ABSTRACT
Smart cities present us with a vision of optimal urban life dependent upon the function of digital algorithms. In this chapter I invoke a more generous sense of algorithm – as formula or recipe – to challenge this perception. Drawing upon a view first set out by Aristotle I suggest that it is the city itself which provides the formula for optimality, though this requires us to acknowledge all its complexities. As an example of these I consider an underexplored dimension of urban life – its sensory aspects and the atmospheres they create. I explore how modernity attempted to supress ‘excessive’ sensory elements and compare this with a parallel process in the smart city – the phenomenon of personalisation and its apparent simplification of the ‘info-sensory’ excess arising from information-rich environments. I suggest that by fostering illusions of simplicity, care and autonomous preference the algorithms driving personalisation are contributing to an insidious new kind of politics – one where assimilation and absorption obscure complexity and dissolve any need for engagement, whether sensory or critical.
