{"id":983,"date":"2015-05-04T20:57:54","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T19:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bijt.org\/wordpress\/?p=983"},"modified":"2017-11-14T23:52:24","modified_gmt":"2017-11-14T22:52:24","slug":"digital-cities-9-workshop-hackable-cities-from-subversive-city-making-to-systemic-change-27-june-2015-university-of-limerick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bijt.org\/wordpress\/2015\/05\/04\/digital-cities-9-workshop-hackable-cities-from-subversive-city-making-to-systemic-change-27-june-2015-university-of-limerick\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Cities 9 workshop “Hackable Cities: From Subversive City Making to Systemic Change”, 27 June 2015, University of Limerick"},"content":{"rendered":"

[see original workshop page and most up to date announcements on http:\/\/www.themobilecity.nl\/dc9<\/a>]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"1040-2-1040x393\"<\/a>Workshop “Digital Cities 9 – Hackable Cities: From Subversive City Making to Systemic Change”<\/p>\n

27 June 2015, University of Limerick, Ireland, prior to the\u00a0Communities & Technologies Conference 2015<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DEADLINE EXTENDED until May 8 2015 (24:00 CET)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n


\nList of organisers and their backgrounds<\/strong><\/p>\n

Michiel de Lange (Utrecht University, The Mobile City)<\/p>\n

Nanna Verhoeff (Utrecht University)<\/p>\n

Martijn de Waal (University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, The Mobile City)<\/p>\n

Marcus Foth (Queensland University of Technology)<\/p>\n

Martin Brynskov (Aarhus University)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contact:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Martijn de Waal & Michiel de Lange (Digitalcities9@gmail.com).<\/p>\n


\nThe workshop\u2019s theme, goals and activities:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Digital Cities workshop series started in 1999, and is the longest running academic workshop series that has followed the intertwined development of cities and digital technologies. Earlier years have seen papers presented at Digital Cities to appear as the basis of key anthologies within the field of urban informatics, smart & social cities and civic media.<\/p>\n

This year again we are\u00a0part of the C&T event to further discuss these relevant themes, gain new insights and work collaboratively towards a new publication, and explore opportunities for cooperation in research programs for instance in the H2020-framework.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Abstract<\/b><\/p>\n

The DC9 workshop takes place on June 27, 2015 in Limerick, Ireland and is titled \u201cHackable Cities: From Subversive City Making to Systemic Change\u201d. The notion of \u201chacking\u201d originates from the world of media technologies but is increasingly often being used for creative ideals and practices of city making. \u201cCity hacking\u201d evokes more participatory, inclusive, decentralized, playful and subversive alternatives to often top-down ICT implementations in smart city making. However, these discourses about \u201chacking the city\u201d are used ambiguously and are loaded with various ideological presumptions, which makes the term also problematic. For some \u201curban hacking\u201d is about empowering citizens to organize around communal issues and perform aesthetic urban interventions. For others it raises questions about governance: what kind of \u201ccity hacks\u201d should be encouraged or not, and who decides? Can city hacking be curated? For yet others, trendy participatory buzzwords like these are masquerades for deeply libertarian neoliberal values. Furthermore, a question is how \u201ccity hacking\u201d may mature from the tactical level of smart and often playful interventions to the strategic level of enduring impact. The Digital Cities 9 workshop welcomes papers that explore the idea of \u201chackable city making\u201d in constructive and critical ways.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Call for papers<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Digital Cities workshop invites papers that explore the relation between digital media technologies and everyday urban life, planning and governance. We especially welcome papers within this year\u2019s theme: \u201cHackable Cities: From Subversive City Making to Systemic Change.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHacking\u201d has long been part and parcel of the world of media technologies. From HAM radio amateurs to US west-coast computer culture, users have been figured as active creators, shapers, and benders of media technologies and the relationships mediated through them (Levy 2010; Roszak 1986; Von Hippel 2005). In general what the term refers to is the process of clever or playful appropriation of existing technologies or infrastructures, or bending the logic of a particular system beyond its intended purposes or restrictions to serve one\u2019s personal or communal goals.<\/p>\n

Whereas the term was mainly used to refer to practices in the sphere of computer hardware and software, more recently \u201chacking\u201d has been used to refer to creative practices and ideals of city making: spanning across spatial, social, cultural, and institutional domains, various practices of \u201ccity hacking\u201d can be seen in urban planning, city management, and tactical urban interventions. Worldwide, we have seen various artistic and political movements making use of digital media to appropriate urban places as the locus for theatrical interventions, often politically charged. A prominent book on the future of \u201csmart cities\u201d makes an appeal for \u201ccivic hackers\u201d (Townsend 2013). Urban governments around the world have embraced \u201chackathons\u201d as a new way for the development of urban services. Numerous events with titles like \u201cHack Your City\u201d (e.g. Sheffield) or similar, have been organized. Municipalities have opened up datasets and created urban APIs or SDKs that allow clever hackers to build apps and services.<\/p>\n

What these examples have in common is that the term \u201chacking\u201d is used to evoke a participatory alternative to top-down ICT implementations in cities. The term \u201chacking\u201d suggests a novel logic to organize urban society through social media platforms. It suggests a move away from centralized urban planning towards more inclusive process of \u201ccity making\u201d, creating new types of public spaces. This logic of \u201chacking\u201d is touted as slightly subversive, innovative, and is associated with collaboration, openness and participation. As such it is applied to various domains of urban life. The term can be used to highlight critical or contrarian tactics, to point to new collaborative practices amongst citizens mediated through social media, or to describe a changing vision on the relation between governments and their citizens.<\/p>\n

Discourses about \u201chacking the city\u201d are not unproblematic. While the term suggests cities have embraced a new \u201chacker ethic\u201d of decentralized organization, reputation-based meritocracy and playfulness, at the very same time many \u201csmart city\u201d policies reinstate modernist ideals of centralized overview and pervasive control. As the notion is ported from the field of software development to civic life and organization, it is used ambiguously, loaded with various ideological presumptions. For some, \u201curban hacking\u201d is about empowering citizens to organize themselves around communal issues and empowering them to perform aesthetic urban interventions. For others it raises questions about governance: what kind of \u201ccity hacks\u201d should be encouraged and which ones are unwelcome, and who decides about that? Can city hacking be curated? For yet another group it is a masquerade for neoliberal politics in which libertarian values appear in the discursive sheep\u2019s clothing of participatory buzzwords like \u201cWeb 2.0\u201d, \u201ccollective intelligence\u201d, \u201ccrowdsourcing\u201d, \u201copen source ethics\u201d, or \u201csharing economy\u201d. Furthermore, a key question that remains largely unanswered is how \u201ccity hacking\u201d may mature from the tactical level of smart and often playful interventions to the strategic level of enduring impact.<\/p>\n

The Digital Cities Workshop explores welcomes papers that explore the notion of hackable city making both in a constructive as in a critical way. We also welcome the discussion of related concepts that address the relationship between bottom-up city making and issues of governance and urban management.<\/p>\n

We prioritize papers that address this overall theme, but works connecting to adjacent themes may also come into consideration. Contact the DC9 chair if you want to discuss before submitting.<\/p>\n

Relevant topics include but are not limited to:<\/p>\n