Technoscience and the City

Think of urban waste management, transport flows, noise abatement or tourist practices. Cities are made of multiple sociotechnical assemblages bringing together humans and non-humans, such as technologies, microbes, fuel or maps, in all sorts of ways for all sorts of purposes. For a long time, however, urban studies have mostly focused on the political economy of cities, on the logics of capital accumulation and class struggles shaping urbanization processes, overlooking the often contested role played by technoscience in shaping sociotechnical assemblages.

This area introduces students to new theoretical approaches, conceptual repertoires and understandings of the urban, urbanity and urbanization that, inspired in science and technology studies, address the sociotechnical complexity of cities. Courses include: