Urban research series
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type of event:
Lecture series
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place:
ITAS, Karlstraße 11, Raum 418
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date:
2025 - 2026
About urban research series at ITAS
Urban research and technology assessment intersect in exploring the complex interactions between technology, society, and the built environment. With the Urban Research Series at ITAS, we aim to stimulate knowledge exchange across disciplines and foster networks that contribute to more sustainable, equitable, and resilient cities.
In light of the growing research on urban transformations, the series provides a space for dialogue across academia, policy, and practice. Our invited speakers address key issues in contemporary urban research - ranging from socio-technical transitions and (digital) infrastructures to questions on housing, governance, and social inclusion.
As always, we warmly invite you to join us - not only for the talks but also for informal exchanges afterwards over a drink in a nearby bar.
Contact
Tim Fraske (tim fraske ∂does-not-exist.kit edu)
Thursday, 16 October 2025, 15:00 CET
Digitalisation and flexible urban space
In critical scholarship on digital technologies and cities, key foci have been the control of urban circulations through smart cities software and the privatisation of urban infrastructure. This lecture takes a different approach to the political and economic implications of digitalisation by considering how technologies are involved in the production and valuation of urban space as flexible. It outlines how digital technologies tend less towards rendering the city entirely knowable and more towards constructing an urban environment in which anything can happen. This shift towards spatial flexibility is traced through the case of the office building and office work in London from the 1980s. This example shows the economic valuation of flexible office space and the technologies for its production are tied to the emerging social value and sometimes imperative of flexibility in everyday work and life.