A participatory, multidimensional and modular impact assessment methodology for citizen science projects

This paper presents a multidimensional methodology for assessing the scientific, social, economic, political and environmental impacts of citizens science (CS) projects. Besides these five areas of impact, the methodology considers also the transformative potential of the CS projects, i.e. the degree to which a CS project can help to change, alter, or replace current systems, the business-as-usual, in one or more fields such as science production or environmental protection. The methodology is designed to be modular and flexible so to adapt to the specificities of different CS projects and offers operational tools for its use by non-experts. The paper also describes the co-design process followed for its development and discusses the main lessons learned as emerged during its testing with 16 citizen science projects

Insurgent Planning in Pandemic Times: The Case of Rio de Janeiro

Given the growing importance of populism in cities both empirically and in scholarly discourse, planning is increasingly grappling with this ‘unsettling era’, focusing on how to respond to these times. This opening provides an opportunity to re‐engage with the idea of insurgent planning—practices that are counter‐hegemonic, transgressive, and imaginative—within populist contexts. I explore the case of mobilizations by community communicators in Complexo da Maré, a set of favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during the spread of COVID‐19 in 2020. In contrast to these mobilizations, Brazil's federal right‐wing populist government failed to attend to the needs of favela residents. Through the case of Maré's communicators, I highlight the need for planning to account for the role of insurgent planning as a response to populist contexts in cities of the global South

The techno-political fabric of Rio de Janeiro: insights from electricity infrastructure

Taking infrastructural changes in favelas as a starting point, this article investigates how the electricity infrastructure contributes to understanding the production of the city of Rio de Janeiro. It builds on the “infrastructural turnaround” in urban studies, and on the notion of techno-politics to bring a new perspective to the role of urban infrastructures in mediating everyday life, in shaping the form of the city - both materially and symbolically - and in managing differences and urban inequalities. In particular, the article sets out three different ways by which electricity infrastructures contribute to the urban fabric of Rio de Janeiro: 1) the reordering of urban space; 2) urban fragmentation; and 3) everyday practices. Through this analysis, the article seeks to investigate the relationship between infrastructure and urban fabric by considering the technological, material, and symbolic aspects of infrastructures that shape space and everyday practices

The smart grid as a security device: Electricity infrastructure and urban governance in Kingston and Rio de Janeiro

This article aims to contribute to recent debates on the politics of smart grids by exploring their installation in low-income areas in Kingston (Jamaica) and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). To date, much of this debate has focused on forms of smart city experiments, mostly in the Global North, while less attention has been given to the implementation of smart grids in cities characterised by high levels of urban insecurity and socio-spatial inequality. This article illustrates how, in both contexts, the installation of smart metering is used as a security device that embeds the promise of protecting infrastructure and revenue and navigating complex relations framed along lines of socio-economic inequalities and urban sovereignty – here linked to configurations of state and non-state (criminal) territorial control and power. By unpacking the political workings of the smart grid within changing urban security contexts, including not only the rationalities that support its use but also the forms of resistance, contestation and socio-technical failure that emerge, the article argues for the importance of examining the conjunction between urban and infrastructural governance, including the reshaping of local power relations and spatial inequalities, through globally circulating devices

Urban and infrastructural rhythms and the politics of temporal alignment

To date, urban research has paid little attention to the role of urban infrastructures in shaping and ordering urban temporalities. I contend that the study of infrastructures offers a powerful lens for understanding the reciprocal relationship changing infrastructural and urban temporalities as well as the power-driven processes of temporal alignment and realignment. Approaching time through the empirical study of infrastructures, I argue, reveals how contemporary infrastructural change is entangled with—often conflicting—orientations to the past, present, and future. At the same time, it uncovers how temporal ordering and reordering processes by socio­-technical systems not merely reflect, but also enable, constrain, and preconfigure contemporary and future urbanism. Specifically, periods of infrastructural change, crisis, and failure reveal various temporalities, asynchronisms, and misalignments that are otherwise invisible or neglected but are crucial for the broader understanding of urban change and its governance