Philosophy of the City Journal and other updates

The curse of running a blog: There will be a day when one stops blogging and every week, it becomes harder to re-boot and start that habit again. Well, I don't promise to return to this blog, but let me briefly share that the 2nd issue of the Philosophy of the City Journal is out.

I would also like to share that I am no longer a co-director of the Philosophy of the City Research Group since I can no longer be involved in the PotC RG and the Special Interest Group Design Ethics at the DRS. I also wanted to make room for new members to take on a leadership role. However, this does not imply that I am no longer interested in the field.

Philosophy of the City 2023: 10 years of PotC (Brooklyn)

The programme of our meeting in Brooklyn has been published - and as always, the list of speakers and topics is amazing! We will not only celebrate the 10th anniversary of our research group but also the official launch of our spectacular Philosophy of the City Journal.

If you want to join us, you can still register. More information can be found on the PotC Research Group's website.

I will also be honourd to deliver my Co-director's Address. Here's the abstract:

Urban Technologies - revisited

I introduced the concept of "urban technologies" in a paper in 2018. The guiding idea was to demarcate the intersection between Philosophy of the City and Philosophy of Technology. In my Co-Director's address, I will revisit the concept by providing a brief overview of the past and current discussions on the interplay between technologies and cities before discussing two aspects of my proposed concept.

The first aspect concerns my understanding of "urban technologies" as a hermeneutical lens rather than an ontological category. That is to say that I would like to avoid defining criteria for something to be an "urban technology." For example, exploring "cars" as urban technologies seems reasonable since they obviously influenced what cities look like today. Yet, obviously, "cars" are not only used in cities. Along these lines, I would like to use an example from my current work on cities and informal settlements in the Global South to ask: Are satellites urban technologies?

The second aspect, which I would like to highlight and discuss, is my proposal to consider something as an urban technology because the technology has been shaped by cities. While I find it plausible and, maybe, even necessary to consider the mutual shaping of cities and (urban) technologies, the mechanisms of how cities shape technologies are far less obvious. Thus, I would like to explore how we can better grasp the multiple ways in which cities play a role in our understanding of technologies.

Final BRIDE event on August 23, 2023, in Delft

 All good things must come to an end. On August 23, 2023, we will celebrate the closing of the BRIDE project with a smaller academic event at the TU Delft. Please join us and register at

https://www.aanmelder.nl/bride-closing-event

I look forward to looking back at four intense years of work on smart urban infrastructure.

Welcome to 2023!

It has been a while since my last post. Needless to say, a thousand things have happened. Let's start with a quick summary of what you may have missed...

The Philosophy of the City conference in Turin (Italy) was awesome! I enjoyed reconnecting with some of my fellow philosophers of the city & meeting some new faces.

One of the conference's highlights was the official announcement of the Philosophy of the City Journal. Yes, we do have our own journal now. I guess that makes us an official subdiscipline. If you want to be part of the Inaugural Issue, please consider submitting your work before 31st March 2023. (This, of course, especially applies to all the good people presenting at the Turin meeting.)

There is another publication venue for people working on cities, technologies, and design: I have been an associate editor of the new Journal of Human-Technology Relations and will take care of papers on urban design and urban technologies.

The Philosophy of the City Research Group also decided to get back on the regular schedule and to hold one annual conference and one summer colloquium per year again. We will start with the celebration of 10 years of PotC RG in October 2023 in Brooklyn. So, we will be back to the place where everything started. Expect a Call for papers coming out soon. In 2024, we will start with our summer colloquia again.

I am also very happy that Remmon Barbaza joined the board of directors to take over from Ronald Sundstrom, who stepped down after many years of great dedication and commitment to the community.

As you may have noticed, the group also has a new website, which still is very much in the making. Sadly, we lost access to our old site. Thus, we had to move and create something new.

Personally, I am also struggling with our group's future use of social media. We still have a presence on Facebook, which may explain why we have yet to join the Twitter exodus. And, yes, there is a LinkedIn group. But being a Philosopher of Technology, none of these platforms feels right. Any suggestions are welcome! - In any case, the current struggles are part of why I came back to update the blog. You will also find me at @mnagenborg@h-net.social.

While Shane Epting has been a busy bee with writing and promoting books (no. 4 is out in March, and he does a promo tour like a rock star now), I at least started to think about my next bigger project with the working title "Mapping and measuring cities." You can learn about my current research through the recording of a public lecture I did in Hamburg last year.

While the main focus in 2023 will be on education, I also have some news and plans related to research. Sadly, the BRIDE project will come to an end soon. Yet, the good news is that the amazing Sage Cammers-Goodwin is about to finish her PhD thesis! Stay tuned.

Philosophy of the City update - April 2022

It has been a while... and some great videos came out. For example, here's a great clip about the MX3D bridge in Amsterdam:

The really, really important news is, of course, that there will be a Philosophy of the City conference: 20.–22.10.2022 Turin, Italy. You can find the CfP here and submit your abstract here. (We are still struggling with the Philosophy of the City website. Sorry!)

To be on the safe side: Let me repeat... Philosophy of the City. October 20-22, 2022. Turin, Italy.

Of course, there are also new things to read, like the wonderful special issue "Philosophy of the City" of the East Asian Journal of Philosophy (edited by Sanna Lehtinen and Tea Lobo).

Tea Lobo also was so kind to invite Sage Cammers-Goodwin and me for an interview for her vlog:

Shane Epting most likely also has a new book out. He did two last year. Hence, the writes books quicker than I do blogs ;) - Check out his publications on his super-cool new website with great pix.

Last, but not least, we will host a Datathon on May 13, 2022. The event is part of a small grant, which we received for a BRIDE legacy project from DesignLab. At the event, we would like to learn how people make sense of smart city-data. So, if you want to play with the data from our bridge and help Sage Cammers-Goodwin with the final part of her PhD project, feel free to register online.

That's all folks! I am sure that I overlooked something. Sorry!

 

Philosophy of the City update

One of the typical pitfalls of blogging is that one starts to fall behind and never comes back to writing, because there is so much catching up, which needs to be done. At least, this is what happens to me. And I want to break the curse today. So, here's a brief update on current publications and a bit about the Philosophy of the City Research Group.

Let's start with the Philosophy of the City Research Group: As you may already have notice our website is down. As things currently stand, we will not be able to reclaim our domain before Spring 2022. Hence, we have a new domain: www.philosophy-of-the-city.org

For now, the URL will take you to the "About us" section of our last conference website. Expect a new website to pop up soon-ish, which is likely to include information about our first "back to meatspace" conference in fall 2022, which will take place in Europe.

There are also some publications from our ongoing research projects, which I would like to mention: Sage Cammers-Goodwin and Naomi van Stralen published Making Data Visible in Public Space, which contributes to the BRIDE project. And from FRAME-PRO, we have to report a joint publication on Earth observations and statistics: Unlocking sociodemographic knowledge through the power of satellite images for which Isaac Oluoch contributed a wonderful ethics section.

With BRIDE we are also preparing a panel for the next edition of the Computer, Privacy, and Data Protection-Conference (CPDP) in Brussels (Jan 27, 2022), where we will discuss who can and should take responsibility for IoT in public spaces. You can find out more about the panel on the CPDP website.

We also received an additional grant from DesignLab to work on a legacy project for BRIDE. Expect a hands-on hackathon on smart urban infrastructure to happen in Spring 2022.

Finally, and a bit off topic, we are hiring a postdoc for the Disastrous Information-project. In the project, we are exploring how the use of AI and Maschine Learning shapes humanitarian aid practices. The postdoc position will help us to get a better grip on the existing and desirable legal and institutional design for making responsible use of geo-AI in Malawi and its neighboring countries. If you are interested or you know someone who might be interested: Here's the job ad.

May 17, 2021: Join us to celebrate 24 hrs of Philosophy of the City

It's been a while since the last update of this blog. However, I don't want to miss the opportunity to invite all readers to join the Philosophy of the City Research Group on May 17, 2021, to celebrate 24 hours of Philosophy of the City. Please visit the conference website for more information and registration.

A bit of additional background information: As you may recall, the Philosophy of the City Research group decided to cancel all conferences and summer schools for 2020 and 2021, since we believe in the added value of international meetings. We didn't wanted to miss out on the diversity of perspective that you commonly will find at a PotC event.

However, in Fall 2021, the board of directors decided to hold a global virtual event. Not so much to replace a "real" conference, but to work on something together with our colleagues from across the globe. Thus, the idea of 24 hours of Philosophy of the City was born. And we are delighted that we received a sufficient number of good submissions from various timezone to embrace the adventure.

In all seriousness, I do not expect anyone to join us for 24 hours. But if you join us for a while, it might be great to know that you just became part of a worldwide initiative.