Ambient Urbanities and Beyond: Perspectives Going Forward

1. Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a review of the research literature for works that are pushing the boundaries of smart cities in providing a glimpse of perspectives going forward. This chapter focuses on ambient explorations, microgrids and smartgrids, wise cities, and the quantum concept in shedding light on the evolving nature of the people-technologies-cities dynamic for more adaptive urban environments, characteristic of smart and responsive cities. Using an exploratory case study approach, solutions and recommendations are advanced. An analysis is provided of issues, controversies, and problems along with a discussion of the solutions and recommendations offered. Perspectives emerge for looking beyond and into the future of ambient urbanities in identifying potential directions for practitioners and researchers. This chapter makes a contribution to: a) the research literature for smart cities and future cities; and b) perspectives beyond ambient urbanities that encompass parallel and complementary potentials for smarter urbanities.

Further, this chapter suggests new paths of inquiry, along with evolving methodologies, approaches, and practices for understanding, complementing, extending, and moving beyond Internet infrastructures (e.g., through smartgrids/microgrids, etc.). As such, ambient urbanities open new spaces, perspectives, and frames of reference for a rethinking of many aspects of urban life from culture, to sharing and collaboration, to metrics for the analysis of 21^st century cities, to information management, to learning, and so on. Additionally, the conceptual framework for ambient urbanities is further enriched, providing guidance on future direction for both practitioners and researchers.

• Objectives: The objective of this chapter is to provide a look beyond and into the future of ambient urbanities. As such, the key research question posed is – How and why are ambient and quantum elements important for ambient urbanities in smart cities and beyond?

2. Background And Overview

Highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of ambient urbanities, this chapter provides a look to the future, beyond structures such as the Internet to microgrids/smartgrids (McCullough, 2015a; McCullough, 2015b). Baude (2016), for example, focuses on the ends of the Internet while Schmitt (2017) argues for a movement from smart cities to responsive cities, cognizant of people. Williams (2017) argues for a movement from smart cities to wise cities to incorporate a more human-centered perspective. Hunter (2018) predicts that ambient contextuality will be “the next big game changer in technology interface” as in “enabling a reliable conversational interaction with technology in order to overcome the friction humans experience when we use our modern tools” from “apps, phones, cars or semi-autonomous coffee makers.” Evolving directions for the ambient are highlighted in an experiment on “emergent forms of literature” described by Schwab (2018) and referred to as ambient literature, designed to “make use of novel technologies and social practices to create more robust and evocative experiences for readers.”