The White Problem in Planning
U RBAN O P E RATI NG SYST EMS : Pro d u c i n g t h e Co m p u t at i o n a l C i t y
AUTHORS/ ANDRÉS LUQUE-AYALA & SIMON MARVIN Review by Kshitiz Khanal
Ideas of applying computational logics (use of computers to formalize logics or reason) in urban planning are not new: they go as far back as the 1950s, when the Principles of Cybernetics1 were first outlined. Development and widespread diffusion of hardware, software, and data infrastructure in recent decades have made the application of computational logics in urban settings near-ubiquitous, creating a new phenomenon out of an old paradigm. Andrés Luque-Ayala and Simon Marvin’s Urban Operating Systems investigates the origins and state of urban computational logics across seven domains: operationalization, datafication, sensing, mapping, prediction, circulation, and (digital) resistance, each presented as a separate chapter. The book begins by tracing the origins of rationalities that guide the use of computational logics in cities. The authors examine smart cities, digital urbanism, and everything else collectively called “urban operating systems (OS)” in both historical and contemporary contexts. The investigation posits urban OS as a political technology that empowers technological functions and bakes neoliberal ideologies into the governance and physical fabrics of modern-day cities. By analyzing abstract diagrams that model urban systems, the authors trace technologies with military and corporate origins that have been applied in urban applications and continue to shape cities, both physically and meta-physically.
MIT Press, 2020. 296 pages.
98
A case study of New York exemplifies how data flows in urban systems enable the practice of exercising power and control through data, a typical case of datafication (the conversion of urban settings and life into data to be used as feed for decision-making systems). New York city politicians and local tech community come together to creating technological solutions enabled by open data law and open data portal. These solutions materialize data and information when they interact with existing city infrastructures to create creating new forms of interaction between city elements. The authors examine sensors, the devices that create data from urban elements, for their roles as creators of monetary value and enablers of commodification of urban life. The authors review digital mapping as the process of creating an alternative representation of geographies, one that not only represents places in a map but also enables building services and creating economic value on top the representation. Digital
