision not to be made lightly or as a thought exercise: how we design our city of information is as vital to quality of life as streets, schools, and job opportunity. [...] But fissures in a city’s data infrastructure are as consequential as potholes. They are structural failings of a city at the most basic level, in a way that a busted piece of street art would never be. Think of cell phone outages — “dark zones” — as potholes in the urban information landscape. Or consider GPS brownouts, such as cause error in bus-tracking when the CTA enters the satellite-blocking skyscraper canyon of the Loop. [...] Second, we need to recognize that, while the power of information is the power to connect, every linkage made represents a connection not made or, at worst, a disconnection. (Think again of the unintended effects of expressways on neighborhood mobility.) Our plan for a networked urbanism should seek above all to be maximally enfranchising, lowering barriers to commerce and community.

Why blogging this? because I have been analyzing neo-nomads’ adherence to spaces and places, and how mobilities affect the way they/we dwell, linger, collect, let-go, re-construct, anchor, etc… To overlay a digital infrastructure onto the physical, one needs to understand behavioral patterns and needs (changing according to the spatial context and the nature of mobility; there are many kinds of neo-nomads). I am not sure however that “fissures in a city data’s infrastructure” is bad… For some time now I have been wanting to build a “zero-zone” sculpture/urban pod, a space where no radio wave allowed, no mobile phone could work, etc… Just because it is all part of the rhythm of a city. Anyway… I am ready for the conversation!