Technologies like driverless cars and smart heating systems could end up making cities dysfunctional according to Maarten Hajer, curator of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2016 (+ interview).
Speaking at an opening event for the biennale, Hajer called for architects and designers to stop treating the advent of smart technologies as inevitable, and to question whether they will solve any problems at all.
"People with lots of media force pretend to know exactly what the future will look like, as if there is no choice," he said. "I'm of course thinking about self-driving vehicles inevitably coming our way."
Maarten Hajer is curator of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2016
Discussions about the future of cities are at risk of being "mesmerised" by technology, he added. "We think about big data coming towards us, 3D printing demoting us, or the implication of robots in the sphere of health, as if they are inevitabilities. My call is for us to think about what we want from those technological advances."
An expert in public science and urban planning, Hajer is professor of Urban Futures at Utrecht University. For the fifth edition of the biennale, known as IABR, he has chosen the theme The Next Economy.

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