On February 8th of this year, we had the pleasure of having Dr Andrés Luque-Ayala in Maynooth University to give a seminar on “Digital Territories: Location Awareness and the Re-making of Political Space in Rio’s Favelas”.
This presentation was based on research conducted with Flávia Maia (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Urban Planning Dept.) on the digital mapping of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas in the context of the city’s ICT drive to become a leading ‘smart city’.
We are delighted to have Dr. Andrés Luque-Ayala as a guest speaker on Wednesday 8th February at 3pm, Iontas Building, room 2.31 for the third of our Programmable City seminars this academic year 2016/17.
Dr. Andrés Luque-Ayala is a lecturer at Durham University, based in the Department of Geography. He has a broad background in academia, urban design and sustainability consultancy, with his research interests primarily focussed on climate change and smart cities.
He was a co-investigator in the RCUK-CONFAP International Network (UK-Brazil) Augmented urbanity and smart technologies, and will be presenting his research with Flávia Maia (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Urban Planning Dept.) on the digital mapping of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas in the context of the city’s ICT drive to become a leading ‘smart city’.
We are pleased to announce that that Dr Federico Cugurullo will be delivering the second Programmable City Seminar for the 2016/17 academic year on October 26th, 3.30pm, in room 1.31 of the Iontas Building, Maynooth University.
Dr Cugurullo recently joined the Department of Geography at Trinity College Dublin as Assistant Professor in Smart and Sustainable Urbanism. He previously worked as a lecturer in Human Geography at Manchester University. His research is positioned at the intersection of urban geography and political philosophy, and explores how ideas of sustainability are cultivated and implemented across geographical spaces and scales, with a focus on projects for eco-cities.
The seminar will explore the smart city through the example of Hong Kong.
James Ash, Rob Kitchin and Agnieszka Leszczynski have published a new paper entitled ‘Digital Turn, Digital Geography?‘ available as Programmable City Working Paper 17 on SSRN.
Abstract
In this paper, we examine the relationship between the digital and geography. Our analysis provides an overview of the rich scholarship that has examined: (1) geographies of the digital, (2) geographies produced by the digital, and (3) geographies produced through the digital. Using this material we reflect on two questions: has there been a digital turn in geography? and, would it be productive to delimit ‘digital geography’ as a field of study within the discipline, as has recently occurred with the attempt to establish ‘digital anthropology’ and ‘digital sociology’? We argue that while there has been a digital turn across geographical sub-disciplines, the digital is now so pervasive in mediating the production of space and in producing geographic knowledge that it makes little sense to delimit digital geography as a distinct field. Instead, we believe it is more productive to think about how the digital reshapes many geographies
Keywords: digital, geography, computing, digital turn, digital geography
The paper is available for download here.
Conference of Irish Geographers 2015, Queens University Belfast, 21-24 May 2015
This session aims to think through the complex relationship between space and technology. The proliferation of smart phones and city-scale embedded devices is reshaping homes, work places and cities. Rather than focus explicitly on how technologies might autonomously and automatically produce such spaces, our focus is the broader imaginaries which pre-empt and prefigure sociotechnical systems. We are interested in submissions that explore how space is produced or performed through contested relationships between technologies, imaginaries and situated practices. This might mean, on the one hand, to approach technologies by reflecting on cultural representations or utopian visions of the future. On the other hand, imaginaries might be understood through the ways communities, social groups or initiatives think about already existing technologies. We are open to a broad range of theoretical and methodological approaches.
Contributions may respond to various topics, including but not limited to urban planning, surveillance, emergency response, energy management, sustainable transportation or everyday consumption and mobility. The following questions might be addressed:
Potential contributors are free to contact us prior to submission of their abstract. Contact email: james.white.2014@nuim.ie.
Abstracts must be submitted online at the Conference of Irish Geographers website.
Deadline: March 20, 2015.