Digital information and the right to the city

Henri Lefebvre talked of the ‘right to the city’ alongside a right to information. As the urban environment becomes increasingly layered by abstract digital representation, Lefebvre’s broader theory warrants renewed application to the digital age. This chapter examines the problems and implications of any ‘informational right to the city’ in relation to Google, arguably the world’s most powerful mediator of digital information. The chapter argues that Google currently occupies a dominant share of any contemporary right to the city, and concludes by exploring other possible paths towards more just information geographies and a ‘Google-free’ city.