Our cities are facing a tremendous pace and scale of change, driven by rapid advances in ‘smart city’ technologies with limitless potential for disruption.

But is ‘disruption’ necessarily a good thing? Who is included or excluded from the benefits of a smart city? Will algorithms eliminate or perpetuate bias, prejudice, and inequality? What will these disruptions mean for our economy, culture, and social fabric? And how will we respond and rise to the challenges it presents?

Artengine and Impact Hub Ottawa are hosting the Future Cities Forum, which will kick off with an evening of three keynote talks by science-fiction writer and futurist Madeline Ashby, urban designer Ken Greenberg, and Tracey Lauriault, specialist on big data and the city.

This diverse group will share their speculations on future cities in the context of emerging and disruptive technologies. How will and can we adapt the key lessons of urban design of the twentieth century and not be seduced by the same techno-utopianism that shaped cities in the past? As we are transformed and extended into the network, how will a citizen be in public or private in our new data-driven city? Who will be the heroes and anti-heroes of the cities to come?