This week London hosts a jamboree of computer geeks, politicians, and urban planners from around the world. At the Urban Age conference, they will discuss the latest whizz idea in high tech, the smart city. Doing more than programming traffic, the smart citys computers will calculate where offices and shops can be laid out most efficiently, where people should sleep, and how all the parts of urban life should be fitted together. Science fiction? Smart cities are being built in the Middle East and in Korea; they have become a model for developers in China, and for redevelopment in Europe. Thanks to the digital revolution, at last life in cities can be brought under control. But is this a good thing?本周伦敦找来世界各地的计算机极客，政治家和城市规划者做了一个大聚会。在城市年代会议上， 他们将辩论近期的高科技专家的建议 -关于’智能城市‘。

在智能城市里， 计算机不仅管理交通，而且需要规划办公室和商店如何产于最有效率， 人们在什么地方睡合适，以及城市生活的各个方面如何有机地融合在一起。听得上去像科幻小说吗？ 实质上在中东和韩国，人们早已开始修建智能城市了，在中国智能城市也沦为了开发者的样板，对欧洲的新的研发也是这样。由于数字革命，城市生活再一显得高效率了。

但是这却是一件好事吗？You dont have to be a romantic to doubt it. In the 1930s the American urbanist Lewis Mumford foresaw the disaster entailed by scientific planning of transport, embodied in the super-efficient highway, choking the city. The Swiss architecture critic Sigfried Giedion worried that after the second world war efficient building technologies would produce a soulless landscape of glass, steel, and concrete boxes. Yesterdays smart city, todays nightmare.即使不是浪漫主义者的人也不会回应存在猜测。在1930年代， 美国城市规划专家Lewis Mumford 预见了’科学规划‘ 所连带的交通灾难- 超级高效的高速公路把城市阻塞一起。

瑞士建筑批评家Sigfried Giedion 担忧在二次大战后的高效建筑技术不会产生出有一批没什么生机的玻璃，钢铁和水泥盒子。昨天的聪慧城市早已出了今天的噩梦。The debate about good engineering has changed now because digital technology has shifted the technological focus to information processing; this can occur in handheld computers linked to clouds, or in command-and-control centres. The danger now is that this information-rich city may do nothing to help people think for themselves or communicate well with one another.关于何为好工程的辩论今天早已转变了， 因为数字技术早已把技术重点移往到了信息处理方面； 这一点展现出在手执电脑与’云‘，或者是命令与控制中心连接。

现在的危险性在于， 这种信息非常丰富的城市有可能对于协助人们为自己考虑到或者人们之间的较好交流并方面没什么作为。Imagine that you are a master planner facing a blank computer screen and that you can design a city from scratch, free to incorporate every bit of high technology into your design. You might come up with Masdar, in the United Arab Emirates, or Songdo, in South Korea. These are two versions of the stupefying smart city: Masdar the more famous, or infamous; Songdo the more fascinating in a perverse way.想象你自己是一个总规划师， 面临一个空白计算机屏幕，从零开始设计一座城市， 可以在规划中包括各种高新技术。你可能会设计出有阿联酋的马斯达尔，或者韩国的松岛。

他们是两个令人瞠目的智能城市版本， 马斯达尔更加有名或者更加不有名， 而松岛以一种异常的方式更加令人著迷。Masdar is a half-built city rising out of the desert, whose planning – overseen by the master architect Norman Foster – comprehensively lays out the activities of the city, the technology monitoring and regulating the function from a central command centre. The city is conceived in Fordist terms – that is, each activity has an appropriate place and time. Urbanites become consumers of choices laid out for them by prior calculations of where to shop, or to get a doctor, most efficiently. Theres no stimulation through trial and error; people learn their city passively. User-friendly in Masdar means choosing menu options rather than creating the menu.马斯达尔是在沙漠上修建的半竣工城市， 由总设计师Norman Foster 主持人规划， 包罗万象地涵括了城市的功能，有一个中央控制中心来监控和规范整个城市。整个城市是按’福特主义者‘来构想的 - 也就是说， 每一种活动都有个必要的地方和时段。

按照先前计算出来的最佳结果来自由选择去什么地方购物，去什么地方看医生。没了试试看之后的激动和性刺激， 人们对城市的理解是被动的。

‘用户友好关系’ 在马斯达尔意味著在现成菜单上做到自由选择，而不是建构菜单。Creating your own, new menu entails, as it were, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In mid 20th-century Boston, for instance, its new brain industries developed in places where the planners never imagined they could grow. Masdar – like Londons new ideas quarter around Old Street – on the contrary assumes a clairvoyant sense of what should grow where. The smart city is over-zoned, defying the fact that real development in cities is often haphazard, or in between the cracks of whats allowed.过去， 在错误的时间，去到错误的地方， 是建构你自己的菜单所必定要带给的。例如，在20世纪中叶的波士顿，新的‘大脑产业’在规划者们几乎没想起的地方开始茁壮。

与过去几乎忽略的是， 马斯达尔像伦敦旧街道周围的新‘创新角’一样， ，假设一种告诉什么东西应当生长于什么地方的遥测法术。智能城市的分区过度智能了， 不否认城市中确实的发展常常是很无意间的， 或者正是从月规划的’缝隙‘中产生的。Songdo represents the stupefying smart city in its architectural aspect – massive, clean, efficient housing blocks rising up in the shadow of South Koreas western mountains, like an inflated 1960s British housing estate – but now heat, security, parking and deliveries are all controlled by a central Songdo brain. The massive units of housing are not conceived as structures with any individuality in themselves, nor is the ensemble of these faceless buildings meant to create a sense of place.松岛代表智能城市建筑异常的一面 - 极大，整洁，高效的房屋在韩国西部山区中拔地而起， 就像1960年代英国住宅去的收缩版，但是现在暖气，安防，行驶和车主都是受到松岛“神经中枢’掌控的。极大的房屋单元不是按照任何个性本身的结构设计，也不是那些没什么个性的只是为了辟个房子而已的建筑群。

Uniform architecture need not inevitably produce a dead environment, if there is some flexibility on the ground; in New York, for instance, along parts of Third Avenue monotonous residential towers are subdivided on street level into small, irregular shops and cafes; they give a good sense of neighbourhood. But in Songdo, lacking that principle of diversity within the block, there is nothing to be learned from walking the streets.如果在地面规划充足有弹性的话， 上风格样式完全一致的建筑并不一定会导致一种死气沉沉的气氛； 例如在纽约，第三大道那些单调的住宅塔楼边上有很多小型的，点状的店铺和咖啡馆； 这些小店流露出很舒适度的邻家感觉。但是在松岛， 街区里没这种多样性的原则， 回头在大街上看到任何有意思的东西。A more intelligent attempt to create a smart city comes from work currently under way in Rio de Janeiro. Rio has a long history of devastating flash floods, made worse socially by widespread poverty and violent crime. In the past people survived thanks to the complex tissues of local life; the new information technologies are now helping them, in a very different way to Masdar and Songdo. Led by IBM, with help by Cisco and other subcontractors, the technologies have been applied to forecasting physical disasters, to co-ordinating responses to traffic crises, and to organising police work on crime. The principle here is co-ordination rather than, as in Masdar and Songdo, prescription.目前对于智能城市更聪明的一种尝试于是以再次发生在里约热内卢。里大约过去曾被毁灭性的洪水毁坏过，普遍产于的贫民区和暴力犯罪使得城市的状况更为差劲。

以前人们之所以需要存活下来，要靠当地简单的社区生活结构； 现在新的信息技术正在用与马斯达尔和松岛几乎有所不同 方式协助人们。由IBM联合，在Cisco和其他分包商的因应下， 新技术被用作自然灾害的预报， 协商交通事故处置，以及的组织警员对付犯罪。

这里的原则是协商，而不是像马斯达尔和松岛那样的收到指令。But isnt this comparison unfair? Wouldnt people in the favelas prefer, if they had a choice, the pre-organised, already planned place in which to live? After all, everything works in Songdo. A great deal of research during the last decade, in cities as different as Mumbai and Chicago, suggests that once basic services are in place people dont value efficiency above all; they want quality of life. A hand-held GPS device wont, for instance, provide a sense of community. More, the prospect of an orderly city has not been a lure for voluntary migration, neither to European cities in the past nor today to the sprawling cities of South America and Asia. If they have a choice, people want a more open, indeterminate city in which to make their way; this is how they can come to take ownership over their lives.但是怎么会这种较为不是很不公平的吗？ 在贫民窟里的人们如果可以自由选择的话， 怎么会不是更加不愿生活在那种预先的组织好的， 规划好的地方吗？ 无论如何， 松岛市各方面都能长时间运转。过去十年在像孟买和芝加哥这样几乎有所不同的城市中的大量研究指出，一旦基本服务到位，人们就会再行关心效率问题，而是期望有更高质量的生活。例如，手执GPS怎么也不有可能带来人们社区的感觉。

不仅如此， 井然有序的城市并不是更有人们强迫移民的诱因， 无论是过去的欧洲城市还是今天南美洲和亚洲那些蔓延到发展的城市都是如此。如果人们需要自由选择， 他们就不会自由选择更为对外开放，有更加多不确定性的城市来首创自己的生活。只有这样他们才是确实的享有了自己的生活。

Theres nothing wicked about the smart city confab London is hosting this week. Technology is a great tool, when its used responsively, as in Rio. But a city is not a machine; as in Masdar and Songdo, this version of the city can deaden and stupefy the people who live in its all-efficient embrace. We want cities that work well enough, but are open to the shifts, uncertainties, and mess which are real life.本周在伦敦开会的智能城市讨论会并没任何蓄意。当技术被必要地应用于时，需要沦为一种最出色的工具，就像在里大约那样。但是城市不是一台机器，无法像马斯达尔和松岛那样，那样版本的城市不会在高效中使得生活其中的人们显得死气沉沉和昏头昏脑。

我们期望城市需要运转较好，但同时充满著确实生活的那种变化，不确定性和恐慌。

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