And what do We Like?

Speaking for myself, I like being able to hail a ride, share a ride, grab an on-demand bike or scooter, understand routing options and times across multiple modalities. I like renting an apartment or bedroom when I travel so that I can cook, or stay where there aren’t many hotels, or open the window, or share a place with a group of friends. I like being able to rent out my own place when I’m away. I like being able to instantly identify, evaluate, and select from among nearby restaurants / bars / shops / businesses. I like connecting with friends and strangers on social media apps. I like being able to consume as much or as little workspace as I like on flexible terms, with a range of amenities and supports at hand, and to make use of a portfolio of spaces ranging from isolated to sociable. I like better building materials and systems, such as mass timber framing, reconfigurable wall panels, digital electricity, and district-scale utility systems. I like municipal services informed by geodata. I like learning on my schedule rather than someone else’s. I like the efficiencies and process improvements that big data analytics can generate. I like the potential to automate repetitive tasks and iterative workflows in architectural and urban design. I like outcome-based analytics and decision-making.

What else do I like? Universal healthcare. Workplace safety. Worker protections. Living wages, maybe even guaranteed basic income. Affordable housing. Public transit. Food security. Accessible education. Ethical supply chains. Inclusive forums. Appropriate technology. IRL community. Privacy, especially with respect to state power. Consent. Sharing in the value I create. Equity. Justice.

How to reconcile these desires, goals, ethical claims? What about the many others that I have forgotten today but will remember in the morning? What about the needs and priorities of my neighbours, fellow citizens, and fellow non-citizens? Animal species and other nonhuman actors?

I don’t always know how to discern, evaluate, and balance competing priorities, or to factor fully the parochialism and privilege that shape my judgment. But I don’t think the status quo is sufficient or sustainable. I’m excited by the prospect of change to our buildings and cities, and to the ways of life that they support. I recognise the uneven benefit and negative impacts of data and technology-based methods for seeing, shaping, and inhabiting cities. I’m encouraged by the policy responses that are regulating the tech sector, the gig economy, and other data capitalist ventures at multiple scales – and also by resurgent unions, emergent platform cooperatives, and other forms of worker ownership.

The consolidation of many technologies and business models into platforms that increasingly set the terms of city-making and urban life has been made possible, at least in the United States, by nearly half a century of neo-liberalisation that has weakened government through defunding, deregulation, privatisation, and regulatory capture. As I write, one week before the presidential election, this society is in deep crisis. More than at any time in recent memory, though, other paths seem possible, including democratic socialist governance and a green new deal. We can imagine platforms that support a more equitable public life. We can design technologies, services, and strategies that expand access. We can teach students how to prototype better futures in partnership with professionals and industry practitioners, policymakers, communities, advocates, and activists.

This is the work my colleagues and I are digging into at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. We are studying Lyft and Turo and Ford, Airbnb and Sonder, Zillow and Yelp, Instagram and Grindr, WeWork and Zoku, Sidewalk and Amazon and Katerra, Paperspace and Monograph, Facebook and Google. We are learning from the Boston Urban Mechanics, Oakland Civic Design Lab, Allied Media Projects, Design Vanguard, Bloomberg Cities, Tech Reset Canada, our own Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing, and many other sources. We are analyzing algorithmic bias, helping cities interpret their data, deploying sensors to understand public health, developing space-as-a-service products, making games that teach players commoning. We are building our curriculum and preparing to welcome students into the study and practice of urban technology. Join the conversation via our blog, Urban Technology at the University of Michigan.