Street Computing: Urban Informatics and City Interfaces

This book develops tools and techniques that will help urban residents gain access to urban computing. Metaphorically speaking, it is taking computing to the street by giving the general public – rather than just researchers and professionals – the power to leverage available city infrastructure and create solutions tailored to their individual needs. It brings together five articles that are based on presentations given at the Street Computing Workshop held on 24 November 2009 in Melbourne in conjunction with the Australian Computer-Human Interaction conference (OZCHI 2009).

This volume focuses on applying urban informatics, urban and community sensing and open application programming interfaces (APIs) to the public space through the delivery of online services, on demand and in real time. It then offers a case study of how the city of Singapore has harnessed the potential of an online infrastructure so that residents and visitors can access services electronically.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Urban Technology.

Marcus Foth is Associate Professor and a Principal Research Fellow with the School of Design, and the Director of the Urban Informatics Research Lab at Queensland University of Technology.

Markus Rittenbruch is a Senior Research Fellow with the Urban Informatics Research Lab at Queensland University of Technology.

Ricky Robinson is a Senior Research Scientist with National ICT Australia (NICTA).

Stephen Viller is a lecturer in the Information Environments Program (IEP) at the University of Queensland, Australia.