The presence of new digital technologies is expanding in professional planning practice and in everyday urban life. Rather than examine the technical capabilities or institutional structures of such tools, this talk draws attention to the personal and collective desires that animate them, in particular the desires for certainty and solvability. Examples from recent research on New Mobility—a suite of smartphone apps, data infrastructures, and novel transportation services—suggest that when digital technologies promises an idealized escape from the challenges of politics and infrastructure, they risk leaving us unprepared to live well with the inevitable messiness of urban life.
Speaker: Peter Dunn | Lecturer, Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning
Date: Thursday, September 15, 2022
Location: Design Building Rm. 170
Time: 4:00 – 5:00 pm EST
Peter Dunn is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He will soon complete his PhD from the University of Washington, where his research connects planning and technology studies.