Smart Spaces and Places

Book excerpt: Smart technologies have advanced rapidly throughout our society (e.g. smart energy, smart health, smart living, smart cities, smart environment, and smart society) and across geographic spaces and places. Behind these "smart" developments are a number of seminal drivers, such as social media (e.g. Twitter), sensors (drones, wearables), smartphone apps, and computing infrastructure (e.g. cloud computing). These developments have captured the enthusiasm of the public, while inevitably present unprecedented challenges and opportunities for the geographic research community. When meeting the smart challenges, are there emerging theories, methods, and observations that reveal new spatial phenomena, produce new knowledge, and foster new policies? Smart Spaces and Places addresses questions such as how to make spaces and places "smart", how the "smartness" affects the way we think spaces and places, and what role geographies play in knowledge production and decision-making in a "smart" era. The collection of 21 chapters offers stimulating discussion over the meaning of spaces, places, and smartness; scientific insights into smartness; social-political views of smartness; and policy implications of smartness. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Annals of the American Association of Geographers.