Urbanization of Zurich - A perspective from Luxembourg

Presentation (2023)

Panel discussion: "Zürich in the light of international experiences" with Jorge Peña, Cristina Mattiucci, Gruia Bădescu, Constance Carr, Nataliia Mysak, Hanna Hilbrandt, Andreas Wirz, Richard Wolff – ... [more ▼]

Panel discussion: "Zürich in the light of international experiences" with Jorge Peña, Cristina Mattiucci, Gruia Bădescu, Constance Carr, Nataliia Mysak, Hanna Hilbrandt, Andreas Wirz, Richard Wolff – moderated by Christian Schmid [less ▲]

Future research interests in digital urbanization – How do Google and Amazon generate relational urban geographies?

Presentation (2023)

INURA reflects on Luxembourg - Results of a feedback session with INURA

in INURA Bulletin (2023), 33

Imagining post-war reconstruction fro resilience Kyiv with INURA

Report (2023)

From protest to imagining reconstruction and urban futures

Presentation (2023)

Imagining resilient urban futures - Digital but not only

Presentation (2023)

On the sociopolitical and institutional production of digital cities

Presentation (2022)

The dichotomies of Amazon's and Google's digital cities: Representational symbolic spaces versus infrastructural hard spaces

Presentation (2022)

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 ▲]

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 ▲]