ENQ 16:2 Urban Data Assemblage

A new issue of ENQ is now available. The edition was structured through the vision of Silvio Carta of the University of Hertfordshire and includes articles by Euan Mills, Roberto Bottazzi, Kevin Rogan, Pieter Marthinus de Kock, Ljubomir Jankovic, and Fang Xu.

Increasingly, the divide between physical and digital space is becoming more complex and difficult to define. The progress of new digital technologies (e.g. Artificial Intelligence, portable smart devices, Virtual and Augmented reality and robotics) and visions (like Internet of Things and Ubiquitous Computing) is blurring the boundaries between what is physical, tangible, real and what is not.

Similarly, cities and the urban environment are including these new technologies as a part of their complexity, enriching people’s experience (information readily available about potentially everything everywhere) and posing new threats (biases, surveillance, privacy etc.) at the same time. Cities are no longer definable with binaries like physical/digital, real/simulation, or human/machine. They are rather characterised by complex relational networks which we call assemblages where data, information technologies, people and algorithms are increasingly intertwined.

This special edition of ENQ: The ARCC Journal, includes contributions that reflect upon the idea of these urban assemblage, reflecting upon the ways in which information is produced, processed and shared by individuals through the built environment and by algorithms within the urban context.

https://arcc-journal.org/index.php/arccjournal/issue/view/40