Maria Popova is the founder and editor of Brain Pickings. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic, Nieman Journalism Lab, and Design Observer.Cities are becoming increasingly human when the streams of data they generate are being opened up for entrepreneurs and startups to develop cool and useful services on. But how is this changing our understanding of the space in which we spend our life and why is it important for data owners to make their data accessible thru APIs?