Digital Urbanism, from the Grassroots

Niloufar Vadiati
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The podcast Digital Urbanism, from the Grassroots, is based on my postdoc research, “Grassroots Digital Urbanism”, funded by the German Research Foundation. In this podcast I interview scholars/activists who have either practically imagined an alternative to the classic tech-capitalist model of Smart Cities, or conceptually built new narratives to digital urbanism. The podcast has been structured as two series. One explores the Grassroots practices, and one explores Municipality practices. Hope you enjoy!

Episodes

  1. 01/05/2025

    Season 8: Alternative Digital Economy and PlatformCoop: a conversation with Ela Kagel

    Ela Kagel is co-founder and managing director of SUPERMARKT, Alternative Digital Economy and PlatformCoop. She is also an artistic director of MoneyLab Berlin and board member of Platform Cooperatives Germany eG. Some Notes: -Model Project of Haus der Statistik https://hausderstatistik.org -Food delivery cooperative of Khora: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1080269936143859 -DisCo.coop https://www.disco.coop Image courtesy: Ela Kagel Music Credit: "Negaram" by Golnar&Mahan

    Season 8: Alternative Digital Economy and PlatformCoop: a conversation with Ela Kagel

  2. 01/04/2025

    Episode 7, Feminist Hack Space: Heart of Code, with Marie Kochsiek

    About: The Heart of Code is a FLINTA* space for technology-loving women (trans and cis), trans* and non-binary people to access information technologies, tools and content, and thus make the hacking community and tech landscape more diverse in the long term. -Maria’s current project: The menstrual cycle tracking app called “drip.” -You can find the pictures of Zin making and Wooden Half dome that have been built by ‘Heart of Coders’ in Instagram account of this podcast: @grassroots-digital-urbanism. Music Credit: "Negaram" by Golnar&Mahan

    Episode 7, Feminist Hack Space: Heart of Code, with Marie Kochsiek

  3. 04/26/2023

    Episode 5, From Urban Experimenting to Digital Sovereignty in Berlin, with Elizabeth Calderon Lüning

    In conversation with Elizabeth Calderon Lüning: https://www.drlab.org/team/elizabeth-calderon-luning/ The Urban Gardening project of Prinzessinnengarten https://prinzessinnengarten.net/about/ The Neighborhood Academy(Knowledge Commoning) https://nachbarschaftsakademie.org/en/about/ Mazi project in Berlin: (Practicing community sovereignty over digital infrastructure) https://mazizone.net/mazi-eu/pilot-studies/neighborhood-academy/ The Digital City Alliance Berlin: https://digitalesberlin.info/en/about-the-digital-city-alliance-berlin/

    Episode 5, From Urban Experimenting to Digital Sovereignty in Berlin, with Elizabeth Calderon Lüning

  4. 03/10/2023

    Episode 4_ Urban Hack and Informal Housing in Sydney, a conversation with Dr Sophia Maalsen

    At the intersections of the digitalisation of urban spaces and governance, with feminist-housing, Dr Sophia Maalsen brings forth several questions in this episode: 1-What is hack as an urban practice and politic in the digitally augmented city? 2-​​Who is using urban hacks and how do they do it in digital everyday life? 3-And How have these experiments and practices opened new ways of seeing or thinking about the housing problem in Sydney? Dr Sophia Maalsen is a senior lecturer in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. https://www.sydney.edu.au/architecture/about/our-people/academic-staff/sophia.maalsen.html Main papers that have been discussed in this episode: The hack: What it is and why it matters to urban studies (sagepub.com) Smart housing_ the political and market responses of the intersections between housing, new sharing economies and smart cities | Elsevier Enhanced Reader Hacking housing: theorising housing from the minor (tandfonline.com) Sophia Maalsen keynote at the Beyond Smart Cities Today conference, Sweden, June 2022 - YouTube Please write to us if you have any suggestion or tips: niloufar.vadiati@gmail.com

    Episode 4_ Urban Hack and Informal Housing in Sydney, a conversation with Dr Sophia Maalsen

  5. 02/03/2023

    Episode 3_Technological Sovereignty Movement in Barcelona, a conversation with Casey Lynch

    Technological Sovereignty Movement in Barcelona, a conversation with Casey Lynch on alternative digital future, digital commons and the Glitch About Dr. Casey Lynch: https://people.utwente.nl/c.r.lynch His publication that we discussed about in this episode: -Contesting Digital Futures: Urban Politics, Alternative Economies, and the Movement for Technological Sovereignty in Barcelona https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/anti.12522?saml_referrer -Internet infrastructure and the commons: grassroots knowledge sharing in Barcelona https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00343404.2020.1869200?casa_token=6vDKmZkb1SQAAAAA:hIQVh-wNhZvRhYXw_hKoDMSDlaasSnEYE1MCcd-kO1ZQM5z4w5h_MrXxjax_vm3QWQL19aDKc-S8 -Glitch Epistemology and the Question of (Artificial) Intelligence: Perceptions, Encounters, Subjectivities https://ris.utwente.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/285086564/20438206221102952.pdf Other references that have been discussed -Race after Technology by Ruha Benjamin https://www.bklynlibrary.org/sites/default/files/documents/BOOK%20CLUB%20KITS/RACE%20AFTER%20TECH_BKLYN%20BOOK%20CLUB%20KIT_REV.pdf -Glitch epistemologies for computational cities https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/20438206221075714 Initiatives and Projects in Barcelona Guifi Net https://guifi.net/barcelona https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280720388_Guifinet_a_crowdsourced_network_infrastructure_held_in_common Fab lab of :The Ateneus de Fabricació https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/ateneusdefabricacio/en/ The Congress of Technological Sovereignty https://sobtec.cat Technological cooperative for social transformation. https://colectic.coop

    Episode 3_Technological Sovereignty Movement in Barcelona, a conversation with Casey Lynch

  6. 11/20/2022

    Episode 2_Cyber-Feminist Urbanism, a conversation with Maja-Lee Voigt

    Maja-Lee Voigt: https://www.leuphana.de/en/institutes/isco/members/maja-lee-voigt.html Her Master-Thesis: Cyber_Feminist_City. Stadtschaffende Praktiken zwischen Artificial Intelligence, Algorithmen und Asphalt (With limited access via HafenCity University Library: https://katalog.hcu-hamburg.de/vufind/Record/1783546794) The Manifest of Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russel: https://www.legacyrussell.com/GLITCHFEMINISM https://www.amazon.de/Glitch-Feminism-Manifesto-Legacy-Russell/dp/1786632667 Cyber- Feminist collectives: Baumschiff(treeshuttle) as former home of the Heart of Code: http://heartofcode.org Die Haecksen: https://www.haecksen.org/english/ Mz*Baltazar’s Laboratory https://www.mzbaltazarslaboratory.org The first international Cyberfeminist alliance https://obn.org/obn/faq/fs_faq.html and, https://fuckcologne.de/ Her paper under publication: We build this City on Rocks and (Feminist) code: Hacking Corporate Computation Design of Cities **The cover-image of this episode has been drawn by Maja-Lee Voigt. Resources: -BigBlueButton (2022): BigBlueButton | Open Source Virtual Classroom Software. BigBlueButton - Open Source Web Conferencing. https://bigbluebutton.org/ [letzter Zugriff 28.09.2022]. -Buolamwini, Joy (2021): Tweet vom 09.04.21. https://twitter.com/jovialjoy/status/1380539105675710465. -Buolamwini, Joy / Gebru, Timnit (2018): Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification. In: Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 81, 1–15. -f.u.c.k. cologne (2022): F**k Cologne - Feministisches Tech Kollektiv in Köln. https://fuckcologne.de/ [letzter Zugriff 03.11.2022]. -Genzmer, Jenny (2020a): F.U.C.K.001 Wir haben uns nen Hackspace gemakert. Feminismus und Computerkram. -Haecksen (2021): Wer sind die Haecksen? – Haecksen. https://www.haecksen.org/wer-sind-die-haecksen/ [letzter Zugriff 14.03.2021]. -Heart of Code e.V. (2021): kalender. http://heartofcode.org/kalender [letzter Zugriff 04.08.2021]. -Jurgenson, Nathan (2012): The IRL Fetish. The New Inquiry. https://thenewinquiry.com/the-irl-fetish/ [letzter Zugriff 27.09.2022]. Kitchin, Rob / Dodge, Martin (2011): Code/space: software and everyday life. Software studiesCambridge, Mass: MIT Press. -Mattern, Shannon (2017): A City Is Not a Computer. In: Places Journal. -netzforma* e.V. (2020): Wenn KI, dann feministisch. Impulse aus Wissenschaft und Aktivismus. Berlin: netzforma* e.V. — Verein für feministische Netzpolitik. -Marx, Paris (2021a): Embracing Glitch Feminism with Legacy Russell. Tech Won’t Save Us. Podcastkollektiv der Haecksen (o. J.): Technik kreativ nutzen. Haecksenwerk. -Russell, Legacy (2020): Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto. London/ New York: Verso Books. -Shaw, Joe / Graham, Mark (2018): Ein informationelles Recht auf Stadt? Code, Content, Kontrolle und die Urbanisierung von Information. In: Bauriedl, Sybille, Strüver, Anke (Hg.), Smart City - Kritische Perspektiven auf die Digitalisierung in Städten. London: transcript Verlag, 177–204. -Wark, McKenzie (2004): A Hacker Manifesto. Cambridge/ London: Harvard University Press. -Zook, Matthew / Graham, Mark (2018): Hacking code/space: Confounding the code of global capitalism. In: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 43/3, 390–404.

    Episode 2_Cyber-Feminist Urbanism, a conversation with Maja-Lee Voigt

  7. 11/20/2022

    Introduction

    The podcast **Digital Urbanism, from the Grassroots** is about the emerging sphere of digital urbanism that explores alternatives to the non-techno-capitalist models in cities. In conversation with scholars, coders, and activists, Digital Urbanism, the podcast **Digital Urbanism, from the Grassroots** provides a forum for transnational debate and multi-forms of practices to advance our understanding of reclaiming technological sovereignty in spatial development, demystifying the ‘black box’ of platform urbanism and aligning technology to the urban-democracy agenda. Hosted and produced by: Niloufar Vadiati.

  8. 10/06/2022

    Episode 1_Digital City_Making, a conversation with Martin Bangratz_26. Aug 2022

    In this episode Martin Bangratz from RWTH Aachen University, PhD researcher at the chair of Planning Theory and Urban Development, discusses about the concept of Digital City Making and shares with us his own insights on this emerging practices. Links: https://www.pnd-what-next.de/category/digital-citymakers/ Publication on Digital city makers research projet: https://publications.rwth-aachen.de/record/835015/files/835015.pdf Online Journal of pnd (Planung neu denken) What/Next Podcast https://www.pnd-what-next.de/category/city-talks/ Grassroots Initiatives Utopastadt in Wuppertal https://www.utopiastadt.eu

    Episode 1_Digital City_Making, a conversation with Martin Bangratz_26. Aug 2022
  • 8 Episodes

About

The podcast Digital Urbanism, from the Grassroots, is based on my postdoc research, “Grassroots Digital Urbanism”, funded by the German Research Foundation. In this podcast I interview scholars/activists who have either practically imagined an alternative to the classic tech-capitalist model of Smart Cities, or conceptually built new narratives to digital urbanism. The podcast has been structured as two series. One explores the Grassroots practices, and one explores Municipality practices. Hope you enjoy!

Information