Since the advent of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the 1990s to the emergence of the "smart city" in the 2000s, the digital shift has profoundly redefined our relationship to urban space. It has had multiple effects on planning and development processes, as well as on the everyday practices of citizens. While the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digitalization of many aspects of our daily lives (regarding health, work, commerce, services), the rapid spread of artificial intelligence (AI) is now posing new theoretical and methodological challenges. The use of big data and the trend towards algorithmic governance, from predictive modeling to robotics in urban policies, are deeply transforming the ways in which the city is manufactured, analyzed, and understood. This complex subject is therefore a challenge for the social sciences.
This special issue aims to explore the multiple facets of this transformation by examining the scientific, operational, and epistemological issues raised by the widespread but uneven diffusion of digital technologies in urban planning, design, and management. It seeks to deepen our understanding of these changes in territories that are following different trajectories in their ability to embrace these tools. Disparities exist within metropolitan areas, between urban, suburban, and rural territories, based on infrastructure, economic and human resources, and policy choices. The emergence of new practices also explains these differences, sometimes even reversing the division between cities in the Global North and South, which is one of the possible fault lines in the adoption of these technologies.
In order to shed light on the challenges posed by the new methods of making and visualizing cities, we invite contributions from a variety of disciplines (geography, planning and urbanism, architecture, engineering). These contributions can focus on the evolution of our research methods and analytical frameworks (new but also revisited objects and concepts), as well as on the changes observed in citizens’ or professionals’ practices within the following five axes of reflection.
This first axis explores how digital technology is redefining our conception of urban spaces and territories, challenging traditional notions of geographical rootedness, distance, and location. While digital ubiquity seems to abolish geographical boundaries, it also generates localized effects, that contribute to territorial reconfiguration. Similarly, digital technology and AI present numerous theoretical and methodological challenges while opening up new research opportunities on the relationship between pervasiveness, technicality, and emergence (Peyroux 2023). Digital and AI technologies are omnipresent in our equipment and lifestyles, but their diffusion remains unequal across geographical contexts, social groups, and individuals, due to factors such as accessibility, costs, personal preferences, individual choices, and even resistance. Moreover, the increasing complexity of digital technologies raises questions regarding their understanding and governance. The emergence of "urban AI" (Cugurullo et al. 2023), the growing presence of robotics and automation systems in public spaces, pose new challenges in terms of regulation and ethics (Macrorie et al. 2021, Mintrom et al. 2022). Therefore, we seek articles with methodological and epistemic dimensions that focus on the conceptualization of these new geographies and their influence on our representations of urban space, urban dynamics, and territorial inequalities. Articles are invited to consider how multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary approaches can propose new analytical frameworks for understanding this technicality and rethinking political and social capacities for action within a complex technological environment.
Supported by new knowledge tools and advanced calculation techniques, the "datafication" of the city affects both governance techniques, the production of new urban services, and the economic models of digital actors (Courmont and Le Galès 2019). On the one hand, businesses and administrations are adopting new accounting rationalities and managerial logics, amplifying trends already initiated by the information revolution (Boullier 2016, Marvin and Luque-Ayala 2017). On the other hand, the co-production of urban services between public actors, citizens, and private actors through collaborative platforms and mobile applications based on crowdsourcing raises questions about the construction of new forms of collective action (Courmont 2021, Cinnamon 2020). This "datafication" of society offers promising perspectives, such as better knowledge of real-time flows and optimization of resources, but it also carries risks, in particular in terms of increased surveillance and vulnerability of systems (Zuboff 2019). Therefore, we invite articles that focus on how digital technology and AI are transforming the governance logic of urban services, the modes of control and surveillance of citizens and territories, as well as the relationships between public, private, and citizen actors.
The urban digital transition maintains complex and paradoxical links with the environment. Environmental concerns call for actions from public authorities and private actors. This promotes the adoption of advanced technologies such as 5G and sensor deployment strategies in smart cities, with the aim of better measuring, among other things, air pollution or water quality degradation, and improving urban resource management. This results in increased dependence on financially and energetically costly technologies (Carnino and Marquet 2018, Diguet and Lopez 2019), even though some technological advances in renewable energy and sustainable construction sectors, for example, are seen as innovative solutions to address sustainability challenges and promote the development of a circular economy. At the same time, "low-tech" innovations are emerging locally to meet the specific needs of regions in the Global South and reduce dependence on the global market. However, often far from the urban spaces where these technologies are deployed, digitalization and especially AI are significant consumers of resources (rare earths, energy, water) and sources of pollution (toxic waste from extractive processes, greenhouse gas emissions, electronic waste). Therefore, we invite contributions that focus on the role of digitalization in urban environmental management, or on the need to integrate the environmental impacts of digitalization generated by cities, and ask how these visions can be reconciled towards more sustainable futures (urban and non-urban).
This axis focuses on the digital practices of urban dwellers, contrary to approaches that focus on the strategies of major economic actors and related public policies. The challenge is to understand how urban dwellers, in their diversity of socio-economic statuses, make use of digital tools and AI in their daily lives and contribute to renewing the ways of accessing urban resources and asserting their place in the city. The integration of AI and robotics i reshaping the daily experiences of urban inhabitants, influencing their interactions with the environment (Rose and Willis, 2019). These uses, sometimes diverted and alternative, can be collaborative and coordinated by NGOs, take the institutionalized form of civic tech, or be more individual and spontaneous. Similarly, they can be the work of both formal and informal actors in the urban economy. These new urban digital practices renew the notion of urban citizenship and complicate the action repertoires of urban engagement, at the interface between urban public spaces and digital platforms (Antenucci and Tomasello, 2023). The form and modalities of organization of these practices vary greatly depending on the political contexts considered and call for the promotion of a political and situated approach to urban digital practices. We invite articles on these new forms of mobilization that raise several questions, including the role of digital technology in local solidarity and neighborhood organizations, the interplay of actors in the daily construction of the city, the redefinition of urban dwellers' relationship with urban public spaces in the digital age, inequalities in access to urban resources, and the links between urban informality and digital technologies.
This axis invites a thorough analysis of the upheavals affecting the actors of territorial production: elected officials, researchers, citizens, and professionals (project owners, designers, builders, managers...). The accelerated deployment of digital technology and artificial intelligence, whether desired or feared, results in the emergence of new functions and new professions, as well as changes in practices, particularly among professionals. The new decision support tools, the evolution of internal processes, and the repositioning of organizational balances in favor of digital technology profoundly modify urban planning and management (Kichin, Young, and Dawkins, 2021; Ferchaud, Idt, and Pauchon, 2023). Furthermore, these changes contribute to (and are a result of) the evolution of education and training programs preparing for professions in urban production, integrating the question of digital transition, whether through the creation of new courses on Big Data or AI in connection with planning or development, the implementation of specific courses or their integration into existing training programs, as well as the creation of offers in continuous education and training. Therefore, we invite articles that reflect on the links between new urban professions, digital-related educational offerings, and the concerns of professionals in territorial production. The aim is to examine both the evolution of professions and the changes (or lack thereof) in practices and the new power relations they generate between professional groups and the creation of visions and imaginaries of what constitutes a city.
Articles and scientific notes can be published in French and/or English.
Formatting guidelines are available at: https://journals.openedition.org/netcom/956
Contributions should be sent to:
● Yasmina DRIS (dris.yasmina@gmail.com), Associate-Professor of Urban Planning, Ecole Supérieure des Professions Immobilières, ESPI2R, LET-LAVUE UMR CNRS 7218.
● Marie GIBERT-FLUTRE (marie.gibert@u-paris.fr), Associate-Professor in Geography, Université Paris Cité, UMR CESSMA 245.
● Carine HENRIOT (carine.henriot@utc.fr), Associate-Professor of Urban Planning and Urbanism, Université de technologie de Compiègne, Avenues;
● Elisabeth PEYROUX, (elisabeth.peyroux@crns.fr), Research Fellow, CNRS - UMR Prodig.
● Marie-Hélène ZERAH, (marie-helene.zerah@ird.fr), Senior Research Fellow, IRD - UMR CESSMA, Université Paris Cité.
● Call for papers launch: April 10, 2024
● Submission of abstract proposals (300 words): May 30, 2024
● Submission of article proposals: October 1, 2024
● Publication of the special issue: mid-2025