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Stephen Johnson on the ‘Crowdsourced Metropolis’




“[T]he hundreds of millions of calls also represent a huge pool of data to be collected, parsed, and transformed into usable intelligence. Perhaps even more exciting is the new ecosystem of startups, inspired by New York’s success and empowered by 21st-century technology, that has emerged to create innovative ways for residents to document their problems. All this meticulous urban analysis points the way toward a larger, and potentially revolutionary, development: the city built of data, the crowdsourced metropolis.”

Stephen Johnson, from “What a Hundred Million Calls to 311 Reveal About New York,” in WIRED Magazine, 2010

This is part of a collection of featured quotes on cities. They don’t necessarily reflect our views, just things that may be interesting. We welcome you to add others.

Credits: Image from WIRED Magazine.