How to Enjoy Architecture: A Guide for Everyone reframes the map as the defining instrument of the digital city, arguing that the way we chart urban space — through sensors, open-source platforms, and real-time data — is reshaping how cities are planned, governed, and experienced.
About This Book
Antoine Picon and Carlo Ratti place digital mapping at the centre of a broader argument about the future of urban life. For centuries, the map was a tool of orientation; now, as pervasive sensing technologies saturate the built environment, cartography has become a medium for revealing what was previously invisible — pollution gradients, traffic behaviour, internet connectivity, the rhythms of human movement. This book traces the consequences: how new cartographic possibilities are changing the work of urban planners and administrators, how the monitored city raises genuine political and social stakes, and how open-source mapping is placing power in the hands of activists and vulnerable communities. Grounded in cutting-edge research and accessibly presented, it is essential reading for anyone thinking seriously about smart cities and the information age.
Key Features
- 240 pages of illustrated cartographic research, combining visual mapping examples with analytical commentary on digital urbanism
- Authored by Antoine Picon and Carlo Ratti
- Published by Yale University Press, 9780300247510
What You'll Discover
- How sensing technologies have fundamentally expanded what maps can show — from static geography to live data on pollution, traffic, and digital infrastructure
- The ways digitally mapped cities inform — and complicate — the decisions of urban planners, technicians, and politicians
- The political and social repercussions of monitoring urbanites at scale, and the tensions between efficiency, surveillance, and civil liberties
- How open-source mapping and collaborative platforms are being mobilised by activists and marginalised communities to reshape urban advocacy
About the Author
Antoine Picon is a historian and theorist of architecture, urbanism, and technology. Carlo Ratti is an architect and engineer who directs the Senseable City Laboratory at MIT. Together, their work spans the intersection of digital technology, urban design, and spatial research.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 240
- Dimensions: 254 x 229mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780300247510
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Urban designers, planners, and architects engaging with smart city technologies, as well as academics and researchers working across digital urbanism, cartography, and the social dimensions of data-driven cities.