Tag: urban geography
Uneven development and the anti-politics machine
The Market Value Analysis (MVA), and similar algorithms, perpetuate racial and class-based inequalities by embedding systemic biases into urban planning and the geography of cities under the guise of objectivity. Presented as neutral tools, these algorithms depoliticize decisions, reinforcing the legacies of redlining while prioritizing capital accumulation over equitable development and justifying the abandonment of marginalized communities. [continue reading]
The urban-tech feedback loop
Tech companies are reshaping cities through a feedback loop where consumer behaviors, tracked via smartphones, inform the design of urban spaces tailored to affluent users, reinforcing consumption and deepening inequalities. Using a "data-walk" methodology in Seattle's South Lake Union, we uncovered how surveillance and data collection commodify everyday actions, embedding tech-driven priorities into urban development. To disrupt this cycle, we advocate for inclusive methodologies... [continue reading]
The Amazon Warehouse
Amazon’s warehouses are vast, windowless spaces, each the size of multiple football fields, where thousands of employees and over half a million robots work in tandem to process immense volumes of packages daily. Coordinated by Amazon's AI-powered AWS platform, robots such as Pegasus and Proteus move products efficiently through these facilities, while delivery drivers are monitored closely by AI systems that regulate their behavior... [continue reading]
Interrogating narratives of urban change
Baltimore’s treatment of majority-Black neighborhoods versus Latine/x areas illustrates how racist logics structure urban development. While Latine/x neighborhoods like Highlandtown are framed as vibrant immigrant communities worthy of preservation, Black neighborhoods like Upton are cast as slums primed for exploitation and “renewal.” This distinction impacts how each neighborhood experiences investment or neglect, with Latine/x areas more likely to attract capital while Black neighborhoods face... [continue reading]
The Ground Rent Machine
In Baltimore, Maryland, more than 55,000 homes—roughly 30 percent of all residential plots—are subject to ground rent, a legacy of British feudal property law. Under this landlord–tenant system, the homeowner makes payments to the ground leaseholder, who maintains rights to the land. During the early 2000s, many Baltimoreans fell behind on their ground rent due to recessionary headwinds and were “ejected” from their homes... [continue reading]
Mapping Juvenile Justice
Our findings suggest that there are several barriers facing Baltimore’s justice-involved youth that may impact access to and engagement with juvenile probation. [continue reading]
Political Ecologies of Platform Urbanism
Infrastructure of the built environment affords the collection of data through situated platform services, its circulation through physical ICT infrastructure, and the materials and energy on which this process depends. [continue reading]
Urban Real Estate Technologies
Through this special issue we argue that developing a richer engagement with the role of technology, broadly construed, in reshaping urban property relations is both intellectually significant and politically timely for an engaged urban geography. [continue reading]
Reproducing Spatial Inequality
We explore how the language of “just sustainability” may become subsumed into a sustainability fix strategy, depoliticizing the utility of concepts such as justice and/or equity. Building from critical GIS insights,we combine digitized spatial data from participatory mapping exercises and community-organization-based focus group in Portland, Oregon, regarding a proposed six-mile biking and walking path around downtown. We find that 80 percent of participants’ typical... [continue reading]
Silicon Forest and Server Farms
What inequities are arising in the uneven development of data infrastructures within and beyond cities? How might we extend analyses of data centers and data infrastructures to understand the relationship between computing and socio-natural change? And how might these mappings elucidate new areas for contestation and resistance? What are the possibilities for more sustainable and equitable alternatives in digital economies? This essay perhaps raises... [continue reading]