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.