Beyond the digital city - Remediating space at a regional scale

There has been a great deal of research on the effects of digital media and ICT’s on the urban condition. Similarly the impacts on social and community based structures and networks of the use of new forms of communication and interaction through technology has been studies from a range of perspectives, but with very little critique of the complex urban nature of such media. Yet ICT’s and new modes of remote communication are having, and have had significant effects on communities that are not cutting edge high urban settings but rather at regional and rural scales. These settings have different structures and patterns of inhabitation than those of highly urbanised city centres and therefore corresponding different relationships with social and economical drivers and issues. This workshop will explore the link between the use and infrastructure of digital media and social communities on regional, small-scale urban and rural settings. It will reflect on how this affects what Marsden refers to as the process as ‘communitization’ where members of the community ‘are empowered to derive their own solution strategies that comprise a variety of fundamental components and services’ (Marsden 2011). The focus will be on how to qualify and evaluate the effects of digital networks and interactions on place-based social structures such as neighbourhoods and rural nodes. It will explore the characteristics of place-based communities and the interplay between the invisible networks and material world of regional urban and rural life. To support this we will investigate appropriate qualitative methods for studying such practices, which acknowledge that difficulty with studying everyday practices and interactions in such settings

From 'digital' to 'smart': upgrading the city

In this paper we seek to reflect on the way in which 'digital cities' later re-emerge as 'smart cities' (both in terms of the approaches and also the actual cities) and what lessons can be learned about the role of ICTs in how they shape urban space. We will focus on looking at how the lack of understanding of the city as a 'place' is often a common factor in the lack of longevity in 'digital city' initiatives and discuss the corresponding implications for the emergence of 'smart cities'. We draw on a study of the city of Bristol, UK in order to look at the variety of initiatives that took Bristol from a 1990's digital city to the current 'smart' projects. We conclude by reflecting on what can be learnt from the lessons of the failed Digital City projects of 1990's and discuss the role that placemaking could play in the development of socially and spatially sustainable smart cities

The architectures of media power: editing, the newsroom, and urban public space

This paper considers the relation of the newsroom and the city as a lens into the more general relation of production spaces and mediated publics. Leading theoretically from Lee and LiPuma’s (2002) notion of ‘cultures of circulation’, and drawing on an ethnography of the Toronto Star, the paper focuses on how media forms circulate and are enacted through particular practices and material settings. With its attention to the urban milieus and orientations of media organizations, this paper exhibits both affinities with but also differences to current interests in the urban architectures of media, which describe and theorize how media get ‘built into’ the urban experience more generally. In looking at editing practices situated in the newsroom, an emphasis is placed on the phenomenological appearance of media forms both as objects for material assembly as well as more abstracted subjects of reflexivity, anticipation and purposiveness. Although this is explored with detailed attention to the settings of the newsroom and the city, the paper seeks to also provide insight into the more general question of how publicness is material shaped and sited

Introducing Shaping Smart for Better Cities

Hence the volume offers an intellectual resource that expands on the current literature, but also provides a pedagogical resource to universities as well as a reflective opportunity for practitioners

Smart cities, metaverses, and the relevance of place

A TALE OF TWO (SMART?) CITIES In Yemen sits the 16th Century walled city of Shibam, now listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site. Beyond its historical and cultural significance, something about the place is striking from a design viewpoint. Shibam, like many other ancient settlements, embeds much local wisdom in its own design. Its unusually tall buildings were constructed with locally sourced mud. Its fabric is dense and creates much needed shade in the city\u27s narrow streets. Studies demonstrate its rather sophisticated—and certainly low‐carbon—approach to passive environmental design at both urban and building level, ensuring degrees of thermal comfort in such a hot climate [1]. In the same region, also sit large cities such as Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Shibam and Riyadh, of course, have radically different sizes and economies and are not generally comparable. But it must be noted that those contemporary centres have mainly developed beyond their old historical towns, hinging not on local knowledge but on ‘international’ criteria— normally dictated by modernist visions of urbanism and architecture. Yet, in the harsh climate of the Arabian Peninsula, it takes much effort—and energy—to sustain cities made of steel‐and‐glass buildings buffered by large public spaces. Saudi Arabia seems to use about 70% of its electricity consumption simply to operate air conditioning systems. Why am I invoking an ancient town to discuss smart cities? The point is that adopting and implementing technologies— however past or contemporary—cannot be seen as deterministically positive. It all depends on a more complex, and holistic, understanding of design approaches. Similarly, implementing new technology should not suggest jettisoning what is already there, and what we have already learnt—in a city, a place—as wholly inadequate and out‐of‐date. Shibam and all similar places might have been ‘old’ and unsuitable to accommodate rapid urbanisation, but they also embedded accumulated knowledge, wisdom and awareness of their context. Innovation, yet with such lessons in mind, could be precious in shaping contemporary cities in the same region. The point therefore is that ‘making smart’ without a deep understanding of place is probably not that smart after al

From “Smart in the Box” to “Smart in the City”: Rethinking the Socially Sustainable Smart City in Context

18 months embarg

Digitizing localism: anticipating, assembling and animating a ‘space’ for UK hyperlocal media production

This paper presents an unconventional view of media production, not as the direct production of media content or forms, but the cultivation of spaces for media production taking place elsewhere. I draw on a close analysis of Destination Local, a program of UK charity Nesta, which focused on the implications of location-based technologies for the emergent field of ‘hyperlocal’ media. Although the first round of the program – the focus in this paper – funded 10 experimental projects alongside extensive research, my argument is that Destination Local was less a matter of enabling specific place-based hyperlocal media outlets. Rather, it was an attempt to anticipate, assemble and animate a broader UK hyperlocal media ‘space’, composed of both technical ecologies (e.g. data, devices, platforms, standards) and practical fields (e.g. journalism, software development, local government, community activism). This space, I argue, was anchored to a largely implicit political discourse of localism

Towards an agenda of place, local agency-based and inclusive smart urbanism

"The volume explores the question of what it means for a city to be 'smart', raises some of the tensions emerging in smart city developments, and considers the implications for future ways of inhabiting and understanding the urban condition ..

Alternative organizing in times of crisis : resistance assemblages and socio-spatial solidarity

This paper draws on research conducted in Greece, where, during the last seven years, an acute socio-economic crisis has led to the emergence of a number of alternative organizational forms. By foregrounding the term drasis, the unexpected unfolding of an event in a specific space and time, we discuss how these alternative forms assemble differential capacities in order to resist the neoliberal ordering of socio-spatial and economic relations. In particular, we focus on two self-organized spaces, namely, a social centre and a squatted public garden and discuss two concrete instances of drasis. We propose that drasis instigates the establishment and evolution of transformative, prefigurative organizing through three interrelated processes, namely, the formation of resistance assemblages, social learning and socio-spatial solidarity. The paper offers three propositions, suggesting that drasis provides the socio-material conditions through which new resistance formations challenge the established productive forces of society and co-produce alternative forms of civic life.© 2017 published by SAGE. This is an author produced version of a paper published in European Urban and Regional Studies, uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self- archiving policy. The final published version (version of record) is available online at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0969776416683001. Some minor differences between this version and the final published version may remain. We suggest you refer to the final published version should you wish to cite from it