Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how classifications shape stakeholder involvement in an urban Digital Twin. The study focuses on how stakeholder engagement methods and co-design platforms enable specific design processes, perform socio-technical actors and negotiate the tension between inclusivity and control.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how classifications can be used to control the interest and the inclusion of the actors involved in the development of the urban Digital Twin (UDT) in an Italian city. We are looking at the UDT as an experimental urban knowledge infrastructure whose success depends on the cooperation of a large number of socio-technical actors (public administration, researchers, sensor technologies, algorithms, etc.). We argue that this coordination work is especially delegated to classifications, "boundary objects" (Star and Griesemer 1989), which establish commensurability between the different social and technological worlds that interact within the UDT. However, they do so by enacting some identities, viewpoints and practices while rendering others invisible. More specifically, this paper will focus on the process of stakeholder identification, selection and engagement in the UDT, and on the issues arising from the effort to make the process as inclusive as possible. First, we will interrogate the various stakeholder engagement methodologies (e.g. Value Sensitive Design, Constructive Technology Assessment, etc.) deployed to ensure the sustainable embedding of stakeholder values in socio-technical planning, asking which design methods are enabled by each framework. Secondly, we will look at the action of software platforms facilitating the visualization and discussion of the stakeholder network (e.g. Miro board and the likes), inquiring how they configure and perform the socio-technical actors, assigning them roles in the process. Thus, we will question how the engagement frameworks and co-design platforms negotiate between the drive for inclusiveness in UDT and the operative necessity for delimitation and control.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, we zoom in on the development and role of specific Digital Urban Twins – virtual re-creations of a city – in the context of urban governance and investigate how they take shape in locally situated ways.

Paper long abstract:

One of the latest iterations of urban governance innovation is the development and use of a ‘Digital Urban Twin’ (DUT) – often described as a dynamic virtual re-creation of a city. DUTs promise to create a close entanglement between what is framed as the tangible, material reality and its digital representations, in a way that allows for new forms of knowledge, control, and testing.

The purpose of this paper is to zoom in on the development and role of specific DUTs in the context of urban governance and investigate how they take shape in locally situated ways. Based on a comparative analysis of DUT projects in three contexts of urban governance (Munich, Germany; Boston, USA; Namur, Belgium), we specifically unpack the process of twinning as shaped by and in turn shaping existing governance conceptions and practices.

We explore questions such as: What is being represented and what becomes invisible through processes of twinning? Why do the elements chosen to be represented matter and to whom? Doing so, we analyze how ideas for governing desirable urban futures (including notions of democracy, expertise, participation and public good) influence the making of digital twins, and how DUTs in turn participate in reconfiguring visions of desirable urban futures. We therefore show that the multiple entanglements between the real-world and digital entities are firmly rooted and manifested in visions, materialities, institutions and ideas of decision-making in urban contexts, resulting in different ways of building DUTs locally beyond the current global circulation of standardized models.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the Intelligent Transport System of Namur (Belgium), which aims to manage urban mobility and regulate the use of transport infrastructure in a centralised way. It discusses the relevance of a control lens to this project.

Paper long abstract:

Smart city projects and smart technologies are often presented as tools to extend the reach of local administrations. Indeed, the stated goal of many of these projects is to harness urban flows, optimise infrastructure, and steer citizen behaviours, turning the city into a controlled environment. To this end, smart city proponents praise the breadth of data sources that are combined into urban indicators supposed to provide new policy insights to public authorities. These indicators are then used in city dashboards, street furniture and multiple other interactive systems.

In response to this evolution in urban mobilities, several STS scholars have emphasised the messiness of smart environments, characterised by experimentation (Evans et al, 2019), failure (Kitchin and Dodge, 2011) and maintenance (Houston et al, 2019).

My paper aims to address this long-standing theme by comparing the control ambitions of Namur’s “intelligent transport system” (ITS) with its everyday operationalisation. Namur’s system consists of automated number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras, surveillance cameras, variable message signs, online platforms, and multiple sensors. It measures travel times on the city’s arterial roads in real time and is designed to guide drivers toward fluid routes. Based on a multisited ethnography including control room observations, participant observations, and 19 semi-structured interviews with local stakeholders, I will first analyse the Namur ITS project architecture using the STS concept of environmentality (Gabrys, 2015) to unravel the construction of a transportation controlled environment. Secondly, I will confront this conceptualisation with the daily exploitation and citizen use of Namur’s STI.

Paper short abstract:

This paper argues the socio-technical imaginary of the smart city and open data in Korea is rooted in the distinctive national developmentalism and Korea's the notion of openness and smartness form a synergistic socio-technical imaginary, mutually leveraging and enhancing each other's imaginaries.

Paper long abstract:

This paper argues for approaching the open data initiative as a socio-technical imaginary within the evolving socio-technical narrative of the smart city in Korea. By conducting a discourse analysis of prominent public documents, as well as the 11 narrative interviews, I argue that the socio-technical imaginaries of openness and smartness in Korea have evolved in their different and pluralistic path. However, both initiatives ultimately synergize, mutually leveraging and enhancing each other's imaginaries.

Korea is a significant example of how smart city policy has evolved over time dynamically. The national focus of smart city development was on top-down techno-driven adoption to controll urban spaces by establishing digital infrastructures. The smart city driven by technological determinism was the tangible manifestation of an envisioned political goal and the projection of smartness onto the city as a whole. At the same time the open data initiative has become one of the most successful digital infrastructures, strongly driven by national digital policies. However, the concepts of smart city and open data have ultimately become complementary and leveraged the other's narrative to reinforce the development logic of the respective projects. This complementary relationship has been successfully intertwined over the past few years, accelerating the formation of integrated policies and their performative realization in the socio-technical imaginaries of both.

Consequently, this work addresses the limitations to the sociotechnical imaginary of both initiatives and highlights a reimagination of the notions of openness and smartness, advocating for the development of counter-narratives that open up space for alternative models.

Paper short abstract:

By investigating the notions of curation, compliance, and consolidation, this paper critically analyzes the mechanisms of developing and governing “controlled environments” in the form of seemingly transformative creative urban districts within the local sociocultural context of Munich (Germany).

Paper long abstract:

In current urban development, planners and local governments have embraced creative districts as a popular approach that is usually presented as exploring holistic and powerful out-of-the-box answers to social, economic, and ecological urban challenges by bringing together actors from diverse sectors, including art, culture, and technology (Chapain 2020).

In a comparative paper, I investigate the explicit and implicit mechanisms of governing creative districts as spaces of urban future-making in Munich (Germany) and Bristol (UK). For this panel, I zoom in on the urban development projects of Munich, critically reflecting on the nuances of “controlling” who gets to participate in its creative districts, and how this shapes the respective transformative agenda. Specifically, when drawing attention to actors from the arts and subculture sector whose origins lie in counterculture and respective practices of disruption, I observe the paradox effect of creative districts in Munich: Instead of fostering an experimental space for critical interrogation and transdisciplinary approaches to urban transformation, Munich’s urban governance mechanisms reign in any potential subversion. Exploring the notions of curation, compliance, and consolidation, I lay out how said control mechanisms protect the existing understanding of urban innovation based on the economic success of big tech companies, and sideline alternative ideas rooted in social reform and communal practices.

While this paper is less concerned with urban technologies of control, it provides an empirical study on the politics of developing a “controlled environment”, and what it does (not) allow for in the form of creative districts in a local sociopolitical context.

Paper short abstract:

The paper critically examines the sustainability of the compact city and densification, analyzing actors and tensions related to social equity using the concept of ‘co-agency’. It reflects on the synergy of densification with big data technology, highlighting discourses of control optimism.

Paper long abstract:

Explosive urban expansion has connected and splintered the urban fabric and the sociotechnical infrastructures that sustain it (Graham & Marvin, 2001; Brenner & Schmid, 2015), resulting in a global (sub)urban technosphere (Otter, 2017) that drives climate change. In response, a hegemonic sustainability agenda has emerged that reframes cities as champions of urban transformation (Angelo & Wachsmuth, 2020). Compact urbanism (Haarstad et al., 2023), which envisions dense, efficient, and livable cities, is a widely adopted smart and green growth strategy linked to the technopolitics of urban planning and management. It coexists and interrelates with other models, such as the eco-city and smart city approaches seeking to create an urban operating system (Luque-Ayala & Marvin, 2020). Our paper critically examines urban de/re-densification as a means to achieve compact urban form (McFarlane, 2020), the associated politics of value (Habermehl & McFarlane, 2023), and the proclaimed synergetic potential with big data technologies (Bibri, 2020). We contrast the quality expectations of the compact city with academic research highlighting its tensions and contradictions, particularly in relation to social equity. Our review suggests that this attempt to manage the technosphere frames and translates sustainability in its own control-optimistic way, parallel to trends in smart urbanism (Goodspeed, 2015). Its outcomes depend on the distribution of dis/benefits, potentially disadvantaging already underprivileged groups. We propose ‘co-agency’ as a future research direction to understand the hybrid forms of agency that shape densification processes, and to identify generalizable development scenarios.

Paper short abstract:

By discussing the (dis)continuities of two Chinese urban forms: the danwei (work unit) and the grid, this paper argued that the grid, while serving as an organizational continuity of danwei, it platformized the grassroot governance and created an experiemental urban space.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the transformative impact of digital technologies on grassroots governance in China, specifically examining the shift from the traditional danwei (work unit) structure in the socialist cities (see Lu, 2006) to the contemporary grid model. The grid is conceptualized as a modern manifestation of danwei, representing a fundamental urban form in present-day Chinese cities.

Initiated as a national policy in 2013, gridification gained prominence post-2020, propelled by the completion of nationwide digital infrastructure and the imperative for efficient grassroots governance during the Covid-19 pandemic. Gridification refers to the redivision of urban land parcels into grids, the reorganization of grassroots officials into three levels of grid operators, recording resource information within in digital databases, and managing grassroots affairs through a central dispatching platform.

Through a comparative analysis of the grid and danwei, this paper underscores the organizational continuity between the two while highlighting the influence of a Chinese platform mindset (Chen, 2020) on grassroots governance through datafication, quantification, responsiveness, and automation. This paper also mentioned the future challenges posed by gridification within the institutionalized system of current grassroots governance.

The article posits that both danwei and the grid constitute endeavors of "creative destruction" (Schumpeter, 1942) in contemporary China's urban planning and grassroots governance. These initiatives have transformed urban China into a vast experimental site. The grid marks a departure from a productive urban space to a model promoting high-efficiency grassroots governance and economic incentives, addressing the challenges posed by significant immigrant labor and the imperative for economic transformation.