Data Politics in the Built Environment

This special issue advances understandings of the practices, politics and power implications of data-driven buildings and cities

Buildings and cities are increasingly being reconfigured and reimagined by flows of data e.g. in smart homes and cities, digitally networked infrastructure services, shared mobility programmes and autonomous vehicles, surveillance and security systems, and urban control centres. The benefits of a datafied built environment are uneven and result in detrimental impacts to some individuals and groups at the expense of others.

Guest editors: Andrew Karvonen and Tom Hargreaves

Datafication processes are far from neutral. In many cases, the datafication of the built environment is invisible to users which has negative democratic implications. The asymmetrical access to data produces conditions that are beneficial to some but not all. Decisions about what data gets collected and what is ignored are unavoidably political processes that privilege some while neglecting others. This special issue raise key questions about how data-driven buildings and cities can be designed to be inclusive and democratic.

A key theme emerging from the special issue involves processes of societal exclusion that are commonplace in datafication. Mello Rose and Chang argue that datafication processes tend to ignore important sources of ‘subjective socio-cultural data’ while Sharma et al. highlight the under-representation of particular social groups and the perpetuation of existing structures of inequality. White and Larsson demonstrate how digital platforms produce social relations that are de-individualized and de-personalised to realise globalised and consumerist modes of life, while Sareen et al. show how digitalisation favours privatised and individualised structures rather than collective forms of management and ownership.

A second theme in the special issue is the centrality of local geographies and histories to datafication processes. All of the contributions emphasise the importance of qualitative methods and datasets to characterise local histories and geographies while providing a strong corrective to the universalising quantitative abstractions of most datafication processes.

This special issue highlights the importance of including civil society in the development of new visions and alternatives that can dismantle existing unjust power structures. The contingent character of datafication processes is not inevitable but is the result of particular actions that could have turned out differently. Commoning can be a means to normalise and institutionalise more progressive and inclusive forms of collective consumption. Data-driven processes that are founded in social justice could realise fundamental systemic changes. A more ‘radical ethics’ of data politics could serve to renegotiate and re-evaluate interconnected urban crises.

Table of contents

Data politics in the built environment (Editorial)
A. Karvonen & T. Hargreaves  

Social justice implications of smart urban technologies: an intersectional approach
N. Sharma, T. Hargreaves & H. Pallett

Urban data: harnessing subjective sociocultural data from local newspapers
F. Mello Rose & J. Chang

Social implications of energy infrastructure digitalisation and decarbonisation
S. Sareen, A. Smith, S. Gantioler, J. Balest, M.C. Brisbois, S. Tomasi, B. Sovacool, G. A. Torres Contreras, N. Dellavalle & H. Haarstad

Disruptive data: historicising the platformisation of Dublin’s taxi industry
J. White & S. Larsson

Feedback on the special issue

Phronesis and epistemic justice in data-driven built environments
Miguel Valdez

The data politics of tech corporations
Dillon Mahmoudi & Alan Wiig

Disruptive technologies and the regulator’s dilemma
Andrea Pollio

Populist dissent and digital urbanism
Robert Cowley

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