INURA as a village - urban research and action in urgent times

Report (2023)

Reflections from the 30th Anniversary Conference of the International Network for Urban Research and Action (INURA) in Luxembourg, 'Small State Big Transitions'

Report (2023)

Imagining post-war reconstruction fro resilience Kyiv with INURA

Report (2023)

Technocratic urban development: Large digital corporations as power brokers of the digital age

in Planning Theory and Practice (2022)

Large digital corporations such as Amazon.com or Alphabet Inc. are forging their position in cities by promoting themselves as the sole providers of so-called essential urban infrastructures. In this ... [more ▼]

Large digital corporations such as Amazon.com or Alphabet Inc. are forging their position in cities by promoting themselves as the sole providers of so-called essential urban infrastructures. In this paper, we reflect on how the behaviours of these current-day ‘tech giants’ are similar to those of the mid-20th century, a time period also known for dramatic infrastructural change in North American and Europe. Specifically, we are reminded of Robert Moses and how he pushed for infrastructural change in New York City and State, which were also supposedly the height of state-of-the-art urban planning at the time. He pushed his agenda, however, by brokering power and strong-arming the urban and regional development field. We reflect on Alphabet Inc.’s project in Toronto and Amazon’s search for a second headquarters in New York City and how these LDCs were similarly armed with executive and financial power and an ability to bully the field of urban development in their own interest. Behaving as digital-age power brokers, they engaged managerial-technocratic modes of urban governance to instigate projects that ultimately failed. We argue that Alphabet’s and Amazon’s strategies not only resemble those of Moses, but that all three deploy tactics that debase planning practice itself. [less ▲]

Introducing Luxembourg and reflecting on framework conditions and contradictions in urban governance

Presentation (2022)

Mapping the clouds: The matter of data centres

in Journal of Maps (2022)

The social spatial geographies of telecommunications and their infrastructures have long interested scholars in the social sciences, and in urban geography specifically. This paper focuses on data centers ... [more ▼]

The social spatial geographies of telecommunications and their infrastructures have long interested scholars in the social sciences, and in urban geography specifically. This paper focuses on data centers. Much effort has been placed in preserving the notion that data centers are ‘clouds’, a terminology that obfuscates the real human geographies of cyberplaces. In this map-making exercise, we visualize the sociopolitical human geographies of data centers, and provoke the reader to consider the impacts that data centers have on residents and their environments. The maps shown in this paper suggest four trends. First, hyperscale data center owners are building near large waterways, signifying a shift in location preferences. Second, data centers stress local administrations, financing, and availability of upstream resources, as hyperscale data centers step up their input needs. Third, data center development is state-led. Fourth the competition for data center industries unfolds across a multi-level governance context. [less ▲]

Policy failure revisited: The post-political urban development strategies of large digital corporations

Presentation (2022)

Policy failure in urban governance: the case of large digital corporations

Presentation (2021)

This paper draws upon the branch of urban studies literature known as policy mobilities (McCann 2011) and, particularly, policy failure (Temenos & Lauermann 2020) to understand the strategic practices of ... [more ▼]

This paper draws upon the branch of urban studies literature known as policy mobilities (McCann 2011) and, particularly, policy failure (Temenos & Lauermann 2020) to understand the strategic practices of large digital corporations (LDCs) in urban development. While it is a relatively new phenomenon that LDCs are appearing as important actors in the field of urban development, their role has moved beyond being simply the producers of new technological products that supposedly make cities more efficient, green and smart. They are, for example, in the background, forging their central position in the functioning of cities by taking up space (land, water, bodies) for so-called essential urban infrastructures such as data centers (Carr 2021) needed to support their technologies. At the same time, they are also driving the production of what we refer to as their symbolic spaces of LDC-style digital cities. These are Amazon’s HQ2 and the digital city that was proposed by Sidewalk Labs Toronto (daughter firm of Alphabet Inc.), projects that epitomised both their importance in the field and the height of their technological innovation. Yet, striking about these cases is that, with the exception of the HQ2 in Arlington, these projects never materialized. In this paper, we argue that this was not a coincidence. Rather, both Amazon and Alphabet effectively mobilized a strategy of policy-making that has recently received attention in the urban studies literature: policy failure (Lovell 2017; Temenos & Lauermann 2020). Viewing these cases through the lens of policy failure shows that LDC-led digital cities is not so much about producing flashy cities equipped with avant-garde technologies as it is about endorsing a post-political mode of urban governance that drains public institutions of time and resources and reconfigures state-society relations. This is a cautionary tale for practitioners, who need to understand and watch out for the flags of this disingenuous behaviour. [less ▲]

Urban development led by large digital corporations

Presentation (2021)

Digital urban development - How large digital corporations shape the field of urban governance (DIGI-GOV)

Report (2021)

DIGI-GOV is a research project that aims to understand (I) the role of large digital corporations (LDCs) in digital urbandevelopment, (II) how the presence of LDCs in urban planning practice challenge pre ... [more ▼]

DIGI-GOV is a research project that aims to understand (I) the role of large digital corporations (LDCs) in digital urbandevelopment, (II) how the presence of LDCs in urban planning practice challenge pre-existing modes urban governance, and (III) how LDC-led urban development constitutes a new relational geography of digital cities. DIGI-GOV is thus a chance to call attention to this critical shift in the ways that contemporary digital cities are constructed, planned, mediated and governed. DIGI-GOV expands on prior research that examined Alphabet Inc.’s digital city project in Toronto that raised a number of important issues forurban planners, development practitioners, and urban studies scholars – even if this particular digital city project was ultimately unsuccessful. DIGI-GOV expands this research because the range of services that LDCs provide has increased in both volume and centrality; more and more public and private institutions rely on LDCs for essential digital infrastructures. There is an urgent need to study the trajectories of urbanization that are rolled out under the leadership of LDCs and the tensions in urban governance that are unleashed. DIGI-GOV will shed light on four further cities in addition to Toronto, which have been challenged by the presence of LDCs—namely, Seattle, Washington D.C, Bissen, and Eemshaven. The selected cities are some of the few exemplary cases available where LDCs have secured their position in the local urban field. Through qualitative methodological approaches, DIGI-GOV will tease out how these cities are relationally connected through LDC-led urban development, and what scholars and practitioners can learn from these experiences. Examined together, one can scratch at the surface of, and unearth, this new emerging relational geography. [less ▲]