Unplugging the City ― The Urban Phenomenon and Its Sociotechnical Controversies

Modernity has entrusted technology with such power that it is treated as an autonomous entity, with its own manners and morals. Technological disruptions are also socially disruptive: technological failures reveal both the constituents of the technology itself and the social fabric woven by this technology. Cities are the quintessential technological arrangement, not only materially but also as a conceptual framework: the ubiquity of technology makes us think and plan cities mostly in terms of technological arrangements.

Unplugging the City: the urban phenomenon and its sociotechnical controversies proposes a conceptual and methodological framework for analysing urban phenomenon as a technological assemblage. It demonstrates through multiple case studies the sociotechnical complexities involved in the stabilization and disruption of urban technological arrangements. Examples range from the urban phantasmagorias portrayed in science-fiction movies to the urban proposals of Brasilia and Masdar, from the book of bike-sharing systems to pervasive global surveillance systems.

Written by Fábio Duarte and Rodrigo Firmino based on their original research and publications, this is an essential resource for those interested in the theory and study of technology and its inextricable influence on the city.

Fabio Duarte is an urban planner with a PhD in Communicatino from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and has been a research associate at Harvard Graduate School of Design and a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Rodrigo Firmino is an architect and urban planner with a PhD in Urban Studies from Newcastle University, UK, and has been a postdoc fellow at the University of Sao Paulo, and visiting scholar at the University College London (2015).