URBAN OPERATING SYSTEMS: PRODUCING THE COMPUTATIONAL CITY

The White Problem in Planning

URBAN OPERATING SYSTEMS:

Producing the Computational City

AUTHORS/ ANDRÉS LUQUE-AYALA & SIMON MARVIN

Review by Kshitiz Khanal

MIT Press, 2020. 296 pages. 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.

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

mapping makes spaces with economic value more powerful, creating new lines of divide between places with difference economic values.

Authors examine the use of widely available data for predictions such as the time and place crimes are likely to take place using computational logics with a case of predictive analysis platforms in Chicago. That the predictions in practice have served only targeting and spatial disaggregation exposes how data is not neutral and the assumptions of algorithm developers and biases in urban systems are perpetuated by the urban OS. Focusing on Rio de Janeiro’s digital operations center, the book illustrates how urban spaces are repackaged into components that are amenable to digital representation. The repackaging takes center-stage to maintain the flow of information and political debates give way. However, technology at the hands of people, in contrast to technology used for maintaining city functions, enables new forms of civic resistance, as seen in the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movement.

A theme repeatedly emphasized in the book is the propagation of certain rationalities and ideologies through data and technology throughout urban space and civic life, leading to a reduced presence of political debates and civic action. Expansive diffusion of digital technologies without careful consideration of their impacts on society can, and has, led to harm. Examples of racial bias in prediction systems, economic reimagination of territories of favelas as spaces of consumption, and loss of privacy through surveillance systems all illustrate this risk. Under the façade of neutrality, technologies stemming from defense and corporate institutions—now pervasive in presence—ultimately shape cities in their own image. The book tells a cautionary tale as it revisits a brief history and narratives surrounding urban computational logics over time and their present and potential future impacts, warning us of creating “a city that only makes sense if counted (p211).” The book calls for integration of social interests and multiple knowledge forms, replacing computational logics as the exclusive decision-maker in the future.

Casting a wide net on a critical issue through several casestudies, the book provides an overview of history, state of knowledge and real-world examples of aggregate of urban computational logics manifested as urban OS. Ideas and examples covered in the book are not entirely new to those who are vigilant of social and political issues in data systems, except for its focused coverage of their application as urban OS. In fact, some suggested calls to action in the final chapter are already being practiced in different parts of the world. For example, Mapeo - a software used to map indigenous resources, was developed in partnership with indigenous communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Mapeo places the issues, knowledge, and perspectives of affected communities at its center, and its technology is merely a tool to empower these communities. An additional chapter focusing on existing implementations like Mapeo would be useful.

The book’s major contribution to the domain is applying those issues to urbanism by digging deeper with case studies from cities around the world and adding relevant historical and theoretical background. Trading off depth for a wider scope as adopted by the authors has resulted in a book that can be used as a useful introductory reference material. I can see this book making its way into urban informatics and related syllabi in the coming years.

END NOTES

1 Principles based on understanding the behavior of natural and man-made symptoms through feedback mechanism and information flow within the systems.