Urban media: a design process for the development of sustainable applications for ubiquitous computing for livable cities

Urban centers worldwide are now facing major challenges in almost every arena; population, health and public safety, environment, information access, housing, employment, security, banking, government and global economic competition. To effectively overcome these hurdles cities need to incorporate a broader design approach to understand, plan and shape new facets of urban growth and in the process, redefine the urban experience. As part of this effort, cities today are looking at new technologies to be incorporated into the urban fabric at different levels of intervention. Ubiquitous computing has the potential to be a key factor in these technologies and can be applied to reflect the nature of being human and the urban condition - on an individual level as well as recording the evolution of our society and the communities we live in.