A Return to Providence's "Smart City" downtown redevelopment

A protected tree trunk in the redevelopment area on Dyer Street. Downtown Providence, Rhode Island.

A few Saturdays ago I returned to Providence, Rhode Island to survey what work has been completed of the knowledge economy redevelopment of the Interstate 195 corridor area. I first visited the site a year ago--see this post for more information--and I wanted to document the change since then. As these images below show, the city started to transform the space into its new, smart future. The full photoset is available on Flickr.

"Smart" earth moving

"Smart" concrete drainage pipes

A "Smart" tractor.

A "Smart" sunset?

"Smart" concrete road barriers.

peripheral landscapes

Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris. July 2012.

What has not been realized at all is any corresponding automation of the production of built structures [compared to what information technology and automated production have done for work environments and other fields]. This has meant that in relative terms buildings have continued to become more expensive, while other goods have become cheaper. The volume of new construction is now less than it used to be, and western cities have not changed anything like as much as was expected in, say, the early 1960s. Most of the new landscapes which have evolved as a result of computer-driven change have been peripheral, and either ephemeral and relatively insubstantial--the logistics warehouse, the container port, the business park--or, if more substantial, have been realized only because they generate very high profits--the shopping mall, the airport.

--Patrick Keiller, from the essay Popular Science, included in The View from the Train (Verso 2013, p. 70).

parallel lines.

Powerlines and a lightpost alongside Bartram Avenue, Philadelphia. July 2013.