ABSTRACT
Technological advances have made possible the very existence of the city as we know it. From the canals of Amsterdam to the freeways of Los Angeles, from the aqueducts of Roman cities to the artificial islands of Dubai, technological artifacts have allowed the existence of these cities and have become their identity trait. Understanding the relations between technologies, cities, planning, and design, and the convergence of strategies, interests, alliances, and conflicts into a materialized built space, is not new or unknown, from the point of view of social construction of technologies. The transformative power of technological artifacts inspired architects and urban planners in more direct manners, changing the way they thought, designed, and built. Prescriptive cities are those whose proponents, be they designers, developers, or urban thinkers, make a clear statement on how urban relations should be, and how design would influence such behavior. Prescribing and provoking are companion movements of thinking and designing cities through the delusion of planning.
