Why cities are not computers

Cities have been described in many ways. They've been compared to bustling ants' nests and trees, and likened to computers with complex networks of intersecting technologies. But Shannon Mattern, a social anthropologist at New York's New School for Social Research thinks we should be wary of the city-as-computer. Her new book, A City is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences, argues that cities are inherently messy creations — home to things, places and people who are allowed to not compute.