ABSTRACT
Bias in urban research is influenced by the tools and techniques we employ. To the extent that our understanding of a city is shaped by the methods by which we apprehend it, so too is the city shaped by this understanding. The evolution of urban environments can be understood as an ontogenetic process, whereby the relation between the tools and objects of urban research and design is recursive and mutually reinforcing. With the proliferation of sensing technologies generating big data processed by machine learning algorithms, the tools of urban research are beginning to merge with the environments on which they are reporting. This chapter traces this shift from observational tools to environments that observe in an attempt to examine the changing nature of bias in urban research and the subsequent implications for epistemologies of urban environments.
