Programming in the Margins: New Actors, New Systems, and New Ways of Knowing Urban Environments in a Populist Era

• In Event: Smart yet (in)Sensible? Feminist Critical Perspectives on “Smart Cities” II

Abstract

Given the growing skepticism and public leadership that counters the known scientific image in the US, there is a need to ask what is data and what is knowledge in this (increasingly) populist era, and how might alternate modes of data collection counteract the governance shifts disrupting conventional modes of data collection. Applying alternative ’smart city’ technologies, citizen sensing has become a crucial mechanism through which activists, citizens, and researchers monitor and understand environmental conditions. Citizen sensing can do more than carry on a legacy of data collection from authoritative sources, it can precipitate change in the way environmental problems are identified, framed, and characterized. No longer the exclusive purview of highly-trained professionals, the opportunity to program environmental sensors - to produce the data collection system - is increasingly accessible to a broader spectrum of actors, including people who have historically been excluded from mainstream environmental policymaking because of their lack of academic training or political connections. Although a setback for established environmental research, this political era may open up spaces for marginalized actors to take the lead in creating new ways of knowing urban environments typically dismissed as places of poverty, crime, and unemployment. This paper synthesizes literature on smart cities, environmental justice, and critical data studies for a case study of a youth-led citizen sensing effort in North Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, demonstrating the potential of this alternate approach to refashion the power dynamics associated with entrenched processes of environmental governance in the United States.

Authors

• Hamil Pearsall, Temple University

• Alan Wiig, University of Massachusetts, Boston

• Michele Masucci, Temple University