As scholars and practitioners, faculty members at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning are continually reshaping the knowledge base and practice modes within our fields to address the past, present, and future of the built environment. As teachers, we also prepare students to carry on this work of sustaining and transforming our disciplines.

Recognising that platform urbanism is rapidly reshaping cities and communities, we have developed a new degree aimed at equipping students to accelerate, resist, and modulate data-driven urban transformation. Set to launch next year, our new Bachelor of Science in Urban Technology gives students the vision, knowledge, and skills to shape urban futures at the intersection of information technology with urbanism and design. By mobilising data and technology based strategies that improve outcomes for city dwellers, graduates will help businesses, governments, activists, and communities address key questions: How does technology help us see and understand cities afresh? How could it help us shape cities through new methods? How might it help us inhabit cities in more fulfilling ways? What policies will promote equitable access and outcomes in cities increasingly transformed by private enterprise?

This four-year degree combines thinking and doing, critical reflection and generative praxis. Its courses incorporate a humanist framing of ethics, principles, histories, policies, and urban constituencies; a technical understanding of computation, networks, and data science; and a creative component centering on action through strategy design and service design. We orient the many forms of knowledge and skills which make up this degree towards enabling students to pursue a mission relating to the urban future. Whether they focus on transportation and mobility, housing, logistics, energy, public health, or another domain, our students will synthesize capacities in urbanism, technology, and design to answer the question How will we live together?

Our Urban Technology curriculum responds to three patterns in what some term the fourth industrial revolution. First, technology companies are increasingly creating products and services that have spatial, regulatory, and experiential implications in cities. These organisations need a deeper understanding of cities so that they can better address the real needs of urban dwellers in both high- and low-resource contexts. Students who complete our degree will be able to apply their understanding of computation, networks, algorithms, and sensors to promote efficiency and equity, opportunity and inclusion.

Second, urban practices including planning, policy-making, and advocacy increasingly use technological tools such as GIS to understand cities and to regulate technology businesses, products, and services such as autonomous vehicles, delivery drones, face recognition, data privacy, and cybersecurity. These organisations need a deeper understanding of the functions, limits, impacts, and potentials of the technical systems in question.

Third, the disciplines driving platform urbanism, including business, engineering, and information, increasingly employ the collaborative, iterative, and multi-disciplinary methods of discovery and creation at the heart of design education and studio pedagogy. We aim to give the humanist and social scientific approaches of urban studies and planning greater voice in designing urban futures – and also to accelerate the movement beyond the human-centered design methodologies that have powered the rise of design thinking by integrating broader use of quantitative evidence, engaging more directly with technical systems, and centering equitable approaches to co-creation and participation.

Faculty teaching in our existing architecture, planning, and urban design degrees bring much of the expertise behind our curriculum. Some examples: Faculty director Bryan Boyer – an essential intellectual and organisational leader in this project – focuses on the role of technology and design in reimagining city life. Anthony Vanky shows how data can aid the design and planning of cities. Ellie Abrons works at the intersection of digital culture with the built environment. Robert Goodspeed studies collaborative planning and urban informatics. Malcolm McCullough examines networked cities and interaction design. Cyrus Peñarroyo addresses ways that the internet and media shape cities. Catherine Griffiths generates scholarship and creative work addressing the design and ethics of machine learning. Jose Sanchez specialises in gaming, crowdsourced urbanism, and the commons. Kathy Velikov reshapes ecologies and supply chains through design at scales ranging from building components to regional infrastructures.

We also draw on the knowledge of colleagues from other parts of the University of Michigan: the School of Information for Data Science and its Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing; the humanities college for its Digital Studies Institute and Semester in Detroit program; and engineering resources such as the Center for Entrepreneurship and the Center for Socially Engaged Design. We continually bring in visiting faculty, speakers, and workshop leaders to connect us with advocacy, governance, and industry–through events such as recent symposia and conferences on Shaping Future Cities, Building Better Futures, Becoming Digital, and Living a Digital Life.

In my final post, I will address further the approach to platform urbanism motivating some of this work.