Saskia Sassen [brief video]– the gap between data and urban knowledge

“If knowledge is about the city … then you are beginning to tell an urban story”

Great short video on how data is different from knowledge (“knowledge is not simply a data set”); getting knowledge from data requires an interpretation, an experience in a way that data does not. The video comes from the Picnic festival: Life in Readable Cities hosted by the European Journalism Center.

Here’s also her piece on “Why Cities Matter”.

Humanism and Cities

Check out The Open University’s podcast series on “Understanding Cities” (also available through itunes / itunesU): This episode on “Humanism and Cities” features interviews with such thinkers as Nigel Thrift, Saskia Sassen, Ash Amin and focuses on whether a city can be reduced to economics alone… (7 min.)