Digital clouds and urban spaces

A cooperative venture between the World-Information Institute, dérive – Zeitschrift für Stadtforschung and the Az W

To an increasing extent urbanity is being formed by networks of information technologies. It is not only traffic direction systems, energy supply, infrastructure and planning models that are being based more and more on complex digital systems, the world of work, social spaces and cultural processes are also increasingly relying on a complex system of electronically controlled procedures. Global companies assure us that their technologies will make cities more efficient, safer and cleaner. But to what extent do these systems really help citizens? What might the long-term consequences be, what side-effects must we reckon with? Where are the risks of increasing our dependency on complex systems? What possibilities for action are open to citizens?

WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY

Adam Greenfield, author and urbanist, founder and director of Urbanscale, NY (USA)
Thomas Grüter, science author and software businessman, Münster (D)
Ina Homeier, MA 18 (A)
Daiva Jakutyte-Walangitang, researcher – urbanism/urban energy systems, Austrian Institute of
Technology, Vienna (A)
Christoph Laimer, editor of dérive – Zeitschrift für Stadtforschung, Vienna (A)
Elke Rauth, editor of dérive – Zeitschrift für Stadtforschung, Vienna (A)
Barbara Saringer-Bory, Austrian Institute for Regional Studies and Spatial Planning, Vienna (A)
Oliver Schürer, Author, Curator, Editor, and Senior Scientist at the Department of Architecture Theory at Vienna University of Technology (A)
Marleen Stikker, Director Waag Society, founder of the “Fair Meter” organisation, Amsterdam (NL)

13:30 Welcome Address: Karoline Mayer, Az W, Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder, World-Information Institute

Intelligent City? Introduction and Critical Perspectives

13:45 Adam Greenfield: Another city is possible: Networked urbanism from above and below.
14:30 Barbara Saringer-Bory: Urban Development in the Information Age. Issues, Elements, Perspectives
15:15 Break

Sustainable City? Infrasctructure and Urban Dynamics

15:30 Daiva Jakutyte-Walangitang: The Sustainable City as a Flexible Framework??Between the poles of local urban development and supra-regional networks.
16:15 Thomas Grüter: The Inevitable End of the Internet and the Fall of the Information Society

17:00 Break

Open City? Decentral Technologies and Urban Life

17:30 Marleen Stikker: Technologies for the People? A bottom-up approach to urban informatisation
18:15 Christoph Laimer: Right to the City.?The other vision of an urban society.

19:00 Break

Global Processes and Local Spaces

19:15 Panel with Adam Greenfield, Ina Homeier, Oliver Schürer and Marleen Stikker
Moderation: Elke Rauth

Event in German and English

Supported by departure, der Kreativagentur der Stadt Wien.