New Open Access Paper

From the smart urbanism of the 2010s to platform and AI urbanism(s) of the present-future, the ‘data-driven city’ has been imagined as a functional and controlled whole, impulsed and regulated by autonomous (humans off-the-loop) systems, and fed through powerful data infrastructure. AI urbanism, in particular, manifests the current climax of the long-standing desire to control digital technology in the city yet to come. An excessive focus on technology, however, risks de-contextualising it from the wider economic and political landscapes.

While digital platforms have been structuring the fabric of daily urban life colonising almost any field of interest through their ecosystems and mobile apps, AI technologies start making their way into cities with: autonomous vehicles, city brains, Digital Twins and robotics. Advocates suggest these novel technologies have changed the geographies of their deployment – not confined to cities any more, rather on regional or global scales – and of their partnerships with city management – cities no longer having exclusive and central stage, rather participating to consortia with limited or secondary roles. Both these configurations have been framed as the ‘post-smart city’.

But, is there a paradigm shift between these versions of urbanism? Has the ‘smart city’ framework – the neoliberal project of linking private investment from technology firms into the management and governance of city living – substantially changed? And, finally, what role is expected for cities to take in this uncertain and evolving scenario?

The ‘data-driven city’ ought to be understood in pair with the development of data capitalism and the enormous expansion of its data infrastructure, markets and services. Thus, I invite to re-position this debate as an intensification of neoliberal (‘smart’ or ‘data-driven’) urbanism and its ideological assumptions: technological solutionism and smart mentality, and data extractivism, surveillance and control.

Full paper available as pre-print from Open Science Framework

New Open Access Book Chapter

In this book chapter, I try to capture the journey of ‘platform citizenship’ by using the Scaffold of Smart Citizen Participation, the analytical framework developed with Rob Kitchin (Cardullo and Kitchin, 2019a; 2025).

Adding new insights from my research in Barcelona around the platform for collaborative governance Decidim (Cardullo et al., 2023), in the chapter I will discuss the least explored rung of the Scaffold: citizen power. This is the stage of digital relations between citizens and the municipality (or the state) in which citizens are empowered in decision-making processes and consultations, discussion and deliberation.

On the citizen power rung of the Scaffold, communities and their advocates can control their own decision-making process, tweaking it accordingly; conversely, an inclusive and more democratic governance infrastructure might aid the constitution of temporary mini-publics positioning citizens as multiple (digital) subjects: neighbours, urban dwellers, members of local community and lobby groups, etc.

I conclude that contextualising software and governance cultures, and the infrastructure which derive from them, is a task of provincialising platform citizenship, sometimes enabling other discourses and futures to emerge (see Burns et al., 2021).

The full pre-print can be found on the Open Science Framework repository.

Els llibres en català que he llegit fins ara

• El Retorn del Cató / Matilde Asensi, 2015
• La Lliçó de piano / Bea Cabezas, 2023
• El Camí / Anya Niewierra, 2024
• El Secret dels pergamins càtars / Miquel S. Jassans, 2003
• Pluja d’estels / Laia Aguilar, 2020
• Tots aquells mars / Laia Aguilar, 2024
• Seré el teu mirall / Lluís-Anton Baulenas, 2023
• Terra / Francesc Viadel, 2002 (valencià)
• El Camí de Sant Jaume / AAVV, 2021
• Guía mágica del Camino de Santiago : un viaje en busca de lo mágico y lo sagrado en el camino de las estrellas / Francisco Contreras Gil, 2021 (castel·là)
• Les Cançons tristes ja no parlen de mi / Clàudia Costas Güell, 2025

Estic llegint:

A la foguera! Desmuntant el mite de les bruixes / Carla Vall i Duran, 2024

Sobre de totes, m’agraden les novel·les històriques amb un fons negre (noir), especialment al voltant del mil·lenni — quan els catalans eren també occitans, romànics, càtars, templers, ibèrics, etcètera…

We studied the Soft Infrastructure of the digital platform. Published under Creative Commons in Computational Culture Issue 9 (July 2023).

Paolo Cardullo, Ramon Ribera-Fumaz, and Paco González Gil (TURBA, Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, UOC Barcelona)  offer an insider’s perspective on the development of Decidim, a free and open-source software platform for civic participation created in collaboration with Barcelona City Council under the recent mayorship of Ada Colau and Barcelona en Comu’.

This platform is designed to foster accountability, transparency, and civic participation in local politics. Born partly out of the ‘movement of the squares’, the software strives to emulate the mass open decision-making and deliberation integral to city life. Here, the platform’s key developers reflect on its inception.

Open Access publication via Computational Culture, Issue 9, and the SocArXiv repository on Open Science Framework DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/JASD7

Art installation with CCTV cameras at Goldsmiths University of London. 2013

In conversation with media artist James Steven from the collective SPC, I curated an installation with CCTV cameras at Goldsmiths, University of London, in July 2013. This experiment complemented a panel discussion on video surveillance we organised at the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) annual conference ‘Public Image’. The aim was to raise awareness of the complexities of CCTV systems and to open up a debate beyond the discourse of power and control, which CCTV is usually associated with. Pre-print (2017) CCTV oddity: Archaeology and aesthetics of video surveillance, Visual Studies, Routledge. DOI: 10.1080/1472586X.2017.1328988 →→→SocArXiv pre-print @ Open Science Framework.

#OCTV consisted of six surveillance cameras streaming live from selected conference rooms to video displays positioned in each of the six rooms. Each camera feed was then linked to a webpage, made visible as a QR-code to scan, that is, as a composition of black and white pixels in the characteristic square shape. Any mobile phone was therefore able to connect to the ‘control room’ page, and then to switch to the desired camera.

→→→ see my collaboration to the ‘CCTV Sniffing’ workshops, powered by Deptfod.tv and SPC→→→ see my article about the ‘Sniffing’ workshops (2014)