Carl Skelton is my colleague and co-founder of the Gotham Innovation Greenhouse and former director of the Experimental Media Center at NYU/Polytechnic Institute.
He has written a book about the Betaville open source project that enables residents of a city to collaborate and participate in urban design and planning. But it’s more than just about the history and role of the Betaville project.
The book provides context for urban design in an Internet-enabled era. As the publisher’s (Springer) summary states:
“the reader can gain a deeper understanding of the potential socio-technical forms of the New Soft Cities: blended virtual-physical worlds, whose public works must ultimately serve and succeed as massively collaborative works of art and infrastructure.”
Hence the title of Carl’s book: “Soft City Culture and Technology”, which will be officially published at the end of this month.
© 2013 Norman Jacknis
[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/61587029722/new-soft-cities]