Digital Sociology Conference | Digital Structures, Digital Institutions Session | 03/18/16

PLAYING WITH PROPERTY:Young People and the Right to the ‘Smart’ City

Gregory T. Donovan, PhDAssistant Professor,Communication & Media StudiesNew Media & Digital DesignUrban StudiesUrban Law CenterFORDHAM UNIVERSITY

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I. the ‘smart’ urban frontierII. informational youthIII. two developmentsIV. a right to the smart city?

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“How can cities rise to meet big new challenges — and serve more and more people — with resources that are always stretched thin? By finding smart ways to use a resource that is always growing: Data.”

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digital.nyc/map

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the smart city’s uneven geography

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a “new” urban frontier?

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Lefebvre, H. (2003). The Urban Revolution.

“in the urban, everything is calculable, quantifiable, programmable;

everything, that is, except the drama that results from the co-presence and re-presentation of the elements

calculated, quantified, and programmed.”— Henri Lefebvre

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urban (plat)form

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Lefebvre, H. (1987). The Everyday and Everydayness. Yale French Studies, 73. 7-11.

“… the everyday [constitutes] the platform upon which the bureaucratic

society of controlled consumerism is erected” — Henri Lefebvre *

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the urban platform accumulates all content

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… but produces uneven knowledgedata-driven indifference

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II. informational youth

mydig i ta l foo tpr in t .o rga Youth Design & Research Collective production

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cyberspace

your spacemy space

cyberspace ismagical!

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youth as informational ideal,

youth as informational property

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Circuits for access, or dispossession?

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Proprietary ecologies are the multidimensional ecosystems of privatized data flows within which everyday life increasingly takes place.

… I theorize this as an “ecology” because the concept bridges an IT discourse of information systems that interact at various scales (i.e. information ecology) with a spatial understanding of the relations of production and reproduction at various scales (i.e. political ecology).”

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YOUTH ARE THE CANARIES IN OUR CONTEMPORARY DATA MINE. Their situated resilience, distress, empathy & apathy are indicators of things to come.

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III. two developments

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Hudson Yards Redevelopment Amsterdam Housing Development

DESIGNING SMART CITIESFOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

SPRING 2016

Comm & Media Studies

American StudiesUrban Studies

Dorothy Day Center

for Service & Justice

Amsterdam Houses

Amsterdam Addition

Lincoln Square Neighborhood

Center

COURSE ATTRIBUTES

SERVICE PARTNER COMMUNITY PARTNERS

JUSTICE-LEARNING PARTNER

NMDD 3883

SERVICE LEARNINGCOURSE

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Settling the New West (Side)

“Hudson Yards will attract & cater to this vibrant, cutting-edge community.”

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quantifying privilege

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Amsterdam Houses & Amsterdam Addition

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Photo by PopSpots: http://www.popspotsnyc.com/west_side_story/

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Maps Generated By: I Quant NY, http://iqauntny.tumblr.com

754 frisks 2 guns .265% success rate

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“… it’s not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims

describe as committing the murder.

In that case,incidentally, I think we disproportionately

stop whites too much and minorities too little.”

(June 28, 2013)

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(USA Today, 2003)

(Fox New, 2003)

Brianna, 12 Forced by RIAA to pay $2,000 fine as well as issue public apology for file sharing in 2003.

Resident of UWS public housing

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A Settlement Housefor the Old West (Side)

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A settlement house is a community center with a stated purpose of “strengthen[ing] individual and neighborhood assets, and build[ing] collective capacity to address

community problems.” — Beverly Koerin

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Koerin, B. (2003). The Settlement House Tradition: Current Trends and Future Concerns.”

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IV. a right to the smart city?

situating the settlement house as techno-social interface

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The settlement house, rather than the new media district,

is a potentially potent techno-social interface that could reorient neoliberal modes of

knowing and belonging for marginalized youth in the smart city.

“… the right to the tools through which any citizen can systematically increase that stock of knowledge which they consider most vital to their survival as human beings and to their claims as citizens.”

The Right to the Smart City

“The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city.”

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PUBLIC SCIENCE PROJECT’S RESEARCHERSFORFAIRPOLICING.ORG

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qualitative communities & participatory platforms

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qualitative communities & participatory platforms

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qualitative communities & participatory platforms

Digital Sociology Conference | Digital Structures, Digital Institutions Session | 03/18/16

PLAYING WITH PROPERTY:Young People and the Right to the ‘Smart’ City

Gregory T. Donovan, PhDAssistant Professor,Communication & Media StudiesNew Media & Digital DesignUrban StudiesUrban Law CenterFORDHAM UNIVERSITY

GTD.NYC @GDONOVAN