Yesterday I gave a short talk about The Hackable City project, at a new partner org. of Utrecht University, Connekt, who regularly organize a series of talks on smart urbanism. This one was called “Smart Cities, Hackable Cities?” Below my presentation and the program of this afternoon: Program 14:00 – 14:05 Welcome by Connekt 14:05 – 14:20 Dan Hassler Forest, Universitair Docent Media & Film Studies Utrecht University 14:20 – 14:25 Short Q&A 14:25 – 14:40 […] Read More
Visiting PhD scholar Delaram Ashtari and I wrote a paper “Playful civic skills: A transdisciplinary approach to analyse participatory civic games”, about a playtest session we organized in Utrecht on Nov 20 2017, with the help of Tessa Peters & Rolf van Boxmeer who created the urban planning game Redesire. Abstract Although civic participation is an inseparable part of contemporary urban planning, the civic skills needed for meaningful engagement in the planning process and the way citizens learn them are still controversial issues. […] Read More
2019 [urban interfaces] graduate seminar series at Utrecht University Dates:12 & 26 February 2019, 12 March (seminars); 19-20 March 2019 (workshop)Location:MCW Lab, Kromme Nieuwegracht 20, UtrechtOrganized by: Nanna Verhoeff, Michiel de Lange, Sigrid Merx, and Lotte van der Molen from the [urban interfaces] research group at Utrecht University.ECTS:4 ECMore information:See http://urbaninterfaces.sites.uu.nl/Fee: € 10,00 (partly covering coffee/lunch during workshop), please bring exact change on the first day of the workshop (March 19)Registration via: RMeS-fgw@uva.nlPlease be sure to specify your master programme, national research school […] Read More
Just out, and available as Open Acces: The Hackable City: Digital Media and Collaborative City Making in the Network Society, edited by Michiel de Lange and Martijn de Waal (Springer)
Sneak preview: Two upcoming Open Access publications are already listed on the publisher’s websites: The Playful Citizen: Civic Engagement in a Mediatized Culture, edited by René Glas, Sybille Lammes, Michiel de Lange, Joost Raessens, and Imar de Vries (Amsterdam University press) 2) The Hackable City: Digital Media and Collaborative City Making in the Network Society, edited by Michiel de Lange and Martijn de Waal (Springer) Both are expected end of this year (2018).
Belgian magazine Knack Weekend featured an item (in Dutch) about the ways in which social media like Instagram influence the design of cities. The basic idea is that an increasing number of cities and (cultural) organizations are attempting to create picturfe-pretty ‘Instagrammable’ experiences. I was interviewed by the author, Nathalie Le Blanc who found me through this earlier article on a similar topic, and I am mentioned in the article: Graffiti heette het vroeger, en dook het ergens op, dan haalden stadsbesturen vaak zo […] Read More
A while ago I contributed to a story “How Instagram Is Changing the Way We Design Cultural Spaces” written by Emily Matchar for Smithsonian Magazine. I had kind of forgotten about it, until I was contacted by another journalist interested in Instagram Urbanism, who had found me via this story. Here’s the quote. How Instagram Is Changing the Way We Design Cultural Spaces As neighborhoods, restaurants and museums become more photogenic, are we experiencing an “Instagramization” of the world? […] Michiel […] Read More
On Wednesday 27 June 2018 I gave a short presentation at the NECS2018 conference in Amsterdam. In the presentation I talked about the issue of engaging people with urban data and frictions through alternative approaches to data dashboard design, something I have been interested in for some time. In the talk I briefly spoke about two types of urban dashboards as smart city interfaces: one very efficiency-driven, the other one more artistic and engaging. I then spoke about two more […] Read More
Fresh from the press, this interesting edited volume by colleagues Sybille Lammes, Chris Perkins, Alex Gekker, Sam Hind, Clancy Wilmott and Daniel Evans, called “Time for mapping: Cartographic temporalities”. I have a chapter in the book called “From real-time city to asynchronicity: exploring the real-time smart city dashboard”. In this essay, I pursue the idea of an ‘asynchronous smart city’ (as originally suggested by design researchers Julian Bleecker and Nicolas Nova), using the temporal framework of sociologist Barbara Adam. At stake, I argue, […] Read More
Medialab Katowice published an e-mail interview with me, as part of the Data (for) Culture conference in Katowice at which I spoke in December 2017. Here is the link to the interview on the Medialab Katowice website >> Below the original correspondence (unedited version of the interview): ?ukasz Mirocha (LM): Generally speaking, what is the role of data in the city of 2018? What value has it for different actors: municipalities, citizens, local and non-local businesses? Michiel de Lange (Michiel de Lange): The role of data […] Read More
Recently, the research project ”Designing for Controversies in Responsible Smart Cities” in which I am co-applicant received a NWO grant, as part of the program Smart Culture – Creative Cities. Project lead: Mascha van der Voort. Co-leads: Peter-Paul Verbeek & Michiel de Lange. The mid-sized and centrally located municipality of Amersfoort is building a new Internet of Things infrastructure. A consortium of public and private partners will develop a government+citizen+academic+industry collaboration (a so-called ’quadruple helix’) that allows a wide range of stakeholders to […] Read More
We wrap up the long running The Hackable City project with our partner One Architecture, with – among others – a cahier series targeted at a professional audience. There will also be an edited academic volume that is almost finished: de Lange, Michiel, and Martijn de Waal, eds. 2018, in press. The Hackable City: Digital Media and Collaborative City Making in the Network Society. Singapore: Springer. Cahier #1 introduces our Hackable City-model and explains how it can be used to explore […] Read More
On March 6 and 7 2018, I co-organized the workshop “Critical Making of Frictional Urban Interfaces”, as part of the course Urban Interfaces that I teach together with Nanna Verhoeff. The workshop was a collaboration between Utrecht University’s Media & Culture Studies department (research group [urban interfaces] + the research master program Media, Arts & Performance), and Creative Coding Utrecht, artists Ruben van de Ven (https://rubenvandeven.com) & Cristina Cochior (http://randomiser.info), in partnership with Het Nieuwe Instituut (https://hetnieuweinstituut.nl), and HKU (https://www.hku.nl). ABOUT […] Read More
Together with visiting PhD scholar Delaram Ashtari I organized a small playtest session of urban game Redesire on 20 November 2017 in Utrecht. The game was commissioned by Tessa Peters & Rolf van Boxmeer and designed by We Are Muesli. It is part of a longer-running art/architecture project called Rezone, in which I have collaborated in the past. See announcement below: Invitation playtesting session Redesire: playing urban redevelopment Monday Nov 20 2017, 11:00-13:00 – location Muntstraat 2a, room 1.11, Utrecht University Participation and co-creation with various stakeholders […] Read More
On December 2 2017 I will give a talk at the Data (For) Culture conference in Katowice. The event is organized by Medialab Katowice. About the event: During the conference, experts from Poland and abroad will discuss a number of topics, including: (a) how to combine traditional methods of cultural research with the analysis of large data sets from the web, primarily from social media; (b) how cultural events (official and grassroots) impact on the city’s development; (c) how social media form a networked public […] Read More
Recently I gave a talk (in Dutch) for the Betweterfestival in Tivoli/Vredenburg Utrecht about the increasingly dominant role of data in the ‘smart city’. The talk was called “A Walk in the smart city” (Een wandeling in de slimme stad). The talk was in Dutch. The video of the talk (copyright UU Studium Generale) can be watched here >> Or via Youtube here:
Together with Nanna Verhoeff, Sigrid Merx, and Hira Sheikh, I am organizing this seminar series about Urban Friction. It is part of the research group [urban interfaces] I co-founded with Nanna & Sigrid. Urban processes have been impacted by frictions all throughout history. The remarkable pace and dynamics of the current phase of global urbanization in the age of mediatization, datafication, and pervasive connectivity suggest a new age where insular, political boundaries have come to shift radically. Perhaps to […] Read More
On 24 Oct. 2017, I was the moderator of the conference “A City as Smart as its Citizens”, organized by Het Nieuwe Instituut. The event took place as part of the Dutch Design Week/World Design Event in the former Philips NatLab in Eindhoven. Keynote speakers were Maya Indira Ganesh (Tactical Technology Collective), Usman Haque (Umbrellium), and Drew Hemment (FutureEverything). Also very cool, my first all-female expert panel, on the topic of smart cities and data no less! How do we go beyond the “smart city” […] Read More
Together with colleagues Koen Leurs and Domitilla Olivieri I organized a Lecture and Screening with media artist Tabita Rezaire, on Oct. 5 2017 in Parnassos Utrecht. Tabita Rezaire PCI: Lecture and Screening In this PCI screening, we have the great honour and privilege to have with us the artist Tabita Rezaire, who will introduce, show and discuss her video work for an hour, followed by a 30 minute Q&A session. We end with drinks. The session is titled Decolonial trinity: technologies of the spiritual, […] Read More
For the Betweterfestival on 29 September 2017, I gave a talk about the increasingly dominant role of data in the ‘smart city’. The talk was called “A Walk in the smart city” (Een wandeling in de slimme stad). The talk was in Dutch. See video registration below: Een wandeling in de slimme stad Stel je voor: Je bent vandaag precies op tijd opgestaan dankzij de slimme wekker op je smartphone die in je agenda heeft gezien waar en hoe laat je […] Read More