Week 3: Sensing Cities

This week in class, we continued talking about how cities are portrayed in films as well as the way that we sense cities. We analyzed the movie the movie The City in class on Thursday looking at the themes and how differently rural and urban areas were depicted. Most of our discussion however focused on Urban Tomography or the use of multiple media records to analyze a city or urban area. We spent time discussing the many methods or modes that can be used in Urban Tomography including audio recordings, videos, as well as fixed sensors or photographs.

One example of how Urban Tomography is currently being used is in the 100 Cities project, a description of the project can be found here: http://cesa.asu.edu/urban-systems/100-cities-project/. The 100 cities project is an NSA-funded program that uses satellite based remote sensing data to analyze socioeconomic and biogeographic trends and qualities of many urban areas. Its primary focus is on building collaboration among urban scientists and classifying as many urban sites as possible, in order to better informs them about sustainable development options. Scientists involved in the project are currently assessing 400 of the world’s most populous cities in order to create a set of tools that can be used to analyze the threat that global warming and other environmental risks pose to cities.