Technology and the City: Two tracks at upcoming conferences

The next weeks will be packed with exciting talks and stimulating discussions on technology and the city! Two major conferences will feature dedicated tracks on the role of technologies as part of urban existence.

The joint CEPE/ETHICOMP conference will be held in Turin from June 5 till June 8 in Turin. Shane Epting, Anders Albrechtslund, and I have co-organized a track on „ICT and the City,“ which will feature the following contributions:

• Margoth González Woge: Smart Environments: rethinking the boundaries of human and environmental enhancement
• Lachlan Urquhart: Ethical Dimensions of User Centric Regulation
• Brandt Dainow: Where does the city really end? Redefining Smart Cities and their ethical dangers
• Olli I. Heimo, et al.: Ethical Problems in Creating Historically Representative Mixed Reality Make-belief
• Laura Fichtner: A Smart City of Flows: How Smart Cities Can Shape Urban Experience and Creativity

The program and the abstracts can be found on the conference website.

The bi-annual conference of the Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT) will be held in Darmstadt from June 14 till June 17, 2017, in Darmstadt. For SPT 2017, Remmon Barbaza, Margoth Gonzalez Woge, Taylor Stone, Pieter Vermaas and I organized a track on „Technology and the City,“ which fill bring together the following contributions:

• Sara Eloy and Pieter Vermaas: Over-the-counter housing design: the city when the gap between architects and laypersons narrows
• Taylor Stone: The Morality of Darkness: Urban nights, light pollution, and evolving values
• Giovanni Frigo: ‚Green Buildings’ in the City? A Reflection about Technology, Sustainability Indexes, and Energy Ethics
• Felipe Loureiro: Binding Surfaces: Architecture and The Interplay of Walls and Screens
• Michael Nagenborg: Elevators as urban technologies: Past, present, and future
• Vlad Niculescu-Dinca: Towards a sedimentology of infrastructures / A geological approach for understanding the city
• Alessia Calafiore, Nicola Guarino and Guido Boella: Recognizing urban forms through the prism of roles theory
• Shane Epting: Automated Vehicles and Transportation Justice: Two Challenges for Planners and Engineers
• Diane Michelfelder: Urban Landscapes and the Techno-Animal Condition
• Remmon Barbaza: Metro Manila: A City Without Syntax?
• El Putnam: Locative Reverb: Artistic Practice, Digital Technology, and the Grammatization of the City
• Margoh Gonzalez Woge: Technological Environmentality: technologies 'absent presence' in everyday environments
• Brandt Dainow: Philosophical Framework for Smart City Analysis
• Qian Wang and Xue Yu: Technology and the City: From the Perspective of Organicism
• Jathan Sadowski: Parameters of Possibility: Envisioning and Constructing the Smart Urban Future

Of course, we are excited about the recognition of Vlad Niculescu-Dinca's work, who won the SPT’s Early Career Award for his paper. The track will also feature talks of the current president of the Philosophy of the City Research Group (Shane Epting) and the Vice-President/President-Elect (Pieter Vermaas).

Check out the conference website for more information.

To celebrate these events, a series of interviews with participants of both tracks will be published on this blog. Stay tuned for more good things to come!