ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at some of the underpinning ideas of cities and technology, from how information and communication technologies (ICTs) are tied up with a visionary discourse around the future of the city to thinking about which new models of urban planning may be appropriate for development of digital cities. The processes of industrialisation and urbanisation at the end of the nineteenth century were some of the most profound initiators of links between technology and cities. The design challenges of digital city create tensions around some of the core principles of architectural and building design: the idea that a building has permanence; that it can provide a container for certain activities or functions; and that it has aesthetic quality which can be experienced by senses. William Mitchell introduces the concept of recombinant architecture as a way to address the fact that the uses of built space are no longer permanently assigned and could change as a result of digital interactions.
