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Data and algorithms used for housing prices collusion

A somewhat older news item. Politico and Ars Technica/Wired are among the outlets reporting about the RealPage price collusion case on the housing market. The heart of the matter is that this company is accused of allowing landlords to fix rental prices, using its software: The Justice Department is gearing up to challenge what it says is collusive conduct in the rental housing market with a lawsuit against a software company that it believes allows large landlords to fix prices. (Quote from Politico) The underlying issue already to be that the company’s software platform has become very good at aggregating […] Read More

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Please stop technologists from city-making

A strange rambling interview with technology futurist Vinay Gupta in Vice from some time ago. Some quotes send shivers down my spine… What I wanted was control of a substantial piece of planetary infrastructure. And then I wanted to tax people for access to that infrastructure […] I wanted it to generate enough wealth that I could go and privately finance climate mitigation work. Individual control of privately owned global infrastructure? Private ‘solutions’ for collective issues like climate change? No thank you. …when it comes to hundreds of millions of people needing housing, you just can’t get there in a […] Read More

meetings/events Posted on

‘Civic Urban AI’: Expert Meeting 14 Nov. 2024

A Governing the Digital Society event, in collaboration with [urban interfaces] and the Open Cities Platform. Organized by Michiel de Lange (M.L.deLange@uu.nl) and Erna Ruijer (H.J.M.Ruijer@uu.nl) – SIG Inclusion; Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen (S.G.Grimmelikhuijsen@uu.nl) – SIG AIGOBE Date: 14 November 2024 14:30 – 16:30 + drinks Locatie: Kromme Nieuwegracht 20, Utrecht, Foyer (ground floor) Sign up here: https://www.uu.nl/en/events/civic-urban-ai-expert-meeting-2024 Towards civic urban AI In the last few years there has been a surge of AI deployment in urban settings. Examples include camera surveillance with image recognition, predictive policing, sound/noise detection, autonomous vehicles and robotics, energy distribution prediction and optimization, traffic optimization, public services […] Read More

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Infrastructures of in/exclusion

Noema magazine features a piece on how Guizhou, a former underdeveloped hinterland province, is linked to the global circulation of data and people. In the Gui’an New Area, Huawei has built a vast data center in a ‘18th century European city’ style. Theme-park European architecture is nothing new in 21st-century China, nor in Gui’an New Area, which already offers a Swiss-style scenic village as a nearby tourist attraction. However, look more closely at the buildings in the new Czech town and you’ll notice that their windows are in fact air vents, thrumming and heaving with the high-pitched rush of server […] Read More

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Dutch E-Bike company halts urban racing game

Dutch tech news Tweakers.net reports that Cowboy, an e-bike company from the Netherlands, has stopped offering its urban racing game Race. The game allowed e-bike users to engage in 500-meter competitive racing games in the city. E-bikes in the Netherlands are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and are receiving a lot of backlash for being unsafe and illegally upgraded to achieve speeds way above the legal maximum of 25km/h. A number of public officials earlier have criticized the game Race for inciting unsafe and potentially illegal behavior on public roads. The use of the city as a canvas for playing urban games […] Read More

announcements, meetings/events Posted on

Workshop & panel “Relational Interfaces” June 13-14 2024

Together with various colleagues and organizations, I am co-organizing this event later this week: https://circulateproject.nl/2024/05/03/workshop-relational-interfaces-design/ Organized by Dark Matter Labs, The research project Charging the Commons at the Civic Interaction Design Research Group at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and Zöop, in cooperation with the Focus Area Governing the Digital Society at Utrecht University.

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Data for doodoo: a new low in extractivism?

Rest of World reports on startup Nippy from Argentina that offers flexworkers free use of the loo in exchange for their data. A new type of extractivism, or is it more than that? The company rents out small storefronts where gig workers can use clean toilets and get coffee free of charge — in exchange for downloading Nippy’s app. Nippy makes money by processing and selling the data workers register on the app to financial, insurance, and telecommunications companies it has partnered with. Most delivery workers say to Rest of World that they did not know their data was being […] Read More

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Amazon Fresh walks out on AI powered grocery shopping

Ars Technica writes about Amazon pulling the plug on its Fresh grocery shopping concept, because it just didn’t work: Just Walk Out was supposed to let customers grab what they wanted from a store and just leave, skipping any kind of checkout process. Amazon wanted to track what customers took with them purely via AI-powered video surveillance; the system just took a phone scan at the door, and shoppers would be billed later via their Amazon accounts. Ars refers to reporting by The Information (paywall) that suggest Amazom was not able to properly train the machine vision AI they should detect […] Read More

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NYC AI chatbot speaks in tongues

If you’re a landlord wondering which tenants you have to accept, for example, you might pose a question like, “are buildings required to accept section 8 vouchers?” or “do I have to accept tenants on rental assistance?” In testing by The Markup, the bot said no, landlords do not need to accept these tenants. Except, in New York City, it’s illegal for landlords to discriminate by source of income, with a minor exception for small buildings where the landlord or their family lives. In the report by The Markup, an extensive overview of further examples is given of the chatbot confabulating unreliable answers, […] Read More

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Tech-fix du jour: AI bike camera alerts cyclists to bad drivers

Ars Technica reports on a AI-powered project for safer cycling. For $ 399.00 USD you get a small 330 gram camera, powered by a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, and equipped with “AI-powered predictive analytics” that you can install under your bike saddle. Facing to the rear, it promises to constantly monitor for bad drivers and give off a audible and visible cue when it detects a potentially dangerous situation. It also visibly signals to upcoming drivers that there is a bike ahead. This is the pitch on the website: Copilot is an AI-powered bike light that uses smart sensors […] Read More

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Dutch supermarkets using AI surveillance

Dutch tech website Tweakers reports that 110 supermarkets in The Netherlands (ca. 1,7%) have started to use cameras and software made by the French company Veesion to prevent theft and shoplifting. The software analyses customer behavior and claims to be able to detect when people put an item in their pockets. It sends out push notifications to employees when it detects such suspicious behavior. Large supermarket chain Jumbo is considering adoption for the near future for 100s of stores. The software is called “Intelligent anti-shoplifting system”, which the company describes as “gesture-based recognition software”. This AI-based software uses the latest advances in […] Read More

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Why do social media algorithms foster genericness?

Under the title “The tyranny of the algorithm: why every coffee shop looks the same”, The Guardian has a very interesting longread that touches on the complex twisting between digital media and urban place. The author, who just had a new book out called “Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture” , takes a closer look at the “hipster coffee shop” that looks basically the same in every city in the world. For one type of audience this feels very welcoming and familiar whole for others these global ‘spaces of flow’ as Castells called them are exclusionary. Quote: If these places were […] Read More

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Dutch political party worried about rise of smart doorbells

Dutch local news channel for Amsterdam AT5 reports that GroenLinks, a Dutch leftwing green party, is worried about the rampant use of smart doorbells like Ring. GroenLinks is worried about the implications of these doorbells for people’s privacy and for social cohesion in the city. The problem according to GroenLinks is that these doorbell cameras are filming public space instead of private terrain. In Amsterdam’s smaller streets it is possible to peek into each others homes. A study by Amsterdam Municipality (no source is given in the article) would suggest that a majority of inhabitants have uncomfortable feelings about so […] Read More

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Software bugs that helped send innocent postal employees to prison known in advance

Another grim case of how (faulty) software and algorithms can impact real people’s everyday lives in specific workplaces: Ars Technica writes that “Fujitsu software bugs that helped send innocent postal employees to prison in the UK were known “right from the very start of deployment,” [according to] a Fujitsu executive [during] a public inquiry”. From 1999 onwards, the accounting software called Horizon was installed in UK post offices by a Fujitsu subsidiary. Since then, between 1999 – 2015, this software has led to the “prosecution and conviction of more than 900 sub-postmasters and postmistresses who were accused of theft or […] Read More

meetings/events Posted on

Event: roundtable “Creative Urban Methods” 22 Jan. 2024

On Jan. 22 2024 between 16:00-18:00, I co-organize a roundtable event about ‘Creative Urban Methods’. The event is both to celebrate the launch of our recent special issue on ‘creative urban methods’ in Mediapolis, and to discuss the merits of innovative ways for studying Media Cities. Date: 22 January 2024 Time: 16:00 – 18:00 Location: MCW Lab, Kromme Nieuwegracht 20 (entrance via Muntstraat 2A), Utrecht, NL. Event link: https://urbaninterfaces.sites.uu.nl/save-the-date-roundtable-creative-urban-methods/   On Monday, January 22nd, [urban interfaces] joins forces with the IOS Platform for Open Cities (OCP) and the focus area Governing the Digital Society (SIG “Inclusion in the Datafied City”) […] Read More

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Robo-taxis,auto-mobility, and the right to the city

Today is the day Amsterdam is implementing 30km/h on the majority of its streets. So a good occasion to reblog this article here. Vox writes that San Francisco’s robotaxi experiment is getting out of hand >> In San Francisco – and in other US cities too – self-driving taxis operated by companies like GM’s Cruise and Alphabet’s Waymo are clogging the city streets and are becoming a nuisance if not downright dangerous for emergency vehicles. In a podcast interview between Vox host Sean Rameswaram and Liz Lindqwister, a data journalist at the nonprofit news startup the San Francisco Standard, it […] Read More

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The limits of ‘the city as a platform’

The Conversation has an interesting piece called “WeWork approached physical space as if it were virtual, which led to the company’s downfall”. In the article, the author argues that dreams of cities as cybernetic systems – while old – have their limits. The author suggests that this cybernetic logic of essentially seeing cities and computers as the same in terms of ‘informational flows’, is what led to the downfall of WeWork: “Earlier in the twentieth century, offices were thought of as, essentially, industrial buildings. […] But during World War II, executives witnessed the military use giant mainframes for logistics and […] Read More

announcements, featured, writings Posted on

Special issue in Mediapolis: Creative Urban Methods

I am very happy and proud to announce that the special issue in Mediapolis Journal on Creative Urban Methods, that I co-edited with my [urban interfaces] colleagues Sigrid Merx, Nanna Verhoeff & Coco Kanters, and with the invaluable help of Elle Zwinkels, is out now!  See our own introduction here: https://www.mediapolisjournal.com/2023/11/creative-urban-methods/. In addition to our own introduction, this special issue contains contributions by: Gillian Sonnad and Noortje van Amsterdam Karin van Es and Marcel Broersma Inte Gloerich and Gabriele Ferri Anastasia Hacopian Jan van Duppen, Augusto Anéas, Aileen Harvey, Sandra Jasper, Laura Kemmer and Claudia Muniz

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Landlords in Washington DC accused of using software to keep rent high

Ars Technica reports about a lawsuit filed against 14 DC landlords who are accused of having colluded “with a property management software firm to keep rent prices high in a city with a housing affordability crisis.” The software company RealPage suggests rental prices to landlords, based on the data that they feed the software company. Sounds like a very risky data feedback loop to me anyway, but apparently these 14 landlords in DC joined forces with the company to keep rent prices artificially high on the platform. Effectively they formed a housing cartel. Just another warning that despite rhetorics of […] Read More

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Short-lived platform transport services

This news item by Vice on the quick rise and demise of Revel scooters in NYC makes me think about temporarily as a theme that I’ve been interested in for a long time. As digital media technologies and urban culture intersect, we often see a mismatch between their temporal cycles. The fast-moving ways of the tech industry, with their extremely short cycles and aggressive grab-all strategies for taking over markets, is at odds with the much longer development and maintenance cycles of most urban infrastructures, such as housing and public transport. It artists that many urban tech companies simply do […] Read More