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.