Prof Dr Christoph Bieber and Anne Goldmann are presenting their research paper on “The Political Ecology of Smart Cities: Urban data processing and its environmental impact” at the DVPW Congress “Politics in the Polycrisis”, which is taking place in Göttingen. The paper will be presented in the panel “Unravelling the Political Ecology of Technologies and Infrastructures”.
Since the 2010s, the concept of smart cities has been a much-discussed topic, especially at the interface of computer science and social sciences. While urban modernisation projects process huge amounts of data, the ecological impact of these developments is rarely discussed. The paper by Bieber and Goldmann examines the ecological consequences of data processing in smart city projects, in particular the political conflicts arising from the operation of large data centres.
The paper is based on empirical analyses of strategies from the German “Smart City Dialogue” project, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Building. The aim is to identify interfaces with the debate on political ecology and to anticipate future conflicts arising from the ecological impact of smart city projects. Theoretically, the concept of “data ecology” will be introduced as a new sub-topic in the debate on the environmental impact of urban modernisation.
The presentation will take place on 27 September at the DVPW Congress in Göttingen.
Further information on the congress can be found here.