Cities at the End of the World: Technology and Urbanism in an Age of Crisis
Abstract
As we enter an age of crisis, characterized by climate and environmental emergency, mass migration, accelerating inequality and an ongoing global turn to authoritarianism, our imagination of the futures of cities is narrowing. We were promised smart cities for all, yet in practice, we have divided, unequal cities, full of insecurity and precarity. We live with the unresolved problems of previous waves of utopian urbanism, now compounded by the already flawed and perhaps impossible promises of sustainable development and new horizons of technological innovation, typified by the shining promises of Artificial Intelligence (AI). This talk examines the place of AI in current urban futures, analyzing examples from national plans, corporate proposals and the emerging white supremacist, technocratic vision of the “network state.” It argues that these visions have lost sight of genuinely collective and planetary social and ecological future-making in favour of the welfare and security of a very small elite.
Biography
Educated at Oxford and Newcastle universities, David Murakami Wood is currently the Canada Research Chair in Critical Surveillance and Security Studies, Director of CSS/Lab, and full Professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa. He is an interdisciplinary specialist in surveillance, security and technology in cities from a global perspective, who has worked mainly in Canada, Japan, the UK and Brazil. He is also a leading organizer in the field of surveillance studies as co-founder and now co-editor-in-chief of the international, open access, peer-reviewed journal, Surveillance & Society, and co-founder and director of the Surveillance Studies Network.
Practical details
📅 April 10, 2025
🕛 12:00 – 13:30
📍 Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Etterbeek – Room C.4.09
🥪 Sandwiches will be provided
👉Please RSVP before 5 April 2025: rosamunde.van.brakel@vub.be