Digital Geographies 9781526447289, 1526447282, 9781526447296, 1526447290

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DIGITAL GEOGRAPHIES

Sara Miller McCune founded SAGE Publishing in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE publishes more than 1000 journals and over 800 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. Our growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable tru st that secures the com pany’s continued independence. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | W ashington DC | Melbourne

DIGITAL EDITED BY

JAMES ASH I ROB KUCHIN I AGNIESZKA LESZCZYNSKI

(DSAGE Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne

(DSAGE Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne

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Chapter 1 © James Ash, Rob Kitchin and Agnieszka Leszczynski 2019 Chapter 2 © Agnieszka Leszczynski 2019 Chapter 3 © Andres Luque-Ayala 2019 Chapter 4 © Martin Dodge 2019 Chapter 5 © Matthew W. Wilson 2019 Chapter 6 © Tim Schwanen 2019 Chapter 7 © Jim Thatcher 2019 Chapter 8 © Rob Kitchin and Tracey Lauriault 2019 Chapter 9 © Meghan Cope 2019 Chapter 10 © Hilary Geoghegan 2019 Chapter 11 © David O’Sullivan 2019

Chapter 12 © Daniel Arribas-Bel 2019 Chapter 13 © James Ash 2019 Chapter 14 © Sam Kinsley 2019 Chapter 15 © Gillian Rose 2019 Chapter 16 © Mark Graham and Mohammed Amir Anwar 2019 Chapter 17 © Matthew Zook 2019 Chapter 18 © Lizzie Richardson 2019 Chapter 19 © Bruno Moriset 2019 Chapter 20 © Dorothea Kleine 2019 Chapter 21 © Rob Kitchin 2019 Chapter 22 © Taylor Shelton 2019 Chapter 23 © Linnet Taylor 2019 Chapter 24 © Jason C. Young 2019 Chapter 25 © Jeremy Crampton 2019

First published 2019 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. Editor: Robert Rojek Assistant editor: John Nightingale Production editor: Katherine Haw Copyeditor: Richard Leigh Proofreader: Sharon Cawood Indexer: Judith Lavender Marketing manager: Susheel Gokarakonda Cover design: Francis Kenney Typeset by: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India Printed in the UK

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018940535 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-5264-4728-9 ISBN 978-1-5264-4729-6 (pbk)

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CONTENTS Vll

Contributor Biographies

1 Intro d u cin g D igital G eographies Jam es A s h , R ob K itch in , and A g n ie szk a L e szc zy n sk i

y

DIGITAL SPACES

2 Spatialities

11 13

A g n ie szk a L e szc zy n sk i

24

3 U rban A ndres L uque-A yala

36

4 R u ral M artin Dodge

49

5 M apping M atthew W. W ilson

60

6 M obilities T im Schwanen

J

II DIGITAL METHODS

7 Epistem ologies

71 73

J im Thatcher

8 D ata and D ata Infrastructures

83

Rob Kitchin and Tracey Lauriault

9 Q ualitative M eth o d s and G eohum anities

95

M eghan Cope

10 Participatory M eth o d s and C itizen Science

106

H ilary Geoghegan

11 C artography and G eographic Inform ation Systems

118

D avid O ’Sullivan

12 Statistics, M odelling, and D ata Science D a n i Arribas-B el

129

CO N TEN TS

III DIGITAL CULTURES 13

M edia and Popular C ulture

141 143

James A sh

14

Subject/ivities

153

Sam K insley

15

R epresentation and M ediation

164

Gillian Rose

IV

DIGITAL ECONOMIES

16 Labour

175 177

M ark Graham and M oham m ad A m ir A n w a r

17

Industries

188

M atthew Z o o k

18

Sharing Econom y

200

L iz z ie Richardson

19

Traditional Industries

210

Bruno Moriset

V DIGITAL POLITICS 20

D evelopm ent

223 225

Dorothea Kleine

21

G overnance

238

Rob Kitchin

22

Civics

250

Taylor Shelton

23

Ethics

260

L innet Taylor

24

K now ledge Politics

270

Jason C. Young

25

G eopolitics

281

Jerem y W. Crampton

291

Index

©

CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES M o h am m ad A m ir A nw ar is a researcher at the O x fo rd In te rn et Institute. A m irs research focus is o n the political econom y o f neoliberal globalization in the global South, m ainly in India and Africa, w ith a particular interest in the grow th o f the know ledge econom y in sub-Saharan Africa and its developm ental impacts. D an i A rrib as-B el is L ecturer in G eographic D ata Science and m em b er o f the G eographic D ata Science Lab at the U niversity o f Liverpool. D ani is interested in com puters, cities, and data. His w ork focuses o n the spatial dim ension o f cities, com putational m ethods, and n ew form s o f data. Jam es Ash is a geographer and Senior L ecturer in M edia Studies at N ew castle University. His w o rk investigates the cultures, econom ies, and politics o f digital interfaces. H e is a u th o r o f T h e Interface Envelope: G am ing, Technology; Power and Phase M edia: Space, T im e and the Politics o f Sm art Objects.

M eghan C o p e is a Professor in the G eography D ep artm en t at the U niversity o f V erm ont. H e r areas o f interest include urban geography, geographies o f children and youth, race geographies, qualitative research m ethods, and qualitative GIS. She is currently w o rk in g o n a digital project in historical geographies o f childhood called ‘M apping A m erican C h ild h o o d s’. Jerem y W. C ram p ton is a Professor at the U niversity o f Kentucky. His interests consist o f critical approaches to m apping, geosurveillance, and security. His w ork emphasizes how and w hy the geow eb, spatial big data, and algorithm ic govern­ ance produce urban and everyday subjectivities and w ell-being. H e is currently w orking o n a n ew b o o k entitled T he M a p and the Spyglass: A u to m a tio n , A lgorithm s and A n x ie ty .

M artin D o d g e is a S enior L ecturer in G eography at the U niversity o f M anchester. His intellectual interests focus on the social and spatial enrolm ent o f digital tech ­ nologies as well as research on urban historical geography and the politics o f maps. H e has co -au th o red three books o n digital technologies: M apping Cyberspace, A tla s o f Cyberspace, and C ode/Space.

C O NTRIBUTO R BIOGRAPHIES

Hilary G eoghegan is Associate Professor o f H um an Geography at the University o f R eading. H ilary’s research explores enthusiasm and m ore-than-rational ways o f know ing the world. M ost recently, she has pursued this interest through interro­ gating the m otivations o f volunteers, scientists, policy-m akers, and practitioners involved in citizen science, as well as via a study o f m ore-than-hum an tree health m anagem ent. Mark Graham is Professor o f Internet G eography at the O xford Internet Institute, a Senior R esearch Fellow at G reen Tem pleton College, and a Faculty Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute. H e is interested in w ho benefits m ost and least from the w orld’s increasing connectivity. Sam K insley is a Lecturer in G eography at the University o f Exeter. His teaching, research, and associated w riting explore geographies o f technology by unpicking w hat ‘technologies’ are and how they are involved in our understandings and experiences o f space. H e has presented and published his research in various dis­ ciplinary contexts. R ob K itchin is a professor and E R C Advanced Investigator at the N ational University o f Ireland, M aynooth. H e has been researching digital geographies for two decades. His books include Cyberspace, M apping Cyberspace, A tlas o f Cyberspace, Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life , The D ata R evolution , and Code and the C ity. H e is presently (co)principal investigator o f the Program m able City project and the B uilding C ity Dashboards project. D orothea K leine is Professorial Research Fellow at the University o f Sheffield w here she leads the D igital Technologies, Data and Innovation group at the Sheffield Institute for International D evelopm ent. She is the C hair o f the Digital G eographies W orking G roup o f the U K Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). H er research investigates sustainable hum an developm ent, global justice, and the role o f digital technologies in m aking progress towards these aims. Tracey Lauriault is an Assistant Professor o f C ritical M edia and Big Data in the School o f Journalism and C o m m u n ication, C om m u n icatio n Studies, at C arleton U niversity in O ttaw a. H er research focus is part o f a new field entitled critical data studies. Agnieszka Leszczynski is an Assistant Professor in the D epartm ent o f Geography at Western University in London, O ntario. H er w ork engages the social, economic, and technological shifts associated w ith the commercialization o f digital location through studying a num ber o f phenom ena, including map-based apps, location-based services, sensors, and geocoded content.

C O N TR IB U TO R BIO G R APH IES

A ndres L uque-A yala is an Assistant Professor in the D ep artm en t o f G eography at D u rh am University. His research focuses on the politics o f urban infrastructures in the global South. C u rren tly he is w o rking on the coupling o f digital and m ate­ rial infrastructures as a n ew security apparatus in the city. B runo M oriset is Associate Professor in the D ep artm en t o f G eography and Planning at Jean M o u lin U niversity Lyon 3, France. His research focuses o n the geography o f in fo rm atio n technology and the digital econom y. H e is co-author, w ith Edw ard J. M alecki, o f T h e D igital Econom y: Business O rganization, Production Processes and Regional D evelopments.

D avid O ’Sullivan is Professor o f G eography and Geospatial Science at V ictoria University o f Wellington, N ew Zealand w ith research interests in simulation models and geographic complexity, urban neighbourhood change, and the social implica­ tions o f geospatial technology. H e is author o f num erous peer-review ed papers, and co-author o f Geographic Information Analysis and o f Spatial Simulation. L izzie R ichardson is Leverhulm e Early C areer Fellow in the D ep artm en t o f Geography, D u rh am University. M u ch o f h er cu rren t research exam ines the rela­ tionships b etw een technology, culture, and w ork. G illian R o se is a cultural geographer. She is Professor o f H u m an G eography at the U niversity o f O xford. She has a long-standing interest in how images m ediate relations w ith places, spaces, and landscapes, and in visual m ethods. H e r current research focuses on digital visualizations, and in particular how they are shifting o u r experiences o f cities. T im Schw anen is Associate Professor in T ransport Studies and D irector o f the Transport Studies U n it, a research institute in the School o f G eography and the E n v ironm ent o f the U niversity o f O xford. His research is co n cern ed w ith the geographies o f m obility and addresses broader theoretical and em pirical questions about inequality, w ell-being, socio-technical transitions, and processes o f te c h n o ­ logical innovation. Taylor S h elton is an Assistant Professor in the D ep artm en t o f G eosciences at Mississippi State University. His research interests lie at the intersection o f digital geographies, critical GIS and urban geography. In particular, his w ork focuses on how new sources o f data can be used to rethink urban socio-spatial inequalities. L innet Taylor is Assistant Professor o f D ata Ethics, Law and Policy at the T ilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT), w here she leads the E R C funded D A T A JU ST IC E project. H e r research focuses on global data ju stice —the

CO NTRIBUTO R BIOGRAPHIES

developm ent o f a fram ework for the ethical and beneficial governance o f data technologies across different regions and perspectives.

Jim T hatcher is an Assistant Professor at the University o f W ashington Tacoma. His research examines the recursive relations am ong extrem ely large geospatial datasets, the creation and analysis o f those datasets, and society.This w ork often falls into critical data studies o r digital political ecology. M atthew W. W ilson is Associate Professor o f G eography at the University o f Kentucky, Visiting Scholar at the C en ter for G eographic Analysis at Harvard University, and the Distinguished Larry Bell Visiting Associate Professor at T he University o f British C olum bia. His is the author o f N e w Lines. Jason C. Young is a Senior Research Scientist w ith the Inform ation School at the University ofW ashington. His research interests include digital geographies, indig­ enous know ledge systems, know ledge politics, and participatory research design. H e has w orked on digital projects w ith indigenous com m unities in the Peruvian A m azon and the Canadian Arctic. M atthew Z o o k is Professor o f Inform ation and E conom ic Geography in the D epartm ent o f G eography at the U niversity o f Kentucky. His research focuses on the production, practices and uses o f big geodata and how code, algorithms, and m obile digital technologies help shape everyday, lived geographies.

INTRODUCING DIGITAL GEOGRAPHIES J a m e s A s h , R o b Ki t chi n, a n d A g n i e s z k a L e s z c z y n s k i

DIGITAL GEOGRAPHIES It is n o w so m ew h at obvious to state th at digital p h e n o m en a have radically trans­ fo rm ed alm ost every aspect o f hu m an life. From econom ies to cultures to politics, th ere is alm ost no area that rem ains u n to u c h e d by digital techniques, ' logics, or devices. F or instance, eco n o m ies are n o w based u p o n the p ro d u ctio n o f digital goods and services, and the global stock m arket is m anaged via h ig h ­ speed algorithm ic trad in g and digital netw orks th at co m m u n icate at speeds faster th an hum ans can directly perceive. M any aspects o f cultural life, in clu d in g how w e identify and socialize w ith others, express ourselves, and consum e po p u lar c o n te n t and e n te rta in m e n t, are n o w highly m ediated th ro u g h social m edia platform s such as F acebook, Tw itter, and Instagram . G overnm ents fear cyberattacks, develop digital strategies for in tern a tio n al developm ent, and utilize digital te c h ­ nologies to enable n ew logics o f governance based o n highly dynam ic and individualized m odes o f spatial segregation and control. T hese shifts across p o lit­ ical, econom ic, and cultural spheres o f everyday life are tied to a w h o le range o f v objects, processes, practices, and m aterialities. F rom co n su m er PC s to c o m m e r­ cial server farm s, and from sm artphones to apps, the u b iq u ity and pervasiveness o f digital tech n o lo g ies and th e ir effects are o f im m ediate co n cern to geographers,

DIGITAL GEOGRAPHIES

u n d erw ritin g transform ations o f the space econom y and econom ic relations; m odes o f m anagem ent and governance o f cities and regions; the production o f space, spatiality, and m obilities; the processes, practices, and forms o f m apping; the contours o f spatial know ledge and im aginaries; and the form ation and enactm ent o f spatial know ledge politics (Elwood and Leszczynski, 2011; G raham and M arvin, 2001; K itchin and D odge, 2011; R o se et al., 2014;W ilson, 2012). D igital presences, practices, and effects are characterized by uneven geographies o f underlying infrastructures, co m p o n en t resources, and sites o f creation and dis­ posal (Lepawsky, 2015; Pickren, 2018; Z oo k , 2005). Similarly, there are distinct geographies o f digital m edia such as the in tern et, games, and social, locative, and spatial m edia (Ash, 2015; Leszczynski, 2015; K itchin et al., 2017). At the same time, digital technologies also alter how we, as geographers, go about engaging w ith and researching the digital world. Digital devices (com puters, satellites, GPS, digital cameras, audio and video recorders, smartphones) and soft­ ware packages (statistics programs, spreadsheets, databases, geographic inform ation systems (GIS), qualitative analysis packages, w ord processing) have becom e indis­ pensable to geographic practice and scholarship across sub-disciplines, regardless o f conceptual approach. C u rren t modes o f generating, processing, storing, analysing and sharing data; creating and circulating texts, visualizations, maps, analytics, ideas, videos, podcasts, and presentation slides; and sharing inform ation and engaging in public debate via m ailing lists and social and m ainstream media are thoroughly dependent on com putational technologies (Kitchin, 2013). Digital platforms are changing w hat constitutes ‘the field’; the rise o f digital content comprises new forms o f evidence w ith w hich to approach long-standing geographical concerns; and digital presences and praxes are provoking new questions and opening up new lines o f geographical inquiry (Leszczynski, 2017). In the co n tex t o f these profound shifts, this collection charts a diverse range o f digital geographies, identifying the conceptual, theoretical, and em pirical axes along w hich geographers are engaging w ith the digital, addressing how and w hy digitality m atters to geography, and highlighting the insights that geography can offer to the study o f digital p henom ena. This short introductory chapter p ro ­ vides som e im p o rtan t definitions and m axims that fram e ‘digital geographies’ and situate the co n trib u tio n s w hich follow. We begin by discussing and defining the key te rm ‘digital’. We suggest that rath er than a sub-discipline u nto itself, digital geographies are best u n d erstood through the lenses o f extant as well as em erging fields o f geographic inquiry. It is along these axes o f inquiry that we have organized this collection, and the contributions brought together herein trace how digital p h en o m en a, practices, and presences inflect and reconfigure geographical th in k in g about and approaches to questions o f epistem ology and know ledge p ro d u ctio n , space and spatiality, m ethods and m ethodologies, culture, the econom y, and politics.

e

IN T R O D U C IN G D IG ITAL G EO G R APH IES

DEFINING THE DIGITAL T h e te rm ‘digital’ has a variety o f m eanings across a range o f literatures, from geography (Ash et al., 2018) to m edia and cultural studies (M anovich, 2013) and software studies (Fuller, 2008). As such, w e espouse a broad definitional position that incorporates a range o f engagem ents w ith the digital, w h ich we suggest may be un d ersto o d variously as ontics, aesthetics, logics, a n d /o r discourses (Ash et al., 2018). D igital in the sense o f ontics designates the ways that digital systems ‘trans­ late all inputs and outp u ts in to binary structures o f 0s and Is, w hich can be stored, transferred, o r m anipulated at the level o f num bers, o r “ digits’” (Lunenfeld, 2000: xv). T h o u g h t o f as the universe o f physical literals (C oyne, 1994), ontics sim ulta­ neously em phasizes an u n d erstan d in g o f digitality as com prised o f m aterial digital objects: the hardw are, software, devices, co n ten t, code, and algorithm s that u n d erw rite access to digital p h en o m en a and m ediations, w h ich com prise the artefacts o f o u r digital praxes, and w h ich structure o u r experience o f digitality. T hese digital technologies have recoded — o r rem ediated (B olter and G rusin, 1999) — m ultiple o th e r technologies, m edia, art form s, and spatialities in ways coincid en t w ith the binary nature o f c o m p u tin g architectures. Digitality, then, is also an aesthetics, cap tu rin g the pervasiveness o f digital technologies and shaping ho w we u n d erstan d and ex p erien ce space and spatiality as always-already ‘m arked by circuits o f d igitality’ th at are them selves irreducible to digital systems (Murray, 2008: 40). As we ad o p t and seamlessly em bed n etw o rk ed digital technologies th ro u g h o u t th e fabrics o f o u r landscapes, they com e to enact progressively routine orderings o f q u o tid ian rhythm s, interactions, opp o rtu n ities, spatial configurations, and flows (Franklin, 2015). A longside these ontics, aesthetics, and logics, a w hole set o f digital discourses have arisen w hich actively prom ote, enable, secure, and m aterially sustain the increasing reach o f digital technologies in the spaces and practices o f o u r daily lives. This m u lti-faceted definition is n o t, how ever, in ten d ed as an overarching ru b ric u n d er w h ich an y th in g m ay be characterized o r engaged w ith in term s o f the ‘digital’. W e seek to avoid this key pitfall o f academ ic discussions o f digital technology, w h ich is related to generality.T he term ‘digital’ can easily be deployed vaguely, as a k in d o f discursive label o r blanket that is throw n over a series o f quite different things. In d o in g so, this label can obfuscate m ore than it reveals about w hat are highly hetero g en eo u s sets o f objects, practices, and processes. Avoiding this generality requires that the term ‘digital’ always be qualified in relation to specific objects, techniques, logics, processes, practices, and affects. T hese qualifi­ cations are im p o rta n t because they force us to focus on the em pirical specificities o f the p h en o m en a o f study. T h e first o f these specificities is that w hile ‘digital’ designates a genre o f social, cultural, technological, and econom ic productions historically associated w ith the advent o f digital com p u tin g , digital co m p u tin g

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DIGITAL GEOGRAPHIES

technologies are necessary to, yet insufficient for, ‘the digital’. Following H orst and M iller (2013), ‘digital’ designates objects and artefacts that are ultim ately com patible w ith or w hich arise from binary code and architectures, yet w hich produce fu rth er ‘proliferations’ that exceed the binary logics and m aterialities o f digital systems. For instance, digital maps on sm artphones encourage new forms o f navigational practice and spatial m ovem ent, but these practices exceed the software itself, creating new cultures o f m ovem ent that cannot be anticipated in advance (Verhoeff, 2012). Second, these proliferations arise from the em pirical ability o f digital systems to differentiate and m ark at speed, w hich produces new capacities to act. For instance, a light detection and ranging (LIDAR) sensor on an autonom ous vehicle shines light and measures the tim e it takes the light to return, in order to differentiate betw een objects and em pty space. This inform ation is then differentiated accord­ ing to m achine learning algorithm s to determ ine w hether an object is m oving or still, hum an or no n -h u m an . In this case, such differentiations allow the m achine learning algorithm s to navigate around obstacles and so enable the vehicle to travel safely w ith o u t a hum an driver. From this position, the emphasis becom es exam in­ ing how digital code, algorithm s, and binary architectures construct the thresholds betw een these differentiations through a w hole variety o f factors. In the case o f autonom ous vehicles, these could include the industrial design and m anufacture o f LIDA R sensors, the broader m arket forces and governm ental rationales and techniques that dictate w here and how autonom ous vehicles can be tested, and public fears around w h eth er such vehicles can m ark and differentiate betw een hum an and non-hum ans quickly and accurately enough (Ash, 2017). In turn, one m ight understand how the differentiations digital technologies enact feed into and alter hum an sensory capacities (Ash, 2015), cognition (Hayles, 2017), and decision-m aking m ore broadly. T his begets a third em pirical specificity, w hich is that there is no m onolithic ‘the digital’, only a variety o f differently m aterialized objects, subjects, spatiali­ ties, effects, and affects th at arise from varied practices and processes o f digital p ro d u ctio n , circulation, use, and m ediation. In m aking reference to ‘the digital’, then, we are accordingly invoking ‘digital’ in its m yriad and n o n -m utually exclusive senses o f th e term . This is com m ensurate w ith the im petus for this collection, w h ich is to nam e, em pirically and conceptually frame, and theorize digital g e o g ra p h y . In the same way that we m aintain that there is no singular V 'd ig ital’, there is no singular or m o nolithic digital geography As the co n trib u ­ tions in this collection attest, engagem ents w ith the digital in geography inform and are in fo rm ed by a range o f intellectual positions, philosophical co m m it­ m ents, epistem ologies, subjects and objects o f study, and m ethodological practices across the breadth o f hu m an geography’s sub-disciplinary foci and research com m unities.

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IN T R O D U C IN G D IG ITAL G EO G R APH IES

THE DIGITAL TURN In understanding the digital as a set o f ontics, aesthetics, logics, and discourses that m ark and differentiate by way o f the designator ‘digital geographies’ we, as editors o f this collection, are n o t suggesting that a new subfield o f digital geography be established to study these processes. Such attem pts have been u n d er way in anthro­ pology (H orst and M iller, 2013) and sociology (Lupton, 2014) for a n u m b er o f years. In b o th cases the focus is broad, encom passing the anthropology and sociol­ ogy of, p ro d u ced by, and p ro d u ced th ro u g h the digital. T h e consequence, we believe, is to recast nearly all o f anthropology and sociology as ‘digital an thropol­ ogy’ and ‘digital sociology’ to som e degree, especially given the pervasive reliance on digital technologies in all aspects o f scholarly know ledge production. T h e result is that there is no sociology o r anthropology that is n o t ‘digital’. We adopt a dif­ ferent track. R a th e r than subsum ing all o f (hum an) geography to ‘digital geography’ o r proclaim ing digital geography a new distinct sub-discipline, we instead advance ‘digital geographies’ to signal a fundam ental disciplinary tu rn that has inflected epistem ological and scholarly com m unities o f geographic praxis (Ash et al., 2018). R e fe rrin g to digital geographies in this way avoids issues o f generality that com e w ith recasting all o f disciplinary practice as ‘digital’. W hile we do m aintain that there is a need to th in k critically about the relationship betw een geography and the digital, th in k in g o f ‘digital geographies’ as a tu rn towards the digital as object and subject o f in q u iry in geography, and as a sim ultaneous inflection o f geograph­ ical scholarship by digital p h en o m en a, is m ore m eaningful in that it allows us to th in k about h o w the digital reshapes m any geographies, m ediates the production o f geographic know ledge, reconfigures research relationships, and itself has m any geographies. By fram ing the digital in this way, w e avoid the decontextualization o f digital approaches, m ethodologies, and research studies from their sub-disciplinary dom ains such as urban geography or geographies o f developm ent. Instead, the emphasis rem ains on h o w an engagem ent w ith the digital develops o u r collective understandings o f cities and developm ent, as well as health, politics, econom y, society, culture, and the environm ent, am ong others. It also allows for ‘the digital’ to function as a site and m o d e for intersectional research that cuts across research foci and leverages m ethodologies from m ultiple geographical sub-disciplines, intellectual traditions, and epistem ological com m unities. A ttending to the geogra­ phy o f rare metals used in the p ro d u ctio n o f digital technologies, for instance, raises questions in the fields o f resource and developm ent geographies, postcolo­ nial studies, as well as geopolitics. This enables the differences the digital makes to research, epistem ology, and know ledge p ro d u ctio n to be contextualized w ithin a broader know ledge base and history o f theory, concepts, m odels, and em pirical findings w ith in and across geographic sub-dom ains. For exam ple, w e feel it makes

DIGITAL GEOGRAPHIES

sense to frame smart city developm ents w ithin debates around the long history o f urbanization and urbanism , rather than to set them apart w ithin a separate field o f digital geography Building on this com m itm ent to geographical intradisciplinarity, this collection is organized around five them es that capture the key axes o f inquiry along w hich the digital has been taken up m ost directly in geography: the th eo ri­ zation o f space and spatiality, geographical m ethods and m ethodologies, and cultural, econom ic, and political geographies. This allows us to capture the diverse ways —epistem ological, theoretical, and m ethodological —in w hich the digital has been explicitly engaged in geography, and areas o f scholarly praxis w here digital objects, subjects, and m ediations are anticipated to continue to inflect geographical theory, praxis, and m ethod.

THIS BOOK T h e chapters in each o f the five parts o f this book — spaces, m ethods, cultures, econom ies, and politics —attend to the m yriad ways in w hich digital technologies feed into, alter, and are altered by a range o f activities, practices, objects, and aes­ thetics. W hile the contributions to each part are unified by their engagem ent w ith ‘the digital’ in its m yriad senses, they are diverse in their m ethodological orienta­ tions, subjects/objects o f concern, the intellectual traditions on w hich they draw, as wrell as their ontological and epistem ological positionings. T he title o f each chapter signals a key concept that constitutes a lens through w hich to begin to distil the relationship betw een the digital and space, m ethods and m ethodologies, culture, the economy, and politics. In each instance, this key concept could be prefaced by ‘digital’ —for instance, (digital) labour, (digital) m apping, and (digital) governance. In keeping w ith o ur com m itm ent to geographical intradisciplinarity and to avoiding recasting all geographies as always-already ‘digital’ geographies, however, we om it the ‘digital’ prefix. In so doing, the individual contributions organized around the five them es speak to the ways in w hich geographical inquiry has turned to and been pervasively inflected by the digital across hum an geography’s sub-disciplines and axes o f inquiry. As geographers, we are affiliated w ith one another by our concern and engage/ m ent w ith spaces, places, and spatialities. As such, we lead this collection w ith five contributions devoted to digital spaces. In C hapter 2, Agnieszka Leszczynski o u t­ lines a range o f theories and approaches to understanding the relationship betw een spatiality and digital technologies. W hile these positions are diverse, all provide different ways o f attending to the processes by w hich different digital technologies produce, co-constitute, and generate the appearance o f socio-spatial relations that alter how space is perceived, know n, used, and experienced. M oving beyond the­ ories o f digital space in general, C hapter 3 discusses the specific spatialities o f the

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digitally-m ediated urban environm ent. H ere, Andres Luque-Ayala points to the transform ations in cities such as R io de Janeiro bro u g h t about by the in tro d u ctio n o f a range o f digital technologies such as screens in control room s and sm art sen­ sors in the environm ent, illum inating how these digital technologies enable x / distinct form s o f real-tim e governance. C h ap ter 4 turns to rural spaces, w hich have generally been understudied in relation to digital technologies. M artin D odge usefully points o u t that digital technologies, from sensor-enabled com bine har­ vesters to autom ated m ilking m achines, have transform ed rural space at least as m uch as, o r perhaps m ore than, urban spaces. M apping is a key technology that has always been central to the p roduction and know ledge o f space, and in C h ap ter 5 M atth ew W ilson dem onstrates the im portance o f the shift associated w ith the digitization o f m apping for professional geographers as well as m ovem ent through space in everyday life. C losing Part I, T im S chw anen provides an im p o rtan t rem inder that access to digitally m ediated transport technologies is unequal and unevenly affects m obilities. H o w w e kn o w and m ake sense o f digital spaces raises questions about g eo ­ graphical m ethods and m ethodologies w hile sim ultaneously provoking new m ethodological developm ents. B eg in n ing Part II o n m ethods, Jim T h a tc h e rs chapter on epistemologies suggests that utilizing digital technologies in geography — specifically GIS — is part o f a lo n g er history o f know ledge in w hich the visual is prioritized . In tu rn , digital m ethods should be critiq u ed w ith this occularcentrism in m ind, w hile recognizing the new possibilities b ro u g h t w ith these technologies. In C h ap ter 8, R o b K itchin and Tracey L auriault p o in t to the changing nature o f data u n d e rw ritten by the em ergence o f digital techniques, and how this allows new form s o f analysis utilizing data infrastructures. T h e follow ing chapter expands debates around data and digitality, w ith M eghan C o p e dem onstrating how digital technologies can be used in the generation o f new qualitative m ethods that can attend to the com plexity o f h u m an experience. H ilary G eoghegan continues a focus on ground-level digital data collection in C h ap ter 10, detailing that digital V technologies provide an im p o rtan t o p p o rtu n ity for the developm ent o f participa­ tory m ethods, w hile cau tio n in g against the idea that digital technologies are themselves the solution for the generation o f a properly citizen-led science. Follow ing this, D avid O ’Sullivan provides an account o f cartographic practice in relation to geographic in fo rm atio n science (G IScience) and suggests that critique o f this field m ust be m ore than theoretical and instead w ork w ith these tech n o l­ ogies to generate critically engaged G IScientific practice. In the final chapter o f Part II, D ani A rribas-B el focuses on the use o f spatial statistics, em phasizing how digital techniques and developm ents in data science are transform ing this im p o rtan t field. Part III shifts the focus o n to digital cultures. James A sh’s c o n trib u tio n leads this part by suggesting that p o p u lar culture is now fundam entally m ediated by digital

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platforms, w hich shape the type o f content that is produced and how it is experi­ enced, and w hich amplify the circulation o f affects and em otions associated w ith this content. N ext, Sam Kinsley dem onstrates how a range o f digital technologies, from Tw itter to the US V ISIT visa program m e, m ediate and produce different modes o f subjectivity. Finally, in C hapter 15, Gillian R ose interrogates the concept o f representation in relation to digital media and suggests that the term m ediation may be m ore useful to get at the com plexity and specificity o f digital content as it is translated across m ultiple interfaces, servers, websites, and platforms. Part IV moves from cultural engagem ents to exam ine digital econom ies. In the opening chapter, M ark G raham and M oham m ad Anwar argue that digital labour complicates the relationship betw een labour and place, enabling new forms o f exploitation but also the potential for digital workers to generate their ow n modes, conditions, and sites o f w orking. C hapter 17 provides an account o f digital indus' tries. H ere, M att Z o o k suggests that it is im portant to locate these industries physically w hile also understanding how they produce their own forms o f digital spatiality. Lizzie R ichardson then focuses attention on the sharing economy, w hich has elsewhere also been term ed the ‘o n -d em an d ’, ‘gig’, and m ore recently ‘plat­ fo rm ’ economy. She dem onstrates how ride-hailing services such as U ber are based on problem atic discourses o f sharing and the fundam ental role that digital plat­ forms and interfaces play in the existence and pow er relations o f this econom y Closing o ut Part IV, B runo M oriset usefully outlines the way that so-called non-digital or traditional industries, such as banking and retail, have been altered by digital technologies, driving the globalization o f value and blurring the b o u n d ­ aries betw een different sectors o f the economy. T he final part o f the b o o k turns to digital politics and the political geographies o f the digital. C h ap ter 20 by D orothea Kleine provides a helpful sum m ary o f the role that digital technologies are playing in global developm ent and how issues such as gender inequality and environm ental sustainability are reflected in digital technologies and attendant policies, w hile also being potentially transform ed by these technologies, at tim es w ith u n in ten d ed — and n o t necessarily positive — _v) outcom es. N ex t, R o b K itchin dem onstrates how digital technologies have led to new m odes o f governance. T hro u g h a discussion o f closed-circuit television, sm artphone tracking, and a range o f o th er technologies, K itchin points to a shift from disciplinary governance to a society o f control. Taylor Shelton then discusses digital civics, using examples from smart cities such as Atlanta to discuss how dig­ ital civics are b o th spatialized and corporatized. In C hapter 23, Linnet Taylor discusses the relationship betw een data and ethics and uses the example o f the com m ercialization o f public space to understand how ethics are changed under regimes o f datafication. Jason Young then examines the know ledge politics o f geospatial media, focusing on issues o f access, bias, and the m aterial effects o f this inequality in relation to indigenous knowledges. C losing out the collection,

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Jerem y C ra m p to n ’s chapter charts digital geopolitics, specifically in relation to v m ilitary and surveillance practices, w ith a focus o n technologies such as G oogle E arth. H e highlights the ways in w h ich academ ic, com m ercial, and m ilitary prac­ tices may be m ore closely tied than m any w ould be com fortable w ith. W hile covering a huge range o f em pirical objects, situations, events, and approaches, and b rin g in g to g eth er scholarship from across a range o f intellectual traditions, this collection offers a starting p o in t and guide to studying digital geog­ raphies. E x p lo ring the chapters, w e h o p e readers gain insight into a variety o f p henom ena w hile also b ein g inspired to interrogate how digital technologies are altering th eir ow n areas o f study

A ckn o w led g em en t R o b ’s c o n trib u tio n to this chapter and the collection as a w hole was undertaken as part o f T h e Program m able C ity project funded by the E uropean R esearch C o u n cil ( E R C -2 0 12-A dG 3 2 3 6 3 6 -S O F T C IT Y ).

R E FE R E N C E S Ash J. (2015) The Interface Envelope: Gaming, Technology, Power. N ew York: Bloomsbury. Ash, J. (2017) Phase Media: Space, Tim e and the Politics o f Smart Objects. N ew York: Bloomsbury. Ash, J., Kitchin, R . and Leszczynski, A. (2018) ‘Digital turn, digital geographies?’, Progress in H um an Geography, 42(1): 25—43. Bolter,J.D. and Grusin, R .A . (1999) Remediation: Understanding N e w Media. Cam bridge, MA: M IT Press. Coyne, R . (1994) ‘H eidegger and virtual reality: T he implications o f H eidegger’s thinking for com puter representations’, Leonardo , 27: 65-73. Elwood, S. and Leszczynski, A. (2011) ‘Privacy, reconsidered: N ew representations, data practices, and the geow eb’, Geoforum, 42: 6—15. Franklin, S. (2015) Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic. Cam bridge, MA: M IT Press, v Fuller, M. (2008) Software Studies: A Lexicon. Cam bridge, MA: M IT Press. Graham, S. and M arvin, S. (2001) Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition. London: Routledge. Hayles, K. (2017) Unthought: The Power o f the Cognitive Nonconscious. Chicago: University o f Chicago Press. Horst, H.A. and Miller, D. (2013) Digital Anthropology. London: Bloomsbury. Kitchin, R . (2013) ‘Big data and hum an geography: O pportunities, challenges and risks’, Dialogues in H um an Geography, 3: 262—267. Kitchin, R . and Dodge, M . (2011) Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life. Cam bridge, MA: M IT Press.

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Kitchin, R ., Lauriault, T.P. and Wilson, M. (eds) (2017) Understanding Spatial Media. London: Sage. Lepawsky, J. (2015) ‘The changing geography of global trade in electronic discards: Time to rethink the e-waste problem’, Geographical Journal, 181: 147-159. Leszczynski, A. (2015) ‘Spatial m edia/tion’, Progress in Human Geography, 39(6): 729—751. Leszczynski,A. (2017) ‘Digital methods I:Wicked tensions’, Progress in H um an Geography. D OI: 10.1177/0309132517711779. Lunenfeld, P. (2000) The Digital Dialectic: N ew Essays on N ew Media. Cambridge, MA: M IT Press. Lupton, D. (2014) Digital Sociology. London, N ew York: Routledge. Manovich, L. (2013) Software Takes Command. New York: Bloomsbury. Murray, S. (2008) ‘Cybernated aesthetics: Lee Bull and the body transfigured’, Performing Arts Journal, 30: 38—65. Pickren, G. (2018) ‘“ The global assemblage of digital flow”: Critical data studies and the infrastructures o f com puting’, Progress in H um an Geography, 42: 225—243. Rose, G., Degen, M. and Melhuish, C. (2014) ‘Networks, interfaces, and com puter­ generated images: Learning from digital visualisations o f urban redevelopment pro­ jects’, Environment and Planning D: Society & Space, 32: 386-403. Verhoeff, N. (2012) Mobile Screens: The Visual Regime o f Navigation. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Wilson, M.W. (2012) ‘Location-based services, conspicuous mobility, and the locationaware future’, Geoforum, 43: 1266—1275. Zook, M. (2005) The Geography o f the Internet Industry: Venture Capital, Dot-coms, and Local Knowledge. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

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PARTI DIGITAL SPACES

2 SPATIALITIES Agnieszka Leszczynski

IN T R O D U C T IO N G eographers have recognized technology to be central to the p ro d u ctio n o f space and socio-spatial relations (spatiality). Historically engagements o f the co-articulation o f technology and spatiality have em phasized ‘the m ap ’ and related spatial tech n o l­ ogies such as survey instrum ents and cartographic techniques.T hey have exam ined the ways these technologies have been deployed w ith in the rem it o f calculative strategies for defining and legitim ating claims to geopolitical notions o f territory, for exam ple. T h e rise o f digital co m p u tin g since the 1960s and the m ore recent decade-plus-long b o o m in com m ercial geolocation technologies have catalysed the developm ent o f n ew conceptual fram ew orks for grappling w ith natively digital technologies, digital co n te n t productions, and space and spatiality. In this chapter, I identify and provide an overview o f the theoretical and concep­ tual frameworks that have been advanced for unpacking the relationship betw een spatiality and technology — and n o w m ore recently spatiality and digitality — in W estern geographical thought. I set the stage by discussing m ap-tcrritory relations in the critical cartographic tradition. I then m ove on to profiling contem porary fram e­ works for engaging the role o f the digital in technology—society—space relations. These include hybrid spaces, digital shadows and augmented realities, code/space, mediated spatialities and diffractive technospaces, and atmospheres.

MAP-TERRITORY RELATIONS C ritical cartographers have dem onstrated that rather than m irro rin g spatial reality, maps precede —that is, produce - the territo ries they represent (Pickles, 2004).T h e m ap in this sense designates the use o f spatial technologies (survey instrum ents,

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projections, etc.) to generate a scientific visual product that serves to delineate, name, legitim ate, secure, and m aintain access to and control over bounded expanses o f territory: a land, its resources, and people. Leveraged as instrum ents o f territory, maps were central strategies o f state, empire, and colonialism. For instance, the earliest maps o f the Americas represented the N ew W orld as great swathes o f em pty land devoid o f the presence o f indigenous peoples, rendering them ripe for ‘conquest, appropriation, subdivision, [and] com m odification’ (Harley, 1992: 524). Maps n o t only legitim ized the dispossession o f peoples from their lands, but also further solidified colonial control over territory by enabling rule at a distance through the quantification o f lands, their resources, and inhabitants. T he success o f the British occupation o f Egypt (1882—1952), for example, was underw ritten by the cadastral m apping o f the entire country, an initiative that produced the Great Land M ap o f E gypt (see M itchell, 2002). T he Great L and M ap both consolidated spatial know ledge into a cohesive cartographic product (the M ap), and also cen­ tralized this know ledge exclusively in the hands o f British colonial power. This solidified im perial control over Egypt by allowing Britain to leverage the geo­ graphic know ledge b o u n d up in the Great L and M ap towards various kinds o f spatial interventions (taxation, infrastructure projects, insertion o f m ilitary pres­ ence, etc.). M oreover, it allowed for the business and adm inistration o f em pire to be conducted from a distance via rem ote practices o f spatial calculation, quantifi­ cation, and regulation. In these historical accounts, spatial technologies are understood as strategies o f calculation that, w h en applied to space, render space as territory: a cartographically dem arcated geopolitical entity that is naturalized and m ade transparent by the very map used to produce it (C ram pton, 2010; Elden, 2007). For Pickles (2004), the subsequent developm ent o f digital spatial infrastructures such as geographic infor­ m ation systems (GIS) beginning in the 1960s has served to further obfuscate the role o f technology in the production o f space. GIS engendered a ‘new scopic regime o f transparency’ w herein space is rendered not only mappable in two dimensions, but can also be interrogated and reshaped using digital technologies (Pickles, 2004: 162). Pickles s concern is w ith the unequal pow er relations o f the technological production o f space/territory. This co ncern likewise resonates in many engagements o f technology-space-society relations in the critical GIS tradition. Participatory or public participation GIS (P/PG IS) scholarship in particular dem onstrated that digital m apping technologies are not only the preserve o f the state, b ut are also enrolled by com m unities, indigenous peoples, and civil society organizations to actively resist and counter narratives o f the legitimacy o f state claims to land and resources, and to advance and negotiate their ow n geopolitical and econom ic claims (see, for example, Elw ood, 2006). These concerns w ith know ledge politics b ound up in the technological pro­ duction o f space and spatiality continue to be a focus o f contem porary geographic

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scholarship (e.g., E lw ood and Leszczynski, 2013). H ow ever, the m ore recent p ro ­ liferation, diversification, and com m ercialization o f digital spatial technologies and data productions beyond the uniq u e assemblages o f GIS architectures —including, b u t n o t lim ited to, interactive w eb maps, geofence technology, native geotagging functionalities, m ap APIs, and location-based services - have diversified the focus o f attention beyond the em phasis o n state—civil society relations enacted through the kinds o f spatial technologies described above. G eographers and o th er scholars have becom e interested in exam ining and th eo rizin g the spatialities produced w ith, through, and by digital devices, services, and c o n ten t productions that have becom e expected and entirely ordinary presences in the spaces and practices o f everyday life (Ash et al., 2018).

HYBRID SPACES T h e u n d erstan d in g o f tech n o lo g y as p roductive o f space and spatiality advanced by critical cartographers co n tin u es to be axiom atic to present-day efforts to grapple w ith and th eo riz e th e c o -articu latio n o f th e digital and the spatial. An initial approach to th in k in g a b o u t the relationship b etw een space and digital • m edia is the n o tio n o f hybrid spaces. H y b rid spaces are th eo riz ed to be constituted by th e en m esh in g o f tw o distinct realms o f space and spatiality: digital (or virtual) spaces, and real (physical, m aterial, a n d /o r actual) spaces. H y b rid ity theses hold that th e digital and real w orlds are (or at o n e p o in t were) ontologically and m aterially distinct, and have only m o re recently b een b ro u g h t into in tersectio n . w ith one a n o th e r by th e pervasiveness o f digital technologies. At the h eig h t o f its p o p u larity in the m id -late 2000s, th e virtual social en v iro n m en t Second Life was ch am p io n ed in p o p u lar discourse as an exem plar o f the digital as a separate sphere o f intim acy, d is/e m b o d im e n t, and sociality to w h ich users could escape by anim atin g a virtual avatar and leaving th e trappings o f the m aterial w orld b eh in d (Johnson, 2007). H ow ever, as scholars such as de Souza e Silva (2006) have m ore recently p o in ted o u t, this d isco n n ectio n b etw een physical and digital spaces has effectively b een ero d ed by th e rise o f location-aw are m obile devices. T h e qu o tid ian en ro lm e n t o f m obile digital technologies has fu n ctio n ed to effec­ tively ‘h y b rid ize’ virtual and real spaces (de Souza e Silva, 2013; de Souza e Silva and F rith, 2012), p ro d u cin g m obile spaces that em erge as b y-products o f people m ovin g aro u n d cities w ith lo catio n -e n ab led m obile devices (de Souza e Silva, 2006). T h e actual (physical) sites w h ere the m aterial and digital ‘h y b rid ize’ by way o f the digital b ein g b ro u g h t into physical spaces have been term ed net localities (de Souza e Silva and F rith , 2012). In this conceptualization, digital technologies b o th en g en d er the h y b rid izatio n o f space and serve as interfaces th ro u g h w h ich to access h y b rid spaces and spatialities.

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H ybrid spaces are seen to ‘enable new forms o f interaction w ith com puting, including location-based service’ and geocoded content (Wilson, 2014: 538). Focusing on content productions, Z o o k and Graham (2007b) have exam ined algorithm s for sorting geocoded content, such as G oogle’s PageR ank algorithm , w hich determ ines the cardinality (order) o f places in the results chain o f a Google Maps query. For Z o o k and Graham (2007b), algorithm s are generative o f a spatial hybridity, w herein users com e to see themselves as inhabiting the interstices o f ‘two w orlds’ in a virtual—physical spatial amalgam that results from the ‘use o f inform ation ranked and m apped in cyberspace to navigate and understand physi­ cal space’ (Z ook and Graham , 2007b: 468, 466). G eocoded content and the algorithm s that structure its delivery shape spatial mobilities and behaviours. For instance, the order in w hich results appear in response to a Google Maps query for ‘pizza’ shapes consum ption patterns by directing people to establishments that appear nearer the top o f the results chain (Z ook and Graham , 2007a). T h e lim itation o f hybridity for theorizing space and spatiality vis-a-vis digital media is that it suggests that virtual spaces are, or at least initially were, ontologically distinct from each other, and have only recently been ‘hybridized’ by contem porary digital media. T h e im plication o f this suggestion is that by virtue o f being originally distinct from ‘real’ or ‘actual’ spaces, digital spaces are im m aterial in essence. This fails to acknow ledge the ways in w hich digital spaces are necessar­ ily always-already physical-material, com prised o f vast networks o f physical infrastructures such as data centres, internet exchanges, deep-sea fibre-optic cables, continental broadband, and routers (see, for example, Blum , 2012).

DIGITAL SHADOWS AND AUGMENTED REALITIES Adding nuance beyond hybridity theses, G raham (2013) has argued that cities in particular are now constituted as m uch by their digital shadows as by bricks and m ortar. D igital shadows are the layers o f digital content generated about city spaces from city spaces. These shadows em anate from quotidian uses o f social media as plumes o f data propagated and transm itted by the connected devices o f the inter­ net o f things, and data trails generated through sensor—netw ork interactions in the smart city.These layers are particularly dense over cities. N o t only is there a greater density o f b o th denizens and devices in urban as com pared to rural areas, even w hen accounting for differences in population density, geocoded content produc­ tion is a distinctly urban ph en o m en on (H echt and Stephens, 2014) .Yet beyond the distinct u rb an -ru ral divide, data shadows also (re)produce long-standing urban inequalities. T h e spatial distributions o f geocoded content, the languages in w hich they are generated, and the sorting o f these data productions by proprietary algo­ rithm s produce uneven urban geographies by prom oting certain places to

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prom inence w hile obfuscating others. L ooking at geocoded co n ten t for Tel Aviv, G raham and Z o o k (2013) identify that a G oogle M aps query f o r ‘restaurant’ co n ­ ducted from the same location in Arabic and H ebrew returns radically different results, w ith different establishm ents appearing at the top o f the results chain for a query co n d u cted in eith er language in ways that entrench the linguistic-spatial segregation o f the city. As urban landscapes are increasingly translated into data, we sim ultaneously com e to experience cities in term s o f their digital shadows. We can digitally tap into these data streams to gain insight into the cultural, social, and political ‘pulses’ o f cities, enrolling co n ten t about city spaces w hile we are in those spaces experiencing those spaces. In o th er words, digital shadows augm ent or enhance o u r everyday spaces and spatialities. G raham et al. (2013) characterize these experiences o f digital shadows as augmented realities. A ugm ented realities are constituted by the ‘m aterial/virtual nexus m ediated through technology, inform ation and code, and enacted in specific and individualized space/tim e configurations’ (G raham et al., 2013: 465). R a th e r than focusing o n the distinctiveness o f the virtual and the real and priv­ ileging technology as a digital in term ed iary w h ich brokers a hybridized spatiality that is sim ultaneously b o th virtual and real, ‘augm ented realities’ em phasize the interstitial m om ents at w h ich digital platform s, hardware, and geocoded co n ten t com e to g eth er to produce spaces that we experience in situ as ‘au g m en ted ’ by layers o f digital in form ation. In this way, augm ented realities im plicitly acknow l­ edge the ontogenesis o f space, w hich is the n o tio n that the technological production o f space is always incom plete. Space is always in the process o f becom ing, and this b ecom in g is perform ative by v irtu e o f being highly subjective and co n tin g en t on the technologies present and available to differentially em bodied subjects. In the case o f augm ented realities, any individual’s experience o f digitally supplem ented space is co n tin g en t on the geocoded c o n ten t available, netw ork availability, the devices being used, and even the tim e o f day. R ealities are thereby ‘au g m en ted ’ in m om ents in tim e and place rath er than pre-existing, and are also highly individu­ alized w hile sim ultaneously b ein g delim ited by the availability and corporate shaping o f c o n te n t flows (e.g., w h at kinds o f inform ation about places casts the strongest digital shadow).

C O D E D SPACES AN D C O DE/SPAC E G raham et al.’s (2013) o n to g en etic conceptualization o f digitally supplem ented spatialities o r ‘au g m en ted realities’ builds directly on K itchin and D o d g e’s (2011) groundbreaking th eo rizatio n o f the nature o f the spatialities produced through the pervasive presence o f code and software in everyday spaces. T h ey advance tw o concepts to capture th e increasing centrality o f code and software to the p ro d u c­ tion o f space: coded spaces and code/space. C oded spaces are spaces in w hich code

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and digital software m aintain a strong presence, but w here their failure may be replaced by an analog transaction. An example is a retail space w herein the sudden no n -functioning o f electronic paym ent devices may be com pensated for by a cash transaction. Here, the social relation o f exchange is facilitated by, but not contin­ gent upon, digital technologies in the retail space. C o d ed spaces may be contrasted w ith code/space, or spaces to w hich the func­ tioning o f code/softw are is essential, and w here the failure o f digital technologies results in the failure o f the space and spatiality (socio-spatial relations). T h e spaces o f air travel are quintessential code/spaces. A failure o f digital technologies — biom etrics, passport verification, body and luggage scanners —w ould result in the failure o f the space. An airport w ould cease to function as such; the sociality o f the space —people m oving betw een places —w ould similarly fail. N o analog alterna­ tive exists for the code/spaces o f air travel. C ode/space captures the capacities for the transduction o f space by code - or the potential for previously n o n -co d ed spaces to becom e recast as code/space. This occurs ‘w hen software and the spatiality o f everyday life becom e m utually constituted, [i.e.], produced through one another’ (Kitchin and D odge, 2011: 16). T he ascendance o f code and software in a space changes the nature o f that space, how it is utilized, as well as the spatiality o f that place. Take, for example, an urban cafe that begins offering free W iFi access. This may transform the space from one o f prim arily social interaction (casual face-toface encounters) to a hot-desk workspace. T he em ergent spatiality o f the space (from interaction-centred to w ork-centred) in tu rn solidifies the centrality o f the presence o f code and software to that space. C ode/space is inherently ontogenetic. B oth the nature o f the space and its spatiality are re-created in mom ents o f the utilization and occupation o f the space in particular ways, be it as a workspace, or a prim arily social space.

MEDIATED SPATIALITIES W hile the ontogenetic theory o f the technological production o f space captures the ways in w hich the role o f technology in the production o f space is dependent on the individual, the nature o f the technology, and the tim e/spaces o f its deploy­ m ent, the concept is n ot unique to digital technologies. For example, it also captures the contingencies o f analog map use. Leszczynski (2015) has recently expanded on the ontogenetic theorization o f code/space in the context o f natively digital media by proposing mediation as a conceptual fram ework for understanding the m ultiple yet contingent com ings-together o f technology, people, and place and space that are productive o f our quotidian lived realities. M ediation speaks to the contem porary condition o f how we experience being w ith both hum an and n o n -h u m an digital others in the spaces and practices o f everyday life, in w hich we

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com e to understand spaces, experiences, and interactions as the effects o f the m yr­ iad com in g s-to g eth er o f technology, society, and space relations. As w ith augm ented realities, m ediation is largely u n co n ce rn ed w ith ho w content, technology, space, and the social are b ro u g h t together, b ut rather w ith the fact that they are brought together. H ow ever, rather than understanding digital technologies as interfaces to spaces augm ented by digital con ten t, here the interface is itself understood as an effect o f these intersections (Galloway, 2012). A lternatively stated, o u r lived reality is the result o f the m utual co-constitutions o f technology, sociality, and spatiality. . In this form ulation, the p ro d u ctio n o f space rem ains inherently ontogenetic. A theory o f spatial m ediation, however, destabilizes the ontological privileging o f technology over space a n d /o r sociality. D igital technology, for exam ple, is n o t positioned as an active agent in the form o f an interm ediary o r broker o f social relations across space. Similarly, space is n o t rendered as a passive entity am enable to transduction. Technology, social relations, and space —as well as natures —are all active in effecting o u r lived spatialities. To say that spatiality is m ediated is to assert that physical spaces are always-already in fo rm atio n spaces (Jurgenson in M adrigal, 2012) beyond — and ind ep en d en tly o f — their capacity to be transduced (shaped, produced) by code and software. It im portantly asserts that space is as m uch o f an active participant in co m prising and sh ap in g ‘the digital’ as digital technologies are them selves productive and generative o f spatiality. Given a th eo ry o f m ediation, technologies do n o t m ediate per se. This is to say that they are n o t conjunctive interm ediaries; rather, they capture, enrol, and p u t inform ation in to circulation in new and un p reced en ted ways that are generative o f em ergent form s o f sociality and spatiality that we experience and understand as m ediated. Federica T im e to (2015: 1) provides som e m ore specificity to the m edi­ ated spatiality via the co n cep t o f diffractive technospaces, w hich are ‘sociotechnical environm ents in w hich hum ans and m achines relate and intersect’. As ‘dynam ic and co n tin g en t fo rm atio n s’, the ‘em ergence [o f technospaces] cannot be disjoined from the generativity o f the m ediations that traverse th e m ’ (Tim eto, 2015: 1). T h e sharing o f images via the social platform Instagram is an exam ple o f pre­ cisely such a m ed iatin g /m ed iated perform ative experience in w hich hum ans, digital platform s, and spatiality im plicate each other. Instagram m ing is an exercise o f b rin g in g spaces in to b ein g via b o th actively shaping and reflecting back the ways in w h ich different places/spaces/locations rise in cultural and social signifi­ cance at particular m om ents only to subside from im portance at others. H ochm an and M anovich (2013), for exam ple, identified distinct ‘signatures’ in Instagram activity across a p erio d o f tim e o f national events o f som bre co m m em o ratio n fol­ low ed alm ost im m ediately after by events o f joyous reverie. T h e geography o f Tel Aviv Instagram activity was characterized by a sw ing in term s o f areas o f the city being Instagram m ed d u rin g m om ents o f national m o u rn in g and rem em brance followed alm ost im m ediately by events o f festive celebration. Yet the spatiality o f

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this Instagram activity during these distinct periods was simultaneously also con­ centrated in a handful o f locations across the city. This reflects w hat Boy and U iterm ark (2017: 612—3) characterize as an ‘aestheticisation o f everyday life’ that effectively ‘[reassembles] the city’ in Instagram ’s ow n image by m obilizing and circulating specific places as preferred sites o f consum ption in ways that actively divert and concentrate flows o f bodies and resources at those sites. This only rein­ forces the Instagram -w orthiness o f these places in ways that prim e them for gentrification. H ere, the city is brought into being through social m edia activity, but Instagram activity is no mere m irror. These piecem eal digital urban perfor­ mances are im plicated in both spatially reorienting and deepening uneven urban geographies w hich are then reflected back through digital channels. M ediation and reality, in o th er words, are co-im plicated (Tim eto, 2015) —digitality and spatiality cannot be experientially or materially disentangled from one another.

MOR E-THAN-H UM AN SPATIALITIES Breaking away from the h u m an-centric fram ing o f spatiality that underw rites the approaches to technology—society—space relations profiled above, scholars have begun advancing a theorization o f digital spatialities beyond the preserve o f the exclusively hum an. For Ash (2013, 2017), digital technologies have a unique soci­ ality outside o f hum an interactions w ith them . Ash positions digital technologies as relating to each oth er outside o f hum an consciousness through series o f ‘per­ turbations’, or capacities o f digital objects to shape the conduct o f other digital objects. Similar to Leszczynski (2015), Ash (2013: 22) does not see technologies as ‘shap[ing] pre-existing space[s] or creating a hybrid form o f reality’. R ather, per­ turbations generate atmospheres, o r space-times ‘local to the [digital] objects in question’ (Ash, 2013: 22). A tm ospheres not only present themselves to other objects (via their perturbations), but also organize space-times for hum an subjects. Ash (2013) illustrates the ways in w hich atm ospheres shape the capacities and conduct o f both hum ans and non-hum ans w ith reference to sm artphones. M obile digital devices com m unicate w ith W iFi netw ork access points (NAPs) through the transmission and reception o f radio waves, w hich are im perceptible to humans. Every tim e a W iFi-enabled device com es w ithin range o f a NAP, the netw ork presents itself as available to the device, perturbing it to register its tim e-stam ped, geolocated presence against the access point, even w here the N A P is a W iFi mast em ulator that does n ot enable actual netw ork connectivity (see Leszczynski, 2017). O ftentim es, a device will be w ithin range o f m ultiple NAPs, w ith an inde­ term inate cardinality o f netw orks (the order in w hich networks are to be joined; usually organized by signal strength). Elsewhere, the spatial extents o f netw ork range are themselves subject to perturbation by elem ental factors such as winds.

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These am biguities o f connectivity em erge from how the objects in question structure relations betw een them selves (w hich access points present them selves to devices; w hich netw orks are jo in ed ). At the same tim e, digital objects also shape the co n d u ct o f hum an subjects by organizing space-tim es for the hum an. O n e way is th ro u g h feedback loops (Ash, 2013). D ead zones (areas o f no connectivity) or p o o r n etw o rk connectivity (spo- . radic connectivity, low data transfer speeds) may b eco m e obvious to hum ans, com pelling th em to engage w ith their devices in ways that exacerbate rather than resolve connectivity issues. For exam ple, attem pting to m anually force co nnection to a netw ork may p rolong the tim e it takes to establish a reliable co n n ectio n c o m ­ pared to allow ing the device to autom atically co n n ect to the best (most reliable, strongest signal strength) available netw ork. Elsewhere, w here n etw o rk connectivity is functional, perturbations betw een digital objects can influence h u m an capacities by shaping subjects’ spatial trajec­ tories. For exam ple, applications ru n n in g in the back g ro u n d o f a m obile device may sporadically ‘p u sh ’ digital recom m endations for co n su m p tio n (eating, d rin k ­ ing, en tertain m en t, and shopping) as notifications to individuals’ devices. T hese spontaneous pings appear as sim ple notifications, b u t they are actually the results o f m yriad factors, in clu d in g a user’s real-tim e location and the historical co n ­ sum ptive behaviours o f m em bers o f th eir social graph (if, for exam ple, a restaurant was recently patronized by individuals in a p erso n ’s social netw ork, it m ay be suggested to th em as they com e w ith in proxim ity o f the establishm ent). T hese affective incitem ents towards co n su m p tion th ro u g h the suggestive shaping o f h um an m obilities are only possible given the successful perturbations o f digital objects outside o f im m ediate h u m an consciousness o f them . In the instance o f push notifications, this includes functional connectivity and applications success­ fully refresh in g ‘in the b a ck g ro u n d ’ (i.e., even w h en the application is n o t actively open on-screen). G oin g forw ard, engagem ents w ith the n o n -h u m a n prom ise to open up exciting avenues for th in k in g ab o u t the nature o f digital productions and reconfigurations o f space and spatiality. O n e avenue is co n tin u ed explorations o f the spatialities and space-tim es o f the n o n -h u m a n a la the w ork o f Ash briefly profiled above. A n o th er prong o f related em ergent research em phasizes the digital n o n -h u m a n reconfigu­ rations o f the spaces and spatialities o f w h at have heretofore b een u n d ersto o d as uniquely hu m an relations, such as sexuality and intim ate en co u n ter (e.g., C ockayne et al., 2017). A third direction rip e for conceptual exploration involves n o n -h u m a n spaces and spatialities in the co n tex t o f socio-technical natures.To date, little atten ­ tion has been given in geography to how nature as an assemblage o f b o th hum an and n o n -h u m a n organic life intersects w ith o r fits into w hat is often presented as a triad o f technology—society—space relations. T his promises to be an exciting ave­ nue for research going forward.

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REFERENCES Ash,J. (2013) ‘R ethinking affective atmospheres: Technology, perturbation and space times o f the non-hum an’, Geoforum , 29: 20—29. Ash, J. (2017) Phase Media: Space, Time and the Politics o f Smart Objects. N ew York: Bloomsbury. Ash, J., Kitchin, R . and Leszczynski, A. (2018) ‘Digital turn, digital geographies?’, Progress in H um an Geography, 42(1): 25—43. Blum, A. (2012) Tubes: A Journey to the Center o f the Internet. N ew York: HarperCollins. Boy, J.D. and Uitermark, J. (2017) ‘Reassembling the city through Instagram’, Transactions o f the Institute o f British Geographers, 42: 612—624. Cockayne, D., Leszczynski, A. and Zook, M. (2017) ‘#HotForBots: Sex, the non­ human, and digitally-mediated spaces o f intimate encounter’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 35(6): 1115—1133. Crampton, J.W. (2010) ‘Cartographic calculations o f territory’, Progress in H uman Geography, 35(1): 92—103. de Souza e Silva, A. (2006) ‘From cyber to hybrid: Mobile technologies as interfaces of hybrid spaces’, Space and Culture, 9(3): 261—278. de Souza e Silva, A. (2013) ‘Location-aware mobile technologies: Historical, social and spatial approaches’, Mobile Media & Communication, 1(1): 116—121. de Souza e Silva, A. and Frith, J. (2012) Mobile Interfaces in Public Spaces: Locational Privacy, Control, and Urban Sociability. N ew York: Routledge. Elden, S. (2007) ‘Governmentality, calculation, territory’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25(3): 562—580. Elwood, S. (2006) ‘Negotiating knowledge production: The everyday inclusions, exclusions, and contradictions o f participatory GIS research’, Professional Geographer, 58(2): 197-208. Elwood, S. and Leszczynski, A. (2013) ‘N ew spatial media, new knowledge politics’, Transactions o f the Institute o f British Geographers, 38(4): 544-559. Galloway, A .R. (2012) The Interface Effect. Cambridge: Polity Press. Graham, M. (2013) ‘The virtual dimension’, in M .Acuto and W. Steele (eds), Global City Challenges: Debating a Concept, Improving the Practice. London: Palgrave. pp. 117-139. Graham, M. and Zook, M. (2013) ‘Augmented realities and uneven geographies: Exploring the geo-linguistic contours o f the w eb’, Environment and Planning A , 45(1): 77-99. Graham, M., Zook, M. and Boulton, A. (2013) ‘Augmented reality in urban places: Contested content and the duplicity o f code’, Transactions o f the Institute o f British Geographers, 38(3): 464—479. Harley, J.B. (1992) ‘Rereading the maps o f the Columbian encounter’, Annals o f the Association o f American Geographers, 82(3): 522—542. Hecht, B. and Stephens, M. (2014) ‘A tale o f cities: Urban biases in volunteered geo­ graphic inform ation’, in E. Adar and P. Resnick (eds), Proceedings o f the Eighth International A A A I Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. Palo Alto, CA: AAAI Press, pp. 197-205.

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Hochm an, N. and M anovich, L. (2013) ‘Z oom ing into an Instagram city: R eading the local through social m edia’, First M onday , 18(7). Available at: http://firstm onday. o rg /article/v iew /4 7 1 1/3698 (accessed 1 February 2018). Johnson, C. (2007) ‘Living a virtual life on the in tern et’, C B S , 8 February Available at: w w w .cbsnew s.com /n ew s/liv in g -a-v irtu al-life-o n -th e-in tern et (accessed 1 February 2018). Kitchin, R . and Dodge, M . (2011) Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life. Cam bridge, MA: M IT Press. Leszczynski, A. (2015) ‘Spatial m edia/tion’, Progress in H um an Geography, 39(6): 729—751. Leszczynski, A. (2017) ‘G eoprivacy’, in R . Kitchin, T.P. Lauriault and M.W. W ilson (eds), Understanding Spatial Media. London: Sage. pp. 239—248. Madrigal, A.C. (2012) ‘H ow Google builds its maps —and w hat it means for the future of everything’, Tlte Atlantic, 6 September. Available at: www.theatlantic.com/technology/ archive/2012/09/how -google-builds-its-m aps-and-w hat-it-m eans-for-the-futureof-everything/261913 (accessed 1 February 2018). M itchell,T. (2002) R u le o f Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, M odernity. Berkeley: University o f California Press. Pickles, J. (2004) A History o f Spaces: Cartographic Reason, M apping and the Geo-coded World. N ew York: Routledge. Tim eto, F. (2015) Diffractive Technospaces: A Feminist Approach to the Mediations o f Space and Representation. Farnham: Ashgate. Wilson, M.W. (2014) ‘C ontinuous connectivity, handheld computers, and mobile spatial knowledge’, Environment and Planning D : Society and Space, 32(3): 535—555. Z ook, M .A. and Graham , M. (2007a) ‘T he creative reconstruction o f the Internet: Google and the privatization o f cyberspace and D igiPlace’, Geoforum , 38(6): 1322-1343. Z ook, M.A. and Graham, M. (2007b) ‘M apping DigiPlace: Geocoded Internet data and the representation o f place’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design , 34(3): 466-482.

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3 URBAN Andres Luque-Ayala

INTR OD U CTIO N O ver the past decades, digital technologies have had a profound im pact on how hum an geography understands the urban. To a large extent, this is the outcom e o f an ongoing transform ation o f the city and its spaces, resulting from the vast and ubiquitous use o f com puters, inform ation and com m unications technology (ICT) and digital systems. It is also the result o f broader changes in processes o f global urbanization m arkedly influenced by the rapid grow th o f IC T w orldw ide and by the spatial agglom erations generated in the production and consum ption o f com ­ puting technologies. Taking this context into account, this chapter introduces the m ultiple ways in w hich digital spaces and urban spaces are intertw ined and co-constituted. T h e emphasis is on how the city, materially, culturally and politi­ cally, has been and continues to be rapidly transform ed by a range o f com putational and digital logics and devices. T he chapter focuses on how digital technologies in the city, u n d erp in n ed by tech n o -u to pian narratives around efficiency, productivity, and transparency, alter the functioning o f pow er in cities w hile reshaping many aspects o f urban governing and control.

CO M PU TIN G THE CITY: A BRIEF HISTORY From the late 1950s, draw ing on the principles o f cybernetics developed by N o rb e rt W iener, the city increasingly cam e to be seen as a com m unication sys­ tem (M eier, 1962; W ebber, 1964; Light, 2003). E m bracing cybernetics, alongside a set o f in form ation technologies developed by scientists w orking w ithin the A m erican defence industry, urban planners reconceptualized the city b o th as a

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m ach in e and a living organism . T his enabled a new type o f u rban planning: one that to o k advantage o f advances in m athem atics, systems analysis, and co m p u tin g technologies for decision-m aking. In the early 1960s A m erican cities such as Pittsburg, N e w York City, and Los Angeles started e x p e rim e n tin g w ith com puters in th eir urban renew al program m es. T h ro u g h a co m b in atio n o f co m p u tin g , cybernetics, and m ilitary expertise, urban planning to o k a p ro b le m -o rien ted approach to local adm inistration. T h e u rb an problem started to be fram ed from a m ilitaristic/d efen ce perspective, its solution increasingly seen as a fu n ctio n o f m anaging processes.T he city becam e a ‘b a ttle g ro u n d ’, ‘fighting a w ar on p o v erty ’, w hile urban problem s w ere rein te rp re ted as processes to be solved via feedback loops and co n tin u al self-adjustm ent (Light, 2003). A t the tim e, the Jo u rn a l o f the Am erican Institute o f Planners, hailed co m puters as th e drivers o f a revolution in urban planning (H arris, 1966). A long w ith th eir databases and sim ulations, c o m ­ puters w ere seen as capable o f en h an cin g existing planning tools such as maps and th ree-d im en sio n al m odels; they w ere capable o f handling large datasets; they w ould enable the visualization o f problem s in novel ways; b u t m ost im portantly, they appeared to tu rn plan n in g into a scientific endeavour (Light, 2003). In fo rm atio n systems becam e a fo rm o f urban response arguably capable o f d ep o liticizing the plan n in g process w hile forcing scientifically verifiable outcom es. B ey o n d th e specific d o m ain o f u rb an p lan n in g , th e re was a b e lie f b e tw e e n th e 1960s an d 1990s th a t th e g ro w th in c o m p u te r use an d a resu ltin g d e m a te ­ rializatio n o f so ciety w o u ld u n d e rm in e processes o f u rb an izatio n , th re a te n in g th e very ex isten ce o f th e city. T h e ‘th e o lo g y ’ o f cyberspace (B olter and G rusin, 2000) — a b e lie f in th e ability o f c o m p u te rs, digital system s and n ew m edia to create a d em aterialized w o rld o f in fo rm atio n th at w e can in h ab it - u n d e rp in n e d a fu tu ristic an d e u p h o ric te c h n o lo g ic a l u to p ian ism w h e re reality was to be replaced, b it by b it, by in fo rm a tio n . S cholars and tech n o lo g ists such as M arshal M cL u h an (1994 [1964]), A lvin Toffler (1980), N ich o las N e g ro p o n te (1995), and Bill G ates (1995) c o m m e n te d on th e e x te n t to w h ic h digital c o m m u n ic a ­ tions w o u ld o v erco m e th e n e e d for spatial proxim ity, and th ro u g h this, a catastro p h ic collapse fo r cities. S uch p re d ic tio n s n ev er tu rn e d o u t to be tru e. T h e fallacy o f this p o s t-u rb a n fantasy lies in failing to u n d e rsta n d th e co m p lex relatio n sh ip an d in te rd e p e n d e n c ie s b e tw e e n IC T s and th e city. R a th e r th an replacin g th e u rb a n , th e w o rld o f IC T and c o m p u te rs has played an im p o rta n t role in facilitatin g global u rb a n iz a tio n (G raham , 2 0 0 4 ).T h ro u g h o u t th e second part o f th e tw e n tie th cen tu ry , a g ro w th in global te le c o m m u n ic a tio n s and th e u rb an tra n sfo rm atio n s ch aracteristic o f advanced in d u strial societies o c c u rre d in parallel; th e very c o n fig u ra tio n o f th e p o st-in d u stria l city b ecam e a m a tte r o f th e relatio n sh ip b e tw e e n th e city and te le c o m m u n ic a tio n s (G raham and M arv in , 1996). N o lo n g e r w ere cities sim ply dense physical nodes o f buildings, tra n sp o rt n e tw o rk s, e c o n o m ic activ ity and cu ltu ra l life; th ey also b ecam e

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electronic hubs, the centres o f dem and for telecom m unications and the p o w ­ erhouses o f global digital co m m unications. T he ubiquitous nature o f com puting established an urban w orld governed m ore by interconnectivity than by boundaries. In the em erging networked city , the urban was no longer defined by physical enclosure (i.e., the city walls), but by digital connectivity. H e re,‘[c]ontrol o f territo ry means little unless you also control the channel capacity and access points that service it’ (Mitchell, 2004: 10). T he in tern et itself has an urban geography, as selected cities play an im portant role in its production through clustering (Townsend, 2001; Z ook, 2005). From the phys­ ical netw orks that allow digital connectivity — optic fibres, cooper cables, com m unication towers, antennas — to the patterns o f em ploym ent and politicaleconom ic landscapes associated w ith the digital economy, inform ation technologies materially co-constitute the city.

EARLY PERSPECTIVES: THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE CYBERCITY In 1992 C hristine Boyer developed one o f the first critical analyses o f the by then popular dem aterialized accounts o f cyberspace — a n o tio n that ironically was often conceived, in urban term s, as a huge m egalopolis w ith o u t a centre (Boyer, 1992). A dvancing the idea o f the cybercity , Boyer highlighted the hybrid m aterial and socio-technical nature o f the grow ing inform ational netw ork. U rb an geography’s engagem ents w ith the cybercity foreground b o th space and m ateriality in the digital w orld, arguing that technology does n o t substitute the city o r body, b ut rather m ediates social, physical, econom ic, and cultural relations (G raham , 2004). In tu rn , digital technology transform s the cultural geography o f the city and everyday life in a m yriad o f ways (Crang, 2010).W akeford, for exam ­ ple, draws on fem inist approaches to exam ine the hybridity o f in tern e t cafes and the em bodied gender identities o f users forged through digital m ediation. T h e city, as part o f a landscape o f com puting, consists o f a m ultiplicity o f hybrid spaces —a set o f ‘m aterial and im aginary geographies w hich include, b u t are not restricted to, o n -lin e experiences’ (Wakeford, 1999: 180). Follow ing a similar approach, Forlano (2009) exam ines the ways in w hich W iFi technologies p ro ­ duce socio-cultural and econom ic reconfigurations o f the city, generating a set o f new codescapes. Perhaps some o f the m ost discussed hybrid spaces in the com ing together o f digital technology and the city are the spaces o f surveillance. Digital technologies facilitate and enable urban surveillance n o t simply through data collection and recom bination b ut also through techniques o f visualization and sim ulation (Graham , 1998). Taking Foucault’s n otion o f panopticism to new heights, and

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draw ing on the ability o f com puters to store and recom bine large quantities o f inform ation in near real-tim e, G raham and W ood (2003) suggest the em ergence o f a ‘su p er-p an o p tico n ’: ‘a system o f surveillance w ith o u t walls, w indow s, towers or guards’ (Poster, 1990: 93, cited in G raham and W ood, 2003: 230), p o in tin g to a quantitative change in the state’s ability to govern via direct surveillance. T h e im plications o f this process, they suggest, go significantly beyond issues o f privacy a n d /o r disciplinary control. From closed-circuit television (C C T V ) and smart utility m eterin g to social targeting and m arketing facilitated by data collection, surveillance fuels the grow ing in fo rm atio n econom y o f the city w hile su p porting a particular p o litical-eco n o m ic configuration. T his continuous and real-tim e tracking o f bodies and behaviours supports a segm entation o f service provision (differentiating users betw een levels o f ability to pay, risk o r eligibility) and fosters a neoliberal logic that prioritizes the privatization o f public services, the co m ­ m odification o f the city and the d evelopm ent o f urban m arkets (G raham and W ood, 2 0 0 3 :2 2 9 ). A n exam ination o f poten tial inequalities em b ed d ed in the urban operations o f code led to th e fo rm u latio n o f software-sorted geographies , the digitally m ediated sorting techniques ‘applied in efforts to try to separate privileged and m arginal­ ized groups and places across a w ide range o f sectors and dom ains’ (G raham , 2005: 562). Softw are-sorting, exem plified by face-reco g n itio n C C T V and elec­ tronic m obility systems, illustrates the role th at code and program m ing play as m ediators o f u rb an practices, shaping b o th the city and its politics (T h rift and French, 2002; K itchin and D odge, 2011). Such a digitally-m ediated city is a sen­ tient city , an u b iq u ito u s co m p u tin g en v iro n m en t that ‘is n o t a passive backdrop b u t an active agent in organising daily lives ... It is a w orld w here w e n o t only th in k o f cities b u t cities th in k o f us’ (C rang and G raham , 2007: 789). T his u b iq ­ uitous co m p u tin g characteristic o f the co n tem p o rary urban co n d itio n , described by G reenfield (2006) as everyware , ‘seeks to em b ed co m p u ters into o u r everyday lives in such ways as to ren d er th em invisible and allow th em to be taken for g ran te d ’ (Galloway, 2004: 384).

SMART URBANISM A recen t and p o p u lar c o n fig u ra tio n o f digital urb an ism is th e idea o f th e sm art city , th at ex ten d s and actualizes th e digital prom ise o f u rb an p ro b lem -so lv in g . P ro m o te d by th e c o rp o ra te sector, in te rn a tio n a l organizations, national and local g o v ern m en ts alike, th e d o m in a n t vision o f th e sm art city is o n e o f a d ig ­ itally en h a n ce d u rb a n ity th a t co m b in es in tellig en t infrastructure, h ig h -te c h u rb an d ev elo p m en t, th e digital econom y, and e-citizen s. N arratives aro u n d sm art cities are deep ly ro o te d in seductive and n o rm a tiv e visions o f th e future,

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w here tech n o lo g y stands as the prim ary driver for change (Luque-Ayala et al., 2 0 1 6 ).T h e idea has gained global recognition th ro u g h the publicity associated w ith the IB M -o w n ed tradem ark S m arter Cities®. It also inherits elem ents from academ ic ideas developed in the 2000s on intelligent cities — w hich emphasize a problem -solving approach th rough partnerships betw een academ ia, business, and g o v ern m en t, w h ere IC T operates as a key in p u t towards regional innova­ tion, com petitiveness, and eco n o m ic developm ent (K om ninos, 2002; C aragliu et al., 2011). Since its inception, the smart city has been a vague and nebulous concept. It comes charged w ith aspirations for a better future, alongside expectations o f green grow th, infrastructure flexibility, new urban services, transparency, dem and respon­ siveness, social inclusion and urban sustainability. Sm art city interventions take a broad range o f forms, in m ost cases (but not always) foregrounding the role o f urban com puting and digital technologies. Examples include Barcelona’s Sentilo , a m unicipally ow ned open source platform aim ed at collecting data from and oper­ ating urban sensors, and C hicago’s Sm artD ata , an experim ental predictive analytics platform . Sm art city initiatives are often an amalgam o f loosely connected projects o f various sizes, under the leadership o f both public and private stakeholders —as in the case o f the Am sterdam Sm art C ity initiative, w hich is a collection o f about 200 projects involving digital technologies. R io de Janeiro provides an exam ple o f the transform ations that digital tech ­ nologies are spearheading in co n tem p o rary urban governance. In 2010, follow ing an extrem e rain event that resulted in w idespread flooding and land­ slides, R io ’s m ayor com m issioned IBM to design and im plem ent a digitallyenabled m unicipal-scale control centre. R io ’s O perations C en tre (C O R ; see h ttp ://c o r .r io ) facilitates the in tegration o f urban services, including transport, energy, em ergency response, waste m anagem ent, and social assistance. T he C O R , ubiquitously show cased as an e x e m p la r‘sm art city’ initiative,‘operates 24 hours a day and 7 days a w eek, in terco n n ectin g the inform ation o f several m unicipal systems for visualization, m o n ito rin g , analysis and response in real­ tim e’ (Prefeitura R io de Janeiro, 2011: 14). W ith over 80 custom izable com puter m onitors fo rm in g a gigantic screen, the C O R resembles a 1960s NASA control room . From here, city officials take decisions to m anage the city’s everyday flows and circulations and, w h en needed, respond to em ergencies. T h ro u g h radio and T V broadcasts as well as a vigorous presence on Facebook, Tw itter, Waze, YouTube, and Instagram , the C O R actively engages the citizen in the everyday fu n ctio n in g (and breakdow n) o f urban infrastructures — fostering a m ediatic atm osphere o f em ergency. A new way o f governing the city stems from this ‘collapse in relations o f control (o f the everyday and the em ergency) and the transform ation o f form s o f engagem ent w ith the public (where the public does

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no lo n g er o p erate as the final receiving e n d -p o in t o f th e infrastructure n etw o rk b u t as an essential fu n ctio n al o r o p eratio nal e le m e n t)’ (Luque-A yala and M arvin, 2016: 204). Luque-A yala and M arv in argue that these digitally-enabled logics o f transparency and visibility, m o b ilizin g the em erg en cy as p art o f the everyday, do n o t question established orders b u t rath er ensure th eir m aintenance: ‘in b ein g offered the v ie w p o in t o f th e co n tro l ro o m , th e citizen, rath er than a political subject, becom es an o p eratio n al c o m p o n e n t o f th e in frastru ctu re’ (Luque-A yala and M arvin, 2016: 206). O ver the past decade, scholars w ith in geography and urban studies have started to ask critical questions o f the sm art city (H ollands, 2008; Luque-Ayala and M arvin, 2015). H o w are these n ew form s o f digital technology transfoim ing urban flows and reshaping urban politics and governance? W h at are the dom inant logics and pathways at play, and to w h at ex ten t can ‘sm art’ em brace progressive agendas? H o w do different form s o f urbanity and citizen im aginaries take shape and becom e contested th ro u g h the sm art city? (Luque-Ayala and M arvin, 2015). K itchin et al. (2016: 17-22) have identified a set o f co m m o n critiques o f the sm art city. First, the sm art city advances a reductionist fo rm o f technocratic governance that presum es that all aspects o f a city can be m easured or m onitored; urban p rob­ lems are treated as technical problem s, and, accordingly, sm art cities prioritize technological solutions. Second, the sm art city is buggy, brittle, and hackable: it is ‘prone to viruses, glitches and crashes’ and ‘vulnerable to being m aliciously hacked’. T hird, in line w ith the critique o f digital surveillance identified in the previous paragraphs, the sm art city ’s m obilization o f big data puts in place form s o f panoptic surveillance, predictive profiling, and social sorting. Finally, sm art city interventions and th eir m obilization o f data create the illusion o f neutrality, over­ looking b o th urban politics and the politics o f big data. Yet, data collection and code developm ent always involve value ju d g em en ts, and through this, they repre­ sent a political interv en tio n . T hese critiques start u n p ack in g the p o w e r/k n o w le d g e dim ensions o f sm art urbanism , p o in tin g to th e ways in w h ich the sm art city, as a te c h n o -u to p ia n dis­ course, p rom otes n eoliberal rationalities and specific private interests. A grow ing critiq u e o f th e sm art city highlights its role in th e co rp o ratizatio n o f urban gov­ ernance. B o th sm art urbanism and u rban big data can be seen as agendas m obilized by IC T co rp o rates to ‘cap tu re’ g o v ern m en t functions and develop new m arket o p p o rtu n itie s — a c o rp o rate endeavour advancing en trep ren eu rial goals (G reenfield, 2013; T ow nsend, 2013;V anolo, 2013; S oderstrom et al., 2014; Barns, 2016). T ran sm u tin g all sorts o f u rban flows in to data, the em erg in g flow that enables u rb an co m p u tatio n al logics plays an im p o rta n t role in reco n fig u rin g the city as a business-led, en trep ren eu rial, and co rp o rate entity (M arvin and Luque-A yala, 2017).

DIGITAL SPACES

T he experience o f N ew York City (NYC) illustrates the growing role o f entre­ preneurial logics in the digital city, specifically through the idea o f the ‘data-driven city’constituting urban data as an infrastructural utility, this also points to the em er­ gence o f data as a novel infrastructural form . For N ew Y ork,‘a data-driven city is a city that intelligently uses data to better deliver critical services, while increasing accountability through transparency’ (N ew York City, 2013: 7). U nder the leader­ ship o f mayor Bloom berg, the C ity C ouncil approved the O p en Data Law, requiring all city agencies to open their data by 2018.T he law is expected not only to generate econom ic opportunities, but also to ‘perm it the public to assist in iden­ tifying efficient solutions for governm ent’ (N Y C Local Law 11 o f 2012).This led to the developm ent o f N Y C O penD ata, the city’s open data platform (see h ttp s :// opendata.cityofnewyork.us). As o f July 2014 the city had made available to the public nearly 1300 datasets through the portal. O p en data platforms aim to stand­ ardize form s o f data collection and make it available in m achine-readable formats. U nlike w ith digital urban dashboards (Kitchin et al., 2015; M attern, 2015), the emphasis is n ot so m uch on data visualization as on opening up the possibility for calculation via the provision o f raw data — w hich, in turn, is usually accessed by civic hackers, code developers, and entrepreneurs in an attem pt to reimagine urban processes. Barns (2016) argues that these platforms support the m unicipal adoption o f entrepreneurial goals, prioritizing com petitive positioning and attracting invest­ m ent. This marks ‘a recent shift in the rhetorical aspirations o f the open data m ovem ent away from the values o f openness and transparency and towards a m ore confined focus on value generation’, w here local governm ent is reinterpreted as a platform or the provider o f a marketplace for a new urban flow (Barns, 2016: 554).

DIGITAL URBANISM BEYOND THE SMART CITY In trying to avoid black and w hite critiques o f the smart city, scholars have pointed to the need to question the ontological and epistemological underpinnings and implications o f the now pervasive com putational urbanism. T he argum ent is that an understanding o f how digital technologies transform and shape the city cannot simply be lim ited to an analysis o f how, where, and on behalf o f w hom such tech­ nologies are used. D raw ing on philosophy and media studies, urban com putation is framed as a ‘m etaphor, m ethod and organizing fram e’ (Golumbia, 2009: 1) for the city, an abstract m achine that ‘constructs a real that is to come, a new type o f reality’ (Deleuze and G uattari, 1987: 142; see M arvin and Luque-Ayala, 2017). As such, the smart city is n ot simply a ‘top-dow n attem pt to discipline citizens’, neither ‘could it be challenged by a simple inversion o f this relation, via a bottom -up liberation o f

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technologies in the nam e o f peo p le’ (Krivy, 2018: 14). Likewise, the im plications o f the corporate sm art city can n o t simply be counterbalanced through em bedding digital technologies w ith the ‘liberal hum anist values o f inclusion, em po w erm en t, sustainability and digital privacy’ (Krivy, 2018: 14). Scholars seeking to transcend simplistic to p -d o w n o r b o tto m -u p analyses o f the sm art city argue that the em erging wave o f digital urbanism , regardless o f w h o it is enacted by and for, puts in place a distinctive regim e o f urban governance — one that, in instilling a new way o f m apping and shaping relationships betw een forces, ‘inscribes particular ways o f seeing th e city, representing relationships and anticipating a changed m aterial future th ro u g h connections and disconnections’ (M arvin and L uqueAyala, 2 0 1 7 :8 6 ). So, w hile the future shape o f the digital city is largely u n k n o w n , increasingly the com ing to g eth er o f the digital and the urban is recognized as a project o f futuring, a speculative endeavour that, in m obilizing algorithm ic prediction, defies traditional scientific logics o f causality. T h e com ing to g eth er o f big data and form s o f ‘algorithm ic speculation’ is likely, b o th m aterially and discursively, to ‘anticipate particular kinds o f cities to c o m e ’ (Leszczynski, 2016: 1692). As the digital algo­ rith m im agines a particular urban future, it also perform s it. T his calls for a b etter understanding o f the role o f algorithm s in the m aking o f the city. Yet, it is clear that in im agining an urban future, urban big data and its analytics can only repro­ duce existing urban fragm entations and socio -eco n o m ic inequalities; the tangible m ateriality o f the latter persists beyond the digital interv en tio n , and the only cer­ tainty projected into the future is the characteristic unevenness o f the contem porary city (Leszczynski, 2016). To conclude, it is im p o rtan t to highlight the need to fu rth er exam ine the ste­ reotyped and hybrid bodies, agents, and agencies at play in the m aking o f digital urbanism . First, this m eans asking questions about ho w difference and m ultiplicity, gender and race, are in co rp o rated a n d /o r m obilized. Gillian R o se (2016), p o in tin g to the absence o f w o m e n ’s voices in sm art city events, calls for a research agenda around ‘h o w different social categories are co n stitu ted ’ in the digital city — acknow ledging that digital data and devices b o th create and solidify social stereotypes b u t also allow people to navigate betw een and against them . An em erging q u eer and fem inist critique o f digital space seeks to uncover the ‘colo­ nizing, racializing and universalizing processes’ at play (Cupples, 2015), p o in tin g to the different ways in w hich different bodies experience relationships across code (both as n orm s and algorithm ic instructions) and space (C ockayne and R ichardson, 2017). Second, it m eans asking questions about the types o f bodies engaged in m aking the digital city. It is well know n that, w h en it com es to the city, the m ost effective technologies are those that are adopted as infrastructures (T hrift, 2014).

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This requires attentiveness to the various digital systems and processes that, em bedded in the background, becom e urban infrastructural flows in their ow n right. T h rift has suggested, for example, that data is likely to becom e em bedded in urban surfaces (walls, screens, and so on), so that every surface o f the city could speak back to us, every urban m om ent and encounter m ediated through digital processes. Yet, in the view o f R ose (2017), w hile digital agencies (the agencies o f the technological non-hum an) have been the subject o f detailed analyses, digitallym ediated hum an agency still demands further attention. She refers to a posthum an agency ‘always already co-constituted w ith technologies’ (Rose, 2017: 779) — an agency that is technologically m ediated, diverse, and inventive; a radically expanded hum an that plays a role in co-producing and re-creating the city. This is a call for reintegrating the now technologically-m ediated hum an into our understanding o f urban digital spaces, and, m ost im portantly, to reconsider its capacity to reinvent urban futures.

REFERENCES Barns, S. (2016) ‘M ine your data: O pen data, digital strategies and entrepreneurial governance by code’, Urban Geography, 37: 554-571. Bolter, J.D. and Grusin, R . (2000) Remediation: Understanding N ew Media. Cambridge, MA: M IT Press. Boyer, M .C. (1992) ‘T he im aginary real w orld o f cybercities’, Assemblage , 18: 115-127. Caragliu, A., Del Bo, C. and Nijkamp, P. (2011) ‘Smart cities in Europe’, Journal o f Urban Technology, 18: 65—82. Cockayne, D.G. and Richardson, L. (2017) ‘Q ueering code/space:The co-production of socio-sexual codes and digital technologies’, Gender; Place & Culture , 24(11): 1642-1658. Crang, M. (2010) ‘Cyberspace as the new public domain’, in C. Wanjiku Kihato, M. Massoumi, B.A. Ruble and A.M. Garland (eds), Urban Diversity: Space, Culture and Inclusive Pluralism in Cities Worldwide. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp 99—122. Crang, M. and Graham, S. (2007) ‘Sentient cities: Ambient intelligence and the politics o f urban space’, Information , Communication & Society, 10: 789—817. Cupples, J. (2015) ‘Coloniality, masculinity and big data economies’, Julie Cupples: Geography /D evelopm ent / Culture /M edia. Available at: https://juliecupples.wordpress. c o m /2 0 1 5 / 0 5 / 1 1 /co lo n iality -m asculinity-and-big-data-econom ies (accessed 1 February 2018). Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Forlano, L. (2009) ‘WiFi geographies:W hen code meets place’, The Information Society, 25: 344-352.

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Galloway, A. (2004) ‘Intimations o f everyday life: U biquitous com puting and the city’, Cultural Studies , 18: 384-408. Gates, B. (1995) The Road Ahead. London: H odder and Stoughton. Golumbia, D. (2009) The Cultural Logic o f Computation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Graham, S. (1998) ‘Spaces o f surveillant simulation: N ew technologies, digital rep­ resentations, and material geographies’, Environment and Planning D : Society and Space, 16:483-504. Graham, S. (2004) ‘Introduction’, in S. Graham (ed.), The Cybercities Reader. London: R outledge. pp. 1-29. Graham, S. (2005) ‘Software-sorted geographies’, Progress in H um an Geography, 29:562—580. Graham, S. and M arvin, S. (1996) Telecommunications and the C ity: Electronic Spaces, Urban Places. London: R outledge. Graham, S. and Wood, D. (2003) ‘Digitizing surveillance: Categorization, space, inequality’, Critical Social Policy, 23: 227—248. Greenfield, A. (2006) Everyware: The D awning A ge o f Ubiquitous Computing. Berkeley, CA: N ew Riders. Greenfield, A. (2013) Against the Smart C ity. N ew York: D o projects. Harris, B. (1966) ‘T he uses o f theory in the simulation o f urban phenom ena’,Journal o f the American Institute o f Planners , 32: 258-273. Hollands, R .G . (2008) ‘Will the real smart city please stand up? Intelligent, progressive or entrepreneurial?’, C ity , 12: 303—320. Kitchin, R . and Dodge, M. (2011) Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life. Cam bridge, MA: M IT Press. Kitchin, R ., Lauriault, T.P and McArdle, G. (2015) ‘Know ing and governing cities through urban indicators, city benchm arking, and real-time dashboards’, Regional Studies, Regional Science, 2: 6—28. Kitchin, R ., Lauriault, T.P and McArdle, G. (2016) ‘Smart cities and the politics o f urban data’, in S. M arvin, A. Luque-Ayala and C. M cFarlane (eds), Smart Urbanism: Utopian Vision or False D awn. London: R outledge. pp. 16-33. Komninos, N. (2002) Intelligent Cities: Innovation, Knowledge Systems, and Digital Spaces. London: Taylor & Francis. Krivy, M. (2018) ‘Towards a critique o f cybernetic urbanism: T he smart city and the society o f control’, Planning Theory, 17(1): 8-30. Leszczynski, A. (2016) ‘Speculative futures: Cities, data, and governance beyond smart urbanism ’, Environment and Planning A , 48: 1691-1708. Light, J.S. (2003) From Warfare to Welfare: Defense Intellectuals and Urban Problems in Cold War America. Baltimore, M D: Johns Hopkins University Press. Luque-Ayala, A. and M arvin, S. (2015) ‘D eveloping a critical understanding o f smart urbanism?’, Urban Studies, 52: 2105-2116. Luque-Ayala, A. and M arvin, S. (2016) ‘T he maintenance o f urban circulation: An operational logic o f infrastructural control’, Environment and Planning D : Society and Space, 34: 191-208.

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Luque-Ayala, A., McFarlane, C. and Marvin, S. (2016) ‘Introduction’, in S. Marvin, A. Luque-Ayala and C. McFarlane (eds), Smart Urbanism: Utopian Vision or False Dawn. London: Routledge. pp. 1—15. Marvin, S. and Luque-Ayala, A. (2017) ‘Urban operating systems: Diagramming the city’, International Journal o f Urban and Regional Research, 41(1): 84—103. M attern, S. (2015) ‘Mission control: A history o f the urban dashboard’, Places Journal, March. Available at: https://doi.org/10.22269/150309 (accessed 1 February 2018). McLuhan, M. (1994 [1964]) Understanding Media: The Extensions o f M an. Cambridge, MA: M IT Press. Meier, R.L. (1962) A Communications Theory o f Urban Growth. Cambridge, MA: M IT Press. Mitchell, WJ. (2004) Me++: The Cyborg S elf and the Networked City. Cambridge, MA: M IT Press. Negroponte, N. (1995) Being Digital. London: Hodder and Stoughton. NewYork City (2013) C hief Information & Innovation Officer Progress Report —December 2013. New York: N Y C Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT). Available at: www l.nyc.gov/site/doitt/about/reports-presentations.page (accessed 17 May 2018). Prefeitura R io de Janeiro (2011) Plano de Emergencia para Chuvas Fortes da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro. R io de Janeiro: Defesa Civil/Prefeitura R io de Janeiro. Available at: w w w .rio .rj.g o v .b r /d ls ta tic /1 0 1 1 2 / 4 4 0 2 3 2 7 /4 1 0 9 1 2 1 /R I O D E J A N E IR O RESILIEN TE_2013.pdf (accessed 17 May 2018). Rose, G. (2016) ‘So what would a smart city designed for women be like? (and why that’s not the only question to ask)’, Visual/M ethod/C ulture. Available at: http s:// visualm ethodculture. wo rdpress.com /2016/04/2 2 /so -w h at-w o u ld -a-sm art-city d e s ig n e d -fo r-w o m e n -b e -lik e -a n d -w h y -th a ts -n o t-th e -o n ly -q u e stio n -to -a s k (accessed 1 February 2018). Rose, G. (2017) ‘Posthuman agency in the digitally mediated city: Exteriorization, individuation, reinvention’, Annals o f the American Association o f Geographers, 107: 779-793. Soderstrom, O., Paasche,T. and Klauser, F. (2014) ‘Smart cities as corporate storytelling’, C ity , 18: 307-320. Thrift, N. (2014) ‘The promise o f urban informatics: Some speculations’, Environment and Planning A , 46: 1263—1266. Thrift, N. and French, S. (2002) ‘The automatic production o f space’, Transactions o f the Institute o f British Geographers, 27: 309-335. TofBer, A. (1980) The Third Way. New York: William Morrow. Townsend, A. (2013) Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest fo r a N ew Utopia. NewYork: W.W. N orton. Townsend, A.M. (2001) ‘N etw ork cities and the global structure o f the Internet’, American Behavioral Scientist, 44: 1697—1716.

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Vanolo, A. (2013) ‘Smartmentality: T he smart city as disciplinary strategy’, Urban Studies , 51: 883-898. Wakeford, N. (1999) ‘G ender and the landscapes o f com puting in an Internet cafe’, in M. Crang, P. Crang and J. May (eds), Virtual Geographies: Bodies, Space and Relations. London: Routledge. pp. 178-200. Webber, M. (1964) Explorations into Urban Structure. Philadelphia: University o f Pennsylvania Press. Zook, M. (2005) The Geography o f the Internet Industry: Venture Capital, Dot-coms, and Local Knowledge. M alden, MA: Blackwell.

4 RURAL Ma r t i n D o d g e

RURAL TE C H N O LO G Y R ural space is distinctive because o f its low population density and its territorial extensiveness. Settlem ents are small in size and people, and econom ic activity are w idely dispersed geographically. T h e resulting condition o f rem oteness in terms o f physical distance and transport inaccessibility correlates w ith higher costs o f delivering public services and the provision o f infrastructures in rural areas. Indeed, it is a sym ptom atic characteristic o f true rurality to live ‘o ff the g rid ’ in term s o f access to services like electricity, telephony, mains drinking w ater and sewage systems that are ubiquitous and taken-for-granted in cities (Vannini and Taggart, 2014). R ural places are typically also politically and culturally peripheral from new ideas and political power. In many places, rural residents are econom ically poorer and less educated than com parable people in cities. Given these conditions, peripheral rural regions have traditionally been backwaters for technology and slower adopters o f new digital developm ents (cf. Salemink et al., 2017).This chap­ ter is focused on the rural space in a broadly W estern developed econom y context, w ith em pirical examples draw n from contem porary farm ing practice in Britain. It is well know n that telecom s and in tern et services available to residents and businesses in rural areas are often o f poorer quality, lower capacity, less sophisti­ cated and w ith o u t choice, m ore unreliable than in urban areas, and yet ironically they can also be m ore expensive. T h e high cost o f physical cabling to connect w idely dispersed households has held back high-speed broadband (Skerratt, 2010). T h e difficulty and cost o f siting antennas to service scattered populations, w hich can often be in challenging terrain, have m eant m obile telephony and 3 G /4 G provision can be patchy at best and com pletely unavailable in m ore rem ote places.

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T hese ‘n o t-sp o ts’ in broadband in tern e t connectivity and m obile p h o n e coverage persist in parts o f rural B ritain, for exam ple, despite several years o f significant capital investm ent and g o v ern m en t subsidies to com m ercial providers (Philip et al., 2017). As p art o f w id er ‘digital divide’ debates, the relatively p o o r provision o f in tern e t infrastructure and low er-level enrolm ent o f digital technologies are seen as significant im pedim ents to the so cio -eco n o m ic developm ent o f rural areas (M alecki, 2003). It is therefore som ew hat paradoxical that for decades inform ation and com m u n icatio n technologies (ICTs) have been ch am p io n ed as a possible way to overcom e the disadvantages o f rurality in developm ent projects, particularly the sense o f rem oteness (cf. K leine, 2013).

AGRICULTURE, INDUSTRIALISM AN D THE RURAL IDYLL In econom ically developed nations, the m ajority o f the p o pulation live in cities and tend to overlook and underappreciate w h at happens beyond the urban hinterland. In part, this is because the n o tio n o f the rural as a tranquil backw ater, the antonym to busy urban m odernity, rem ains po ten t, even w hile being patently untrue. T h e idyllic countryside is a fantasy b ut w ith real effects on ho w society in general relates to rural space and, in particular, understands agriculture. It can also be argued that these deep m isperceptions c o n trib u te to the absence o f the rural from m ost m ain­ stream rep o rtin g and co n tem p o rary scholarly analysis o f digital technologies. M ost academic researchers, technology journalists and m ajor philosophers o f ‘the digital’ — w h o are alm ost all urbanites — have a blind spot w ith regard to consideration o f the particular ‘im pacts’ o f co m p u terizatio n in rural contexts. T h e countryside is usually com pletely m issing in descriptions o f the organizational effects o f software systems, in consideration o f the social im plications o f the in tern e t o f things, and in analysis o f the possibilities o f the sharing econom y and so-called ‘big data’. Yet rural spaces are a heterogeneous set o f productive landscapes, m ost o f th em ow ned and actively m anaged by conventional inform ation systems and econom ic activities planned by software algorithm s, w ith results stored in spreadsheets and databases. So, w hile overlooked in scholarly analysis, it is self-evident that software increasingly m akes a m aterial difference to how the rural is bro u g h t into being. W hile the physical prevalence o f co m p u ter hardw are eq u ip m en t and o th e r visible IC T infrastructure is considerably less, in part, as the population densities o f rural areas are low and the activities are spatially dispersed, the algorithm ic processes o f code are no less intensive o r significant. This is dem onstrated by changes in agricultural systems - the m ost significant use o f rural space and its m ost distinctive econom ic feature — and the everyday practices o f farm ers. To m ost outside observers living in cities, the superficial

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appearance and social perception o f agriculture, for example in lowland Britain, is that o f a ‘green and pleasant’ landscape as it lacks m ost o f the overt signs o f tech­ nological dependency: the hum an-m ade infrastructures and the hard materiality o f steel and concrete associated w ith industrial production and consum ption. People see fields o f crops, familiar farm animals grazing on grass and green trees. W hile there are signs o f orderly cultivation and elem ents o f m anagem ent, such as gates and fences, nevertheless farm ing space is perceived as being essentially rooted in ‘natural’ processes (unlike cities). A griculture is also w idely perceived as being less technologically advanced, yet it is often an intensive and industrial-scale activity. M ost farm ing landscapes have been thoroughly technologically dependent since the start o f the tw entieth cen­ tury and progress in m echanization and the replacem ent o f horse pow er by cheaper and m ore capable diesel engines and electrical m otors. D u rin g and im m ediately after the Second War W orld, in the U K , there was a m ajor push to increase individual farm outputs, raise crop yields per hectare, and im prove over­ all productivity w hile also reducing the labour force. G overnm ent subsidies and price guarantees encouraged the consolidation o f farms, specialization, and in ten ­ sification in production. W holesale m odernization across agricultural practice m eant the enrolm ent o f m ore and larger m achinery, new types o f buildings, im proved livestock breeds, and the application o f biochem ical breakthroughs in the form o f pesticides and herbicides. W hile the push for ever m ore intensive industrialized agricultural production may have dim inished som ew hat in the U K in recent decades - in part due to concerns about food quality, animal welfare, biodiversity and sustainability — the application o f IC T s and m ore digital technology for autom ation has becom e m ore evident th ro u g h o u t farm ing. C ode now makes a difference to daily farm ing prac­ tice and m ore w idely in the operation and governance o f agro-industrial food systems —w ith some parts com ing to depend on software and distributed inform ation systems to function.

HO W CODE IS C H A N G IN G AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION - THREE CASE STUDIES Industrial-scale farms are com plex spatial and econom ic entities that are ‘made (and constantly remade) through the entanglem ent and interaction o f the social and the natural, the hum an and the n on-hum an, the rural and the non-rural, and the local and the global’ (Woods, 2007: 495). T h e entanglem ents that bring con­ tem porary farms into being now include m ultiple instantiation o f IC Ts and increasing layers o f ‘pervasive com puting’, environm ental sensors, autom ated iden­ tification systems, distributed databases, software algorithm s and sim ulation models.

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To illustrate how digital technologies, particularly software, are m aking a real dif­ ference to agricultural practices and changing the farm ing landscape, we present three b rie f case studies in a B ritish context: (i) precision-agricultural techniques in arable production; (ii) b io-digital livestock p ro d u ctio n and food traceability sys­ tems; and (iii) dairy p ro d u ctio n and robotic m ilking.

P r e c i s io n - a g r ic u l t u r a l t e c h n i q u e s in a r a b le p ro d u c t io n O n e area o f agriculture w h ere digital code has had m ost im pact in term s o f changing practice to enhance yields and im prove profitability is in arable farm ing, particularly for large-scale cereal p roduction. D u rin g the tw entieth century, increasing m echanization had already transform ed cereal farm ing into an efficient industrial activity. To fu rth er raise productivity, digital technology has been enrolled to overcom e the lack o f in fo rm ation about ho w crop yields vary w ithin fields and w here best to apply inputs like fertilizers and pesticides to have m axi­ m um im pact (in the past, farm ers had to apply inputs uniform ly across large fields, w hich was ecologically inefficient and econom ically wasteful). C o m p u terizatio n o f key farm m achin ery to record spatial position through o n -b o ard G PS and m o n ­ ito r crop and environm ental conditions through sensors, in com bination w ith external data (such as high resolution, m ulti-spectral satellite im agery and m eteo r­ ological data; Yang, 2009), is facilitating the inform atization o f farm ers’ w orking practices in w hat has been term e d ‘precision ag ricu ltu re’. M obile digital technologies and analytical software packages have transform ed the tacit and em b o d ied know ledge o f the farm er (their ‘feeling’ for land, one m ight say) in to quantified auto m ated procedures, using digital data that is captured largely au tonom ously and processed algorithm ically to give actionable spatial know ledge (Tsouvalis et al., 2000; see also Figure 4.1). In large-scale cereal pro­ duction, w h ere a single farm m ig h t have several thousand hectares grow ing one crop, even relatively small gains in yields per hectare and reductions in chem ical inputs, enabled by the algorithm s in precision agriculture software, represent sig­ nificant financial returns. D erived in form ation from precision farm ing on crop yields, land quality and varying soil capabilities, coupled w ith details on prices, subsidy payments, environm ental grants, etc. are then fed into lo n g -term forecasting m odels for food supplies. T h e com bine harvester, initially developed in the 1930s to b rin g to g eth er sev­ eral key stages in the harvesting o f cereal crops into a single m obile m achine, is o ne o f the iconic symbols o f industrial-scale farm ing. Today it is the central m echanical c o m p o n e n t in precision agriculture and is packed w ith digital tech ­ nology. Integrated software systems and a raft o f sensors continuously m o n ito r and control m any aspects o f the harvesting process; this includes being capable o f ru n n in g sem i-autonom ously w ith steering via laser guidance and positioning the

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Grower: Farm: Field: WDR25SE12 Area: 68.61 ac

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Field Boundary Corn - Moisture Percent 1 3 .2 -1 4 .2 (2.2 ac ) (3.3 %) 1 4 .3 -1 5 .1 (4.1 ac ) (5.9 %) 15.1 -1 5 .9 (8.3 a c ) (12.1 %) 1 5 .9 -1 6 .4 (1 6 .4 ac ) (23.8 %) 1 6 .4 -1 6 .8 (1 8 .8 ac ) (27.5 %) 1 6 .8 -1 7 .4 (1 5 .4 ac ) (22.4 %) 1 7 .4 -1 8 .5 (3.5 ac ) (5.0 %)

Detailed yield m apping o f pro ductivity enables input resources to be spatially

targeted for best effect. Here in-field variability is visualised as a continuous surface by software algorithm s from a grid o f sampled data. C ourtesy o f V iafield/A griC harts, a Barchart. com, Inc. company.

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reel and cuttin g bar using cameras and im age-recognition algorithm s. As well as handling the com plex tasks around crop harvesting, they operate as m obile data collection platform s, w ith detailed m easurem ents o f yield volum es, quality, and m oisture co n te n t b ein g gathered continuously and georeferenced by GPS. T h e driver’s cab, traditionally a noisy and dusty place, is no w fully sealed, soundproofed and air-co n d itio n ed , and is as m u ch a software m o n ito rin g centre as a site to physically m anoeuvre the machine. C ode has transduced farmers into screen-workers, spending as m u ch tim e m o n ito rin g sensor outputs as lo o k in g at the crop in the field (Figure 4.2).

Figure 4.2

O p e ra to r co n tro l panels in a com bine harvester. C o u rte sy o f C LA A S UK. http-.//

w w w .claas.co.uk/fascination-claas/m edia/dow nload-center

T h e code u n d erp in n in g precision agriculture and the algorithm s in expensive m achinery like com bine harvesters have developed to a p o in t w here there are via­ ble attem pts at a fully autom ated arable production system using smart technologies,

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big data and m achine-learning algorithms (Wolfert et al., 2017). Given the scale and capital intensity in the arable sector, it is here that autonom ous farm robots could feasibly replace hum ans com pletely for open-field operations. As such the future com bine harvester, w orking all day and all night to gather in the w heat, will not need an air-conditioned cab at all because there will be no person on-board.

Bio-digital liv e s t o c k p ro d u c tio n and food t ra c e a b ilit y s y s te m s Inform ation systems and com plex software databases are now a crucial aspect o f livestock farm ing. A gro-food m anufacturers and m ajor retail corporations have im plem ented systems o f hazard analysis and com plete life-cycle traceability for m eat products, and changed their sourcing and standards o f production to enable auditing and accountability (Freidberg, 2007). T h e goal is ‘farm -to -fo rk ’ traceability, w hich is only achievable in a financially and logistically efficient fashion through the enrolm ent o f sensors and digital iden­ tification systems. These systems automatically record m aterial flows and changes in status, w hich are controlled through software algorithm s, w ith the results being stored in distributed databases that feed into different actors in the supply chain. Analysis by B u h r (2003) details m ultiple different track-and-trace systems relating to m eat supply and dem onstrates that in each case, individual animals, and subse­ quently post-slaughter com ponent parts o f the carcass, are abstracted and m onitored through various mechanisms. This requires a lot o f abstraction and identification, m uch o f w hich is invisible to the various parties involved. O ne m ode o f identification is the use o f m andatory ID coding o f animals, such as w ing tags on birds, barcode ear tags on livestock, and cattle passports (Figure 4.3), w hich make farm animals into easily m achine-readable com m odities. Database records build up around the livestock over its life, including the details o f breeding, farm location(s), feeding regimes, and space-tim e points o f interaction or transform a­ tion (such as vet check-ups, vaccinations, slaughter and the packaging, processing, and distribution o f the animal as separate m eat products). These audit trails can also collect the names o f the hum an operators involved to provide a chain o f respon­ sibility/liability for any failure or contam ination. M uch o f this data outlives the animal and is folded into livestock breeding databases to deepen know ledge about the productivity o f genetic lineages and then w orked upon by software algorithms to predict and determ ine the next generation o f cattle, pigs, and poultry through genetic selection and artificial breeding. O ne driver o f com puterized traceability, w hich seeks to fully regulate the rearing, m ovem ent, and approved slaughter o f livestock in Britain, is past failures in audit systems, w hich exasperated the im pact o f diseases in the 1990s and 2000s, includ­ ing scrapie in sheep, BSE in cattle, and avian-flu risks in poultry (Barker, 2015).

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Some elements o f these traceability databases have also been opened up to consum erfacing inquiry, enabling shoppers w ith the inclination to be able to ‘look u p ’ details on the source o f food, w h ich typically reveals the nam e o f the farm and its geo­ graphical location (Figure 4.4).

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