Cognitive Cities: An Approach from Citizens

Cities are made from both physical entities (buildings and its links) and social entities (citizens and its links). Cognitive cities demand cognitive citizens. In this paper, we advocate the role of the body and the brain in human cognition. Citizens are rational, embodied agents. As embodied beings, we claim the role of the smart textiles to transform them into kinds of transducers between external stimuli and their cognition. As rational beings, we defend explanations as a relevant way for securing successful adaptations in dynamic scenarios, such as those of cognitive cities. We propose cognitive maps as a skeletal method for explaining concepts and for detecting certain typical social behaviors, such as cooperation, competition or mediation.