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On October 18 at the New York offices of SOM, Metropolis‘s director of design innovation Susan S. Szenasy led a conversation about how innovations in technology can be harnessed to best support the city’s growth. As the city continues to expand—the NYC Department of City Planning estimates the population will grow from 8.5 million in 2016 to 9 million in 2040—how do architects, technologists, and policymakers leverage and create technology that makes the city a more livable, equitable space for all its residents?
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Even as this tech-informed process unfolds, SOM’s design director Colin Koop underlined that we must question the potential consequences of designing cities that people can’t comprehend. “We struggle to communicate. Someone who’s seeking to take a technological approach to a problem and solve it in a way which should benefit individual lives—whether that’s through a shorter commute, better public spaces, lower utility bills—ultimately realizes that if people don’t understand it, they’re going to be inherently suspicious of it. If we don’t bring people along then we risk tearing at the fabric of the social construct that ties us all together,” Koop remarked.