The power of the smart city cognitive map

Abstract

The study describes the mechanisms by which the cognitive map of the smart city will write and rewrite behavioral patterns, starting with a definition of the phenomenon of behavioral influences generated by the architectural landmarks, and continuing with the classification of these influences into two types: direct and indirect, completed with description of the two directions and classification criteria. The indirect influence categories are further examined: "spectacle" type influence, influence through symbol, and influence through the generation of urban atmospheres in the smart city, with an emphasis on the spectacle of architectural landmarks in contemporary visual culture determined and shaped by technology. Architectural images and landmarks form a psychological cognitive map, which reflects the decisions made under effective leadership at a given moment. The materialization of architectural creation in an urban context is commissioned and financed by the structures of power, with an immediate effect on social behavior regarding that power. More than that, they have the particular characteristic of generating attachment and often a behavior of copying and re-edifying them across space or time. This is an effect, a behavioral influence, a power of the cognitive map over the functioning of the smart city, whether at the individual or mass level. Architecture generates behavior, even if we can, by reduction to the absurd, simplistically view this behavior merely as the construction and functionality themselves. The social and political meaning of the decisions made towards reproduction, even copying, of architectural elements is what concerns us in this study. Important architecture is manipulative. In architecture commissioned and financed by the authorities and signed by architects trained and certified by it, power is exerted by the exact copying and implementation of a certain style/manner in different places/sites, or those distanced from the seat of that authority or leadership center, to transmit the message of a certain type of social order. The copying or rebirth of architectural styles and stylistic elements occurs across great geographical distances and over long periods of time. These landmark styles are, in fact, a discourse of display and consolidation of the source leadership's superiority, a genuine show (spectacle), a demonstration of force, and an emergence—an unveiling of the panoply of technological evolution, aesthetic tastes, and culture of the social order that generated them. We are thus talking in this case about manipulation-as-spectacle through architecture. Architectural images congealed in cognitive maps reproduced trans-culturally or over time impact behavior by imposing adherence to a certain cultural identity, materialized through the acceptance of the authority of the culture that generated these images, which are mass-shared and up-graded in the smart city.