Dinners on Digital Urbanism
Rapidly evolving data sources and computational techniques, combined with software and hardware embedded in urban environments present both opportunities and challenges for urban systems. Digital Urbanism, a new research initiative at MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU), seeks to explore the evolving relationship between urbanism, computation, emerging technologies, and design.
Dinners on Digital Urbanism draws together experts from urban planning, film-making, virtual media, architecture, computer science, and activists with the aim to explore, critique, and discuss the intersection of urbanism, technology, and design.
01 Sci-Fi Urbanism: Fiction’s Influence on Future Cities the first in the series of dinners, looked at fiction’s influence on future cities, the ways urban design and planners have learned from science fiction, and how we can use it to create new imaginaries for the places we want to inhabit.
02 Un-Smarting the City: Alternatives to the smart city, algocracy, & technocentrism critiqued the technocentric approach to urbanism, and explored new frameworks to use technology responsibly.
03 Future Makers: Blueprints for the future of pedagogy and practice explored the future of practice and pedagogy in a world where interdisciplinary collaboration is the norm, not the exception.
04 Inun[data]ed: Impacting Climate Change Through Data & Computation examined how the multidisciplinary lens of Digital Urbanism can provide novel contributions to climate research.
05 Debugging Civics: Charting a course for digital participatory parity discussed the role of digital platforms and technology in urban environments, and examined opportunities to strengthen civic engagement, public participation, and city services.
Stay tuned, as these conversations begin to shape a publication on Digital Urbanism.
