Cities Reimagined as Digital Platforms: Assetization of Urban Data and Civic Data Governance

• In Event: Organizing Technoscientific Capitalism: Epistemic Values, Practices & Assets - III

Abstract

This paper draws insights into the experimental practices of data governance from a case study of Alphabet’s/Sidewalk Labs’ smart city in Toronto, Canada. After the deal between Alphabet and the Government of Canada was announced in 2017, Sidewalk Toronto has been the centre of successive controversies relating to its proprietary approach to personal data, with increasingly powerful criticisms of the project’s potential effects on citizen privacy. In this paper, I analyze Civic Data Trust, the entity proposed to be created to manage residents’ data in the smart city. Specifically, I am interested in the new definitions of data and the role of civic governance as they are envisioned by the company and its critics. Alphabet classifies data into two categories: personally identifiable information and deidentified “urban data,” with the former designed as private asset and the latter one being defined as a public asset and protected by Civic Data Trust. The Trust is expected to take on an unprecedented role as the first public institution informing corporate data governance through the establishment of data standards. I argue that ostensibly technical questions like data definition and licensing access to it tend to be contingent upon specific social relationships, actors, and epistemic objects.

Author

• Anna Artyushina, York University