Digital Urbanism, from the Grassroots: Recent Episodes
Niloufar Vadiati
The podcast Digital Urbanism, from the Grassroots, is based on my postdoc research, “Grassroots Digital Urbanism”, funded by the German Research Foundation. In this podcast I interview scholars/activists who have either practically imagined an alternative to the classic tech-capitalist model of Smart Cities, or conceptually built new narratives to digital urbanism. The podcast has been structured as two series. One explores the Grassroots practices, and one explores Municipality practices. Hope you enjoy!
In conversation with Elizabeth Calderon Lüning:https://www.drlab.org/team/elizabeth-calderon-luning/The Urban Gardening project of Prinzessinnengartenhttps://prinzessinnengarten.net/about/The Neighborhood Academy(Knowledge Commoning)https://nachbarschaftsakademie.org/en/about/Mazi project in Berlin: (Practicing community sovereignty over digital infrastructure)https://mazizone.net/mazi-eu/pilot-studies/neighborhood-academy/The Digital City Alliance Berlin:https://digitalesberlin.info/en/about-the-digital-city-alliance-berlin/
a conversation with Dr Sophia Maalsen, a senior lecturer in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney.https://www.sydney.edu.au/architecture/about/our-people/academic-staff/sophia.maalsen.htmlAt the intersections of the digitalisation of urban spaces and governance, with feminist-housing, Dr Sophia Maalsen brings forth several questions in this episode: 1-What is hack as an urban practice and politic in the digitally augmented city?2-Who is using urban hacks and how do they do it in digital everyday life? 3-And How have these experiments and practices opened new ways of seeing or thinking about the housing problem in Sydney?Main papers that have been discussed in this episode:The hack: What it is and why it matters to urban studies (sagepub.com)Smart housing_ the political and market responses of the intersections between housing, new sharing economies and smart cities | Elsevier Enhanced ReaderHacking housing: theorising housing from the minor (tandfonline.com)Sophia Maalsen keynote at the Beyond Smart Cities Today conference, Sweden, June 2022 - YouTubePlease write to us if you have any suggestion or tips: niloufar.vadiati@gmail.com
About Dr. Casey Lynch:https://people.utwente.nl/c.r.lynchHis publication that we discussed about in this episode:-Contesting Digital Futures: Urban Politics, Alternative Economies, and the Movement for Technological Sovereignty in Barcelonahttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/anti.12522?saml_referrer-Internet infrastructure and the commons: grassroots knowledge sharing in Barcelonahttps://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00343404.2020.1869200?casa_token=6vDKmZkb1SQAAAAA:hIQVh-wNhZvRhYXw_hKoDMSDlaasSnEYE1MCcd-kO1ZQM5z4w5h_MrXxjax_vm3QWQL19aDKc-S8-Glitch Epistemology and the Question of (Artificial) Intelligence: Perceptions, Encounters, Subjectivitieshttps://ris.utwente.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/285086564/20438206221102952.pdfOther references that have been discussed-Race after Technology by Ruha Benjaminhttps://www.bklynlibrary.org/sites/default/files/documents/BOOK%20CLUB%20KITS/RACE%20AFTER%20TECH_BKLYN%20BOOK%20CLUB%20KIT_REV.pdf-Glitch epistemologies for computational citieshttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/20438206221075714Initiatives and Projects in BarcelonaGuifi Nethttps://guifi.net/barcelonahttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/280720388_Guifinet_a_crowdsourced_network_infrastructure_held_in_commonFab lab of :The Ateneus de Fabricacióhttps://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/ateneusdefabricacio/en/The Congress of Technological Sovereigntyhttps://sobtec.catTechnological cooperative for social transformation.https://colectic.coop
Maja-Lee Voigt: https://www.leuphana.de/en/institutes/isco/members/maja-lee-voigt.html
Her Master-Thesis: Cyber_Feminist_City. Stadtschaffende Praktiken zwischen Artificial Intelligence, Algorithmen und Asphalt (With limited access via HafenCity University Library: https://katalog.hcu-hamburg.de/vufind/Record/1783546794)
The Manifest of Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russel: https://www.legacyrussell.com/GLITCHFEMINISM https://www.amazon.de/Glitch-Feminism-Manifesto-Legacy-Russell/dp/1786632667
Cyber- Feminist collectives: Baumschiff(treeshuttle) as former home of the Heart of Code: http://heartofcode.org
Die Haecksen: https://www.haecksen.org/english/ Mz*Baltazar’s Laboratory https://www.mzbaltazarslaboratory.org
The first international Cyberfeminist alliance https://obn.org/obn/faq/fs_faq.html
Her paper under publication: We build this City on Rocks and (Feminist) code: Hacking Corporate Computation Design of Cities
**The cover-image of this episode has been drawn by Maja-Lee Voigt.
Resources:
-BigBlueButton (2022): BigBlueButton | Open Source Virtual Classroom Software. BigBlueButton - Open Source Web Conferencing. https://bigbluebutton.org/ [letzter Zugriff 28.09.2022]. -Buolamwini, Joy (2021): Tweet vom 09.04.21. https://twitter.com/jovialjoy/status/1380539105675710465. -Buolamwini, Joy / Gebru, Timnit (2018): Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification. In: Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 81, 1–15. -f.u.c.k. cologne (2022): Fuck Cologne - Feministisches Tech Kollektiv in Köln. https://fuckcologne.de/ [letzter Zugriff 03.11.2022]. -Genzmer, Jenny (2020a): F.U.C.K.001 Wir haben uns nen Hackspace gemakert. Feminismus und Computerkram. -Haecksen (2021): Wer sind die Haecksen? – Haecksen. https://www.haecksen.org/wer-sind-die-haecksen/ [letzter Zugriff 14.03.2021]. -Heart of Code e.V. (2021): kalender. http://heartofcode.org/kalender [letzter Zugriff 04.08.2021]. -Jurgenson, Nathan (2012): The IRL Fetish. The New Inquiry. https://thenewinquiry.com/the-irl-fetish/ [letzter Zugriff 27.09.2022]. Kitchin, Rob / Dodge, Martin (2011): Code/space: software and everyday life. Software studiesCambridge, Mass: MIT Press. -Mattern, Shannon (2017): A City Is Not a Computer. In: Places Journal. -netzforma e.V. (2020): Wenn KI, dann feministisch. Impulse aus Wissenschaft und Aktivismus. Berlin: netzforma e.V. — Verein für feministische Netzpolitik. -Marx, Paris (2021a): Embracing Glitch Feminism with Legacy Russell. Tech Won’t Save Us. Podcastkollektiv der Haecksen (o. J.): Technik kreativ nutzen. Haecksenwerk. -Russell, Legacy (2020): Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto. London/ New York: Verso Books. -Shaw, Joe / Graham, Mark (2018): Ein informationelles Recht auf Stadt? Code, Content, Kontrolle und die Urbanisierung von Information. In: Bauriedl, Sybille, Strüver, Anke (Hg.), Smart City - Kritische Perspektiven auf die Digitalisierung in Städten. London: transcript Verlag, 177–204. -Wark, McKenzie (2004): A Hacker Manifesto. Cambridge/ London: Harvard University Press. -Zook, Matthew / Graham, Mark (2018): Hacking code/space: Confounding the code of global capitalism. In: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 43/3, 390–404.
The podcast Digital Urbanism, from the Grassroots is about the emerging sphere of digital urbanism that explores alternatives to the non-techno-capitalist models in cities. In conversation with scholars, coders, and activists, Digital Urbanism, the podcast Digital Urbanism, from the Grassroots provides a forum for transnational debate and multi-forms of practices to advance our understanding of reclaiming technological sovereignty in spatial development, demystifying the ‘black box’ of platform urbanism and aligning technology to the urban-democracy agenda. Hosted and produced by: Niloufar Vadiati and Matin Akbari
In this episode Martin Bangratz from RWTH Aachen University, PhD researcher at the chair of Planning Theory and Urban Development, discusses about the concept of Digital City Making and shares with us his own insights on this emerging practices.
Links:
https://www.pnd-what-next.de/category/digital-citymakers/
Publication on Digital city makers research projet:
https://publications.rwth-aachen.de/record/835015/files/835015.pdf
Online Journal of pnd (Planung neu denken)
What/Next Podcast
https://www.pnd-what-next.de/category/city-talks/
Grassroots Initiatives
Utopastadt in Wuppertal
https://www.utopiastadt.eu