ABSTRACT
If you type “smart city” into a Google image search, the results returned are very much of a kind. The results show an endless array of tall buildings overlaid with shiny icons in bubbles and vector lines, and there is a lot of blue. The networked technologies of the “smart city” are never neutral and innovation is faster than legislation. Each of us is already generating more data more quickly and from more devices than we can keep up with. When we consider our engagement with ubiquitous computing, few of us would frame this as “informed” or “consentful.” Collectively, we realize the importance of consent, notice, and regulatory obligations when it comes to our data. This chapter explores the materiality and consequences of technology at the city scale. The authors are looking at city-based systems transformation through a cultural lens. We pose questions about the effectiveness of using culture and the arts as mediators for consentful, place-based technology.
In our professional practice, we advise on developing digital capacity, infrastructure, and compelling use cases for technology within the Detroit Cultural Center, an 80+ acre district in Midtown Detroit. Unlike the typical practice of allowing technological or governmental entities to organize this work, here cultural institutions are leading. In this chapter, we discuss how the deployment of technology for festivals, urban screens, technological psychogeography, and mediated oral and visual history are cultural catalysts for the development of civic infrastructure in and beyond Detroit, one of the least connected cities in the US.
