Adam Greenfield

Adam Greenfield is a world-renowned urbanist, technology critic, and Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, recognised as one of the foremost thinkers on how networked technologies reshape urban life. Author of the groundbreaking Everyware and Radical Technologies, he earned his PhD and continues to challenge prevailing smart city visions through rigorous research and teaching in LSE's Sociology Department. His sessions equip organisations and urban leaders with critical frameworks to design human-centred technological systems, enabling them to navigate emerging technologies with greater clarity and build cities that genuinely serve their inhabitants.

When Adam Greenfield founded Urbanscale in 2010, he set out to answer a provocative question: could networked technology make cities genuinely more liveable, rather than simply more efficient? His New York-based practice pioneered a human-centred approach to urban design, creating products, services and spatial interventions that prioritised the needs of inhabitants over the imperatives of data collection. That founding vision, rooted in more than fifteen years working inside the technology industry at companies including Nokia and Razorfish, positioned him as one of the most credible critics of the prevailing smart city orthodoxy. His scepticism emerged not from unfamiliarity with technology, but from an intimate understanding of how networked systems are designed, developed and brought to market.

Greenfield's influence extends across both academic research and public debate. In 2013, he was awarded the inaugural Senior Urban Fellowship at LSE Cities, relocating to the United Kingdom to deepen his research on how emergent technologies shape public space and the right to the city. He has since earned his PhD and now serves as Visiting Professor in the Sociology Department at the London School of Economics, where his teaching challenges students to interrogate the assumptions underlying technological urbanism. His written work has shaped global conversations about the Internet of Things and algorithmic governance. Everyware, published in 2006, introduced general audiences to ubiquitous computing before the term gained widespread currency. Against the smart city made a rigorous case against corporate-led urban transformation, whilst Radical Technologies, released in 2017, offered a critical field manual to blockchain, machine learning, artificial intelligence and the other forces reshaping everyday life. His articles for The Guardian since 2014 have brought these ideas to wider public attention.

Greenfield equips organisations and city leaders with the critical frameworks needed to navigate technological change without sacrificing human agency or urban complexity. His sessions move beyond abstract theory, offering practical tools for evaluating whether proposed systems genuinely serve inhabitants or simply extract value from them. Audiences leave with sharper questions to ask of vendors, clearer criteria for assessing technological interventions, and renewed confidence in advocating for cities that remain responsive, legible and democratic. By grounding his critique in both technical expertise and lived urban experience, he enables decision-makers to resist the seductive simplicity of smart city narratives and instead pursue technologies that enhance, rather than diminish, the richness of city life.