Using technology to run our cities: promises and perils

Our cities are increasingly becoming data-rich environments. The ecology of apps, visualizations and location-based or context-aware media and information systems generated around urban data environments, have the potential to radically transform the way we understand, inhabit and build our cities.

The first European Journalism Centre (EJC) session will bring leading thinkers from academia and the arts to explore the implications of the instruments we use to make sense of our cities on our experience and understanding of cities, as well as on issues of governance and policy making. What are the advantages of the practices and instruments we use today to better understand the processes that govern our cities? What are the perils? What are the politics of these infrastructures? How are they positioned within larger social, cultural, environmental and political concerns? What kinds of futures can we imagine? How do we design infrastructures that help support active citizen engagement? What are the appropriate forms of urban planning, design and policy?

Whether you are interested in technology design, media production, or policy making focused on issues of urbanization and media technologies, or developing services around data, this session will give you the opportunity to enter into a conversation with various experts about the issues that you care about.