Publications

Emerging technologies are fundamentally reshaping the institution of citizenship and the role of cities. This panel will feature research that seeks to understand the challenges that emerging technologies pose to the institution of citizenship. It will discuss the impacts of emerging technologies on citizens, on the role of institutions, corporations, and states in shaping civic…

Declarations and manifestos have emerged across the world claiming to protect citizens’ digital rights. Data-driven technologies in global cities not only have yielded techno-euphoria but also have intensified techno-political concerns as reflected in UN-Habitat’s flagship program called “People-Centered Smart Cities” (PCSC) that advocates the willingness to promote inclusiveness while subverting the technocratic smart city meaning….

New data-driven technologies in global cities have yielded potential but also have intensified techno-political concerns. Consequently, in recent years, several declarations/manifestos have emerged across the world claiming to protect citizens’ digital rights. In 2018, Barcelona, Amsterdam, and NYC city councils formed the Cities’ Coalition for Digital Rights (CCDR), an international alliance of global People-Centered Smart Cities—currently…

Against the widespread assumption that data are the oil of the 21st century, this article offers an alternative conceptual framework, interpretation, and pathway around data and smart city nex-us to subvert surveillance capitalism in light of emerging and further promising practical cases. This article illustrates an open debate in data governance and the data justice…

Image Credit: Artwork by James Seibold, Public Domain. Public Seminar Journal When COVID-19 hit populations worldwide, it became clear how deeply data practices are connected to democracy. One recent report, for instance, found a ‘data divide’ highlighting inequalities in access, knowledge, and awareness of digital health technologies used in the pandemic. The long-researched ‘digital divide’ is…

Coppieters Foundation, Post-Covid Europe series, 4 COVID-19 has hit citizens dramatically during 2020, not only creating a general risk-driven environment encompassing a wide array of economic vulnerabilities but also exposing them to pervasive digital risks, such as biosurveillance, misinformation, and e-democracy algorithmic threats. Over the course of the pandemic, a debate has emerged about the…

Journal of Contemporary Urban Affairs 5(1) pp 145-150 Against the backdrop of the current hyperconnected and highly virialised post-COVID-19 societies, we, ‘pandemic citizens’, wherever we are located now, have already become tiny chips inside an algorithmic giant system that nobody really understands. Furthermore, over the last decade, the increasing propagation of sensors and data collections…

This volume presents the key outcomes and research findings of the Digitranscope research project of the European Commission Joint Research Centre. The project set out to explore during the period 2017-2020 the challenges and opportunities that the digital transformation is posing to the governance of society. We focused our attention on the governance of data…

Amidst COVID-19 crisis and further into aftermath of the hyper-connected and hyper-virialised current societies, nation-state borders seem to be at stake (Calzada, 2021). The social and economic effects of the pandemic are profound and pervasive for an emerging regime of citizenship: ‘pandemic citizenship’. ‘Pandemic citizenship’, therefore, could be described as follows (Calzada, 2020b): the post-COVID-19…

From the Handbook on the Changing Geographies of the State – New Spaces of Geopolitics This chapter examines how state spaces throughout Europe are facing structural tensions as traditional ethnic nationalism increasingly comes into conflict with urban transformations. It argues that European citizenship is experiencing a unique set of city-regional and techno-political dynamics consisting of: (1)…