Today’s Internet for Tomorrow’s Cities: On Algorithmic Culture and Urban Imaginaries

Abstract

In cities, when combined with ubiquitous mobile media and location-based services, algorithmic culture has been seen to exacerbate the problem of software- sorted geographies, that is, a conjunction of code and space that algorithmically “orchestrates inequalities through technological systems embedded within urban environments” (Graham 2005, p. 562). The mediated geographies served to us via locative devices and urban media might, for instance, show us only the city an algorithm assumes we want to see. This chapter examines some of the touch points between the software-sorted city and its citizens, looking at both sides: On the one hand, algorithmic curation and selection render automated variations of the city. On the other hand, there are opportunities to explore, tinkering with algorithmic culture to bring about a diversity dividend and increased innovation capacity in cities. In order to do so, cities must provide appropriate interfaces. Such urban computing, urban informatics, and urban media interfaces include location-based applications on mobile phones used in the city as well as urban screens, public displays, and forms of media architecture, such as interactive media façades and installations. The chapter is structured in three parts. It first offers a critical review of the relationship between the internet and the city and in doing so, it outlines the basic premises of big data analytics and algorithms in the context of urban informatics that have given rise to the new field of urban science. It then turns to the sociocultural implications and issues arising from algorithmic culture. In the third section, we discuss urban imaginaries and novel ways that some of the software tools underpinning algorithmic culture in the here and now can also give rise to new practices of imagining the future city.