Susan Piedmont-Palladino will present a lecture titled “Intelligent Cities” at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 13, at the Clinton School of Public Service, 1200 President Clinton Ave., in Little Rock.

Awash in information from a myriad of sources, today’s cities must sort out, process and use that data to better serve people in their homes, their neighborhoods, their communities and beyond. To meet those ends, city officials and their staffs must be conversant with, and able to utilize, a range of new technologies.

While technology in some form has always shaped the city, today’s technologies provide a different challenge. Information communication technologies – such as smartphones, tablets and electronic books – are changing the ways people interact with the built environment and fellow citizens. What does it portend for the future of cities that technology is now not only an integral part of design and construction but of user experience as well?

How technology is employed is surely the single biggest influence on how cities will look, feel and function in the future. An issue for people who live and work in the city, it is truly a challenge for those who serve the public.

Piedmont-Palladino is an architect, a professor of architecture at Virginia Tech’s Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center and a curator at the National Building Museum in Washington. A graduate of the College of Architecture and Urban Studies at Virginia Tech, she writes and lectures regularly on sustainability, design education and urbanism.

She is the author of several books, including the recently published Intelligent Cities. A former president of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility, she currently serves on the advisory boards of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, the Green Hive Foundation and the National Academy of Environmental Design.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Part of the Art of Architecture lecture series, it is sponsored by the Architecture and Design Network, with support from the Central Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the Arkansas Arts Center and the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

For more information, contact projects4pi@mac.com.