Conference held at the Faculty of Architecture, Estonian Academy of Arts
Tallinn, Estonia, 20-23 April 2017.
With a paper on crowdfunded urbanism, Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer contributed to a panel on “Big Data” and urban subjectification that interrogated the ways in which ideas of a human-friendly city continue to inform urban design. While we expect that “big data” will help us to better design “for people” and make cities more “liveable”, we tend to ignore how these data simultaneously undo the very meaning of people and life. The ultimate embodiment of this paradox is the “smart city,” wherein puerile idea of a desirable urbanity correlates with the transformation of life into a data stream.
How have the environmental powers of architectures and urbanisms mutated since these disciplines started to unfold subjects in cybernetic environments? Who are the past, present and future subjects of digital governmentality-through-environments? Who is the “smart”, optimised, efficiently behaving and algorithmically desiring citizen? And, in what sense, if any, can they be called a democratic citizen? Have social classes and political parties been replaced by de-territorialised swarms? Has government been replaced by environmental modulation?