Firefighters’ demonstration in Paris. by Hugo*
Adam Greenfield in Situated Technologies Pamphlets 1: Urban Computing and its Discontents (found via Speedbird and the interesting cafe side conversation) has this to say regarding control and urban computing:

And lest anyone still, at this point, think the prospect of urban computing is all kittens and bunnies and roses – I don’t see how anyone could, but some people are just die-hard techno-optimists – we should underline that there are many flipsides to ambient informatics. At the request of a client, I’ve been looking lately at some of the ways in which a mesh of networked sensors and effectors can constrain choice in the urban environment – not to put too fine a point on it, but to consider how urban-computing platforms might be used by an authoritarian government to institute social control.
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Some of the scariest and most interesting possibilities here bypass crude, Tiananmen-style repression in favor of what might be called soft control. In this aspect of my work, I’ve been guided by the work of the geographer Steven Flusty, who’s identified a range of “characteristics…introduced into urban spaces to make them repellent to the public.” He gave each of the five situations he listed particularly evocative names:

• stealthy spaces “cannot be found”
• slippery spaces “cannot be reached”
• crusty spaces “cannot be accessed”
• jittery spaces “cannot be utilized unobserved”

Pair this thinking up with James Fallows‘s reporting about China’s Great Firewall in The Connection Has Been Reset:

All the technology employed by the Golden Shield, all the marvelous mirrors that help build the Great Firewall—these and other modern achievements matter mainly for an old-fashioned and pre-technological reason. By making the search for external information a nuisance, they drive Chinese people back to an environment in which familiar tools of social control come into play.
Chinese bloggers have learned that if they want to be read in China, they must operate within China, on the same side of the firewall as their potential audience. (…) And being inside China means operating under the sweeping rules that govern all forms of media here: guidance from the authorities; the threat of financial ruin or time in jail; the unavoidable self-censorship as the cost of defiance sinks in.

Now, I give Humanity a 50/50 chance of sliding into the sort of dystopian future found in Fahrenheit 151 or Nineteen Eighty-Four. These odds reflect the reality that as profit-seeking companies who will assist regimes in controlling the populace at large are in existence, these profit-seeking companies will act to control the populace at large. Just look at how AT&T, among others, violated the law in helping the NSA spy on Americans.

Wall and Sky by velvetart
Outside of the political ramifications, what will the manifestations of social-control look, feel and act in built form? Obvious examples is the Israeli West Bank barrier (above) which is the most basic architectural response to control. More interesting, is what unforeseen results of social-control could be and how people will react in that space. The re-routing or delivery trucks in Lower Manhattan and the resultant disruption of side streets will be a visible and daily reminder.
I don’t know the answer to this question, but it deserves more inquiry.