ABSTRACT
Among US city planners and community leaders, technology is often positioned as the answer to a crumbling urban infrastructure, with suggestions of newer and “cleaner” transportation lines and proposals that researchers consider the city as a “lab” or as a technologically untouched “green field.” Yet for those who live, work, and attend schools in lower income sections of urban areas, technology is often experienced as an obstacle. This chapter considers these contrasting approaches to technology as they play out specifically in relation to perceptions regarding data collection and analysis designed for policymakers, or “big data” for the smart city. The chapter foregrounds a case study of a multi-year project with low income young people of color who were trained to utilize their smart phones to collect and share research designed to inform city policies. The chapter traces the ways that neoliberal approaches to knowledge and its role in relation to technology continue to limit rather than enhance equity and obfuscate racial tensions in the USA’s urban centers, as those seeking to have an impact confront both structural oppression and personal empowerment as part of the lived experiences of knowledge creation.
