A surveillance and development data-walk in South Lake Union
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Mahmoudi, Dillon, Anthony Levenda, and Alicia Sabatino. 2024. “The urban-tech feedback loop: A surveillance and development data-walk in South Lake Union.” Digital Geography and Society 7 (December): 100106. doi:10.1016/j.diggeo.2024.100106. Digital Geography & Society open access
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Summary
Tech capitalism thrives on a perpetual feedback loop of data appropriation and commodification, made possible by the normalization of surveillance and datafication. The physical landscape of the city, designed to meet the preferences of these ‘ideal’ consumers, entrenches the power of large tech companies in urban governance and development.
Cities are increasingly shaped by the invisible hand of tech capitalism, where digital data collection and urban development reinforce one another in a feedback loop. In our research, we used a “data-walk” methodology—a way of walking through urban spaces to observe how data is collected and commodified—to explore how everyday human behaviors are captured by tech platforms and fed back into the design of urban environments. Companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook benefit from this loop: consumer behaviors, tracked through smartphones, inform the creation of urban spaces that cater to affluent “ideal” users. These spaces, in turn, encourage more consumption, enriching tech firms and deepening inequalities in who cities are built to serve.
We contend that the data-walk is a powerful tool for ‘storying’ platform urbanism by grounding the abstract processes of data capture, commodification, and use in the everyday practices of movement and consumption.
This process is far from neutral. The built environment, shaped by alliances between tech giants and property developers, reflects and amplifies the power of digital capital. Spaces like Seattle’s South Lake Union, a hub of tech innovation, are reconfigured to prioritize the preferences of middle- and upper-class consumers while excluding marginalized communities. Our data-walk highlighted how surveillance and volunteered data—from taking a photo to using a rideshare app—are central to these transformations, creating a city “in the image” of tech capital. To challenge this system, we argue for expanding data-walk methodologies to include diverse perspectives, capturing the voices of those often excluded from urban development decisions. By doing so, we can begin to disrupt the loop that commodifies everyday life and entrenches tech power in urban governance.