Very few events manage to bring together such a vast array of content like Austin’s South by Southwest (SXSW). With its emphasis on music, film, and technology, it can sometimes feel challenging to find a common thread that brings together its diversified audiences.
This year the festival launched a convergence program called “Cities Summit” to drive meaningful discussions about the future of our cities— a theme that resonated with many attendees. A number of sessions were dedicated to the topic of ‘smart cities’, with representatives from administrations, businesses, and non-profits discussing how technological advancements can improve our day-to-day lives and debating the right balance between regulation and entrepreneurship.
A similar convergence on the theme of the city occurred in the fifteenth century during the Italian Renaissance, when the invention of perspective in the figurative arts inspired a reflection on how to organize urban space and rationalize how citizens could …read more