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.

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.

Panel on "Smart City Surveillance" at SSN 2020

I am happy about the acceptance of our "Smart City Surveillance" panel at the Surveillance Studies Network Conference in Rotterdam. I will join Sage Cammers-Goodwin, Maša Galič, Mark Ryan, Karin Pfeffer, and Fenna Hoefsloot. The session has been organised and will be chaired by Tjerk T. Timan. Sage Cammers-Goodwin and I will present some of our findings from the BRIDE project.

Here's the abstract:

In many Western city centers, we are witnessing an increase of smart city and living lab infrastructure that is promising innovation in security and profitability. While securing cities and its citizens against external attacks or internal dangers is nothing new, current smart-city logics – often in the form of public-private partnerships – are delivering a complex landscape of purposes for novel and often highly invasive surveillance technologies. Combining privately-generated data (e.g. social media or personal walking patterns), ‘environmental’ data (e.g. crowdedness and weather conditions) and hard-factual statistics (e.g. crime rates, trash collection or beer consumption), profiles on atmosphere, persons’ moods and pre-conflict situational awareness are being generated. The next step in such often experimental initiatives is to package such projects as wholesale security solutions.

Main theme:
In this panel we want to explore, on the basis of a large body of theory in geography, philosophy of technology, surveillance studies and law, what the current practices out there are, and how to analyse such experiments. In other words, what can we say, learn and do about such urban surveillance infrastructural developments, and how can we expand the body of knowledge stemming from these cases?

BRIDE Workshop, Oct 10, 2019 (Amsterdam)

We are happy to announce the first workshop of the BRIDE project. The workshop was originally designed as an internal event. On second thought, we realized that the subjects might actually be interesting for a larger crowd. So, feel free to join us! Here's the blurb: "The BRIDE Workshop seeks to explore the connections between humans and smart infrastructure, specifically related to the MX3D bridge. The workshop will cover Amsterdam's current smart city initiatives, concerns, and goals. Additionally, it will explore the range of how the bridge data will be used from mechanics to 'cityness' and how to make the data visible and useful for users of the structure." For more information about the workshop, please refer to the workshop agenda and register by using this online form. Finally, for more information on the BRIDE project, have a look at our project website.

Philosophy of the City Round-up

1. Philosophy of City 2019: We just published our Call for papers for the annual conference of the Philosophy of the City Research Group. You still have time to think about a cool subject for your brilliant talk. Abstracts are due in June 2019. But we expect you to come. OK?

2. Taylor Stone has defended his PhD thesis earlier this week. His pioneering doctoral thesis on Artifical Lightning is available online.

3. If you want to get an update on the BRIDE project: Kars Alfrink, who is working on the project at TUD, just posted an update on his blog.

4. Since we are talking about BRIDE: If you are around in Amsterdam on February 1, 2019, and have some time at 15:00 - we are looking for volunteers to interact with the 3D-printed IoT-enabled MX3D bridge to create our initial data set. Please, send me an email if you are interested.

5. Finally, as a reminder: the Call for the Philosophy of the City Summer Colloquium 2019 is still open and you may still join us for the Social Resilience in Diverse Societies workshop.

PhD position on smart urban infrastructures at the University of Twente

In Summer 2018, our project "Bridging data in the built environment" (BRIDE) will officially start. The project brings together scholars from TU Delft (Neelke Doorn, Gerd Kortuem, Aimee van Wynsberghe) and the University of Twente (Peter-Paul Verbeek, Nirvana Meratnia) and the great team of MX3D to work together on a 3d printed IoT-enabled bridge to be placed in Amsterdam. We get additional support from the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions, the IoT Privacy Forum, the Foundation for Responsible Robotics and other parties.

In Twente, we are looking for a PhD candidate for a joint doctoral project at the intersection of computer science and Philosophy of the City. I (Michael Nagenborg) will be the daily supervisor of the project.

We are looking for a candidate with a master degree in Computer Science with a strong background in Internet of Things (IoT), especially in (big) data analytics, with a demonstrable interest in urban research (e.g., Philosophy of the City) and the willingness to engage in research-by-design methodology.

Applications are due by May 31, 2018. You can find the official advertisement on the website of the University of Twente.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the positions. And please help us to spread the word!