We build this city on rocks and (feminist) code: hacking corporate computational designs of cities to come

Publikation: Beiträge in ZeitschriftenZeitschriftenaufsätzeForschungbegutachtet

Authors

Cities have long become interspaces, entangled in materialities and virtual worlds. However, as urban automation advances in cities increasingly made ‘smarter’, everyday processes are often controlled by oppressive standards hardcoded into technologies. Publicly neutralized as ‘objective’, corporately owned algorithmic architectures now function as urban gatekeepers. They determine social participation, possibilities of space appropriation on- and offline, and access to (social) infrastructures. Following five months of qualitative research on hacking and other tech-practices by German-speaking cyberfeminist collectives in 2021, my paper portrays their refusal of black-boxed, profitable, and biased technologies of classification. I argue that feminist hackspaces are important urban co-creators in digitized cities to come. They offer infrastructures to increase access to interfaces, (cyber-)spaces, and decision-making processes by sharing their tech-knowledge and tools. Their activism demonstrates how (urban) hacking is a crucial practice to break with non-democratically controlled digitalization processes: in favour of a city for all.
OriginalspracheEnglisch
ZeitschriftDigital Creativity
Jahrgang34
Ausgabenummer2
Seiten (von - bis)162-177
Anzahl der Seiten16
ISSN1462-6268
DOIs
PublikationsstatusErschienen - 24.07.2023

Bibliographische Notiz

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the project ‘Automating the Logistical City’, funded by Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture with funds from the Niedersächsiches Vorab as part of the ‘Digital Society’ call for proposals [Grand ID ZN 3752]. A huge shout-out! … goes out to my interview partners and their hackspaces for generously sharing their time, knowledge and experiences with me. Danke so for opening up the door to your world during very challenging times! Special THX to Kathrin Wildner and Monika Grubbauer for unconditionally supporting my work and the ‘Automating the Logistical City’-team for making this paper possible. Also, thank you to Franziska Schämann and the editors for making it better through your caring remarks. To all those who have cheered for me during this process: 143.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

DOI