'Look InsideTM: digital mediations of the smart city'
- Geography Building room 125
- Lectures Talks and Workshops, Life and Environmental Sciences, Research
Part of the School Seminar Series
Speaker: Gillian Rose, Professor of Cultural Geography, The Open University, Fellow of the British Academy
Hosts: Phil Jones and Tess Osborne
Efforts to become 'smart' are transforming many cities globally. The term 'smart' usually refers to the deployment of digital technologies to improve a city's economic growth (through innovating new products and markets), environmental sustainability (by encouraging more efficient use of resources) and openness (by enabling greater citizen participation in city governance). The development of a city as smart is much more than a technical infrastructure however: it also involves, among many other things, discursive claims about smart, the design and marketing of smart products, and new visions of the good city. Digital visualisations of various kinds are thus central to both the representation and the enactment of 'smart' urban technologies. This chapter will draw on a range of promotional videos made by the technology companies leading the smart tech market, to explore how 'smart' urban spaces are mediatized by a range of visual strategies which both show and enact 'smartness'.
PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE TO GES 125, AND CHANGE OF TIME TO 13:30.