What is Urbanities

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an introduction to the urbanity concept from a variety of perspectives and in the context of smart cities. A key element characterizing smart cities is the introduction of information and communication technologies and other pervasive and aware technologies providing a space for the exploration of new understandings of urbanity. Aware technologies in combination with aware people enable formulation of an ambient urbanities framework. The chapters that follow provide an exploration of the challenges and opportunities for elements of the ambient urbanities framework, with Chapter 2 focusing on sensing; Chapter 3 on infrastructures; Chapter 4 on culture, economies, and everything as ambient; Chapter 5 on digital literacies; Chapter 6 on smart information architectures; Chapter 7 on the need for new methodologies and theoretical spaces; Chapter 8 on innovating privacy; Chapter 9 on measuring ambient urbanities; Chapter 10, a synthesis; and Chapter 11 on ambient urbanities and beyond.