Digital Lives in the Global City: Contesting Infrastructures

308 Pages·2020·6.378 MB·English

by  Deborah Cowen (editor), Alexis Mitchell (editor), Emily Paradis (editor), Brett Story (editor)

Digital Lives in
the Global City

D i g i t a l

LIVES

in the
Global City
Contesting Infrastructures
edited by
Deborah Cowen,
Alexis Mitchell,
Emily Paradis,
and Brett Story
© UBC Press 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publica­ UBC Press gratefully acknowledges the
tion may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval financial support for our publishing program
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any of the Government of Canada (through the
means, without prior written permission Canada Book Fund), the Canada Council
of the publishe. for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts
Council.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing
This book has been published with the
in Publication
help of a grant from the Canadian Federation
Title: Digital lives in the global city : for the Humanities and Social Sciences,
contesting infrastructures / edited through the Awards to Scholarly Publications
by Deborah Cowen, Alexis Mitchell, Program, using funds provided by the Social
Emily Paradis, and Brett Story. Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Names: Cowen, Deborah, editor. | Mitchell, Canada. We also acknowledge support from
Alexis, 1983­ editor. | Paradis, Emily, 1968­ Furthermore, a program of the J.M. Kaplan
editor. | Story, Brett, editor. Fund.
Description: Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers:
Canadiana (print) 2020025815X |
Canadiana (ebook) 20200260480 |
ISBN 9780774862387 (softcover) |
Set in Gilam and Sabon by Artegraphica
ISBN 9780774862394 (PDF) |
Design Co.
ISBN 9780774862400 (EPUB) |
Copy editor: Lesley Erickson
ISBN 9780774862417 (Kindle)
Proofreader: Caitlin Gordon­Walker
Subjects:
Indexer: Judy Dunlop
LCSH: Cities and towns—Technological
Cover designer: Martyn Schmoll
innovations. | LCSH: Technology—Social
Illustrations on pages 18–19, 114–15, and
aspects. | LCSH: Sociology, Urban. | LCSH:
206–7: Lize Mogel
City and town life. | LCSH: Smart cities. |
LCSH: Online social networks—Social UBC Press
aspects. | LCSH: Information society. The University of British Columbia
Classification: LCC HT153 .D54 2020 | 2029 West Mall
DDC 307.76—dc23 Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
www.ubcpress.ca
This book, and the collaborative research out of which it
emerges, is anchored in the work of activists organizing
for urban justice around the world. The collection took nine
years to bring into being and materializes in 2020 to a world
on fire, with longstanding urban struggles for Black lives,
migrant rights, and racial, economic, environmental, and
infrastructural justice reaching a boiling point. In the
context of the global pandemic, political life and digital life
are ever more and inextricably entangled. This collection
archives this extraordinary moment and reminds us that
activists, artists, and scholars were taking up these issues
long before they were “laid bare” by COVID-19. We dedicate
this work to the movements and communities organizing
for change – those whose labour has gotten us to this
definitive moment, and those who are working to take
global urban life into a more just future.
Contents
Contents
TORONTO
ix Foreword: The Towers in 21 Digital Debt in a Precarious
the World, the World in the City | Emily Paradis, Heather Frise
Towers | Katerina Cizek, director
46 Toronto’s Unsecure(d) Urban
of the NFB’s Highrise project
Debtscape | Alan Walks
xv Foreword: When Localities 57 Automating Social Inequality |
Go Global | Saskia Sassen, Robert
Krystle Maki
S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at
Columbia University 65 ACORN’s Campaign for
Affordable Access | Judy Duncan,
ACORN
3 Introduction | Deborah Cowen,
Alexis Mitchell, Emily Paradis,
73 Transmutations | Nehal El-Hadi
Brett Story
SECURITY AND SURVEILLANCE
85 Digital Borders and Urban
Worlds | Stephen Graham
89 Audre Lorde’s File and June
Jordan’s Skyrise | Simone Browne
94 Policing the Future(s) |
R. Josh Scannell
102 Policing Borders through
Sound | Anja Kanngieser
108 Big Data Meet Location
Monitoring | James Kilgore
112 Digital Apartheid | Visualizing Impact
MUMBAI SINGAPORE
117 Mumbai Rising, Buildings 209 The Labour of Global City
Falling | Emily Paradis, Brett Story, Building | Alexis Mitchell,
Deborah Cowen Deborah Cowen
145 On “Market­Friendly” Planning 233 Skyline of Dreams | Grace Baey
in Mumbai | Hussain Indorewala,
238 Sunny Island Set in the Sea |
Shweta Wagh
Charmaine Chua
153 Kashaf Siddique on Being
248 Singapore as “Best Home” |
Precariously Home in the
Natalie Oswin
Suburbs | Deborah Cowen,
Kashaf Siddique
260 Not another Cinderella Story |
Symon James-Wilson
160 Dispatch from Mumbai |
Deborah Cowen, Paramita Nath
167 #WhyLoiter | Shilpa Phadke,
Sameera Khan 271 Acknowledgments
273 Contributors
SHIFTING AND SCRIPTING 277 Index
URBAN LIVES
175 High­Altitude Protests
and Necropolitical Digits |
Ju Hui Judy Han
179 Terabytes of Love | Indu Vashist
186 The Most Hated Woman in
Israel | Shaka McGlotten
194 DIY WI­FI | Heather Frise
200 Network Dislocations |
Nicole Starosielski
viii Contents
Foreword
The Towers in the World, the World
in the Towers
this book emerged out of a unique creative documentary project called
Highr ise, at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). Highrise was a
seven­year experiment in documentary, community­engaged research and
co creation in nonfiction storytelling using emergent technologies. The
documentary makers who were part of the project were interested in the
actual people who make up the growing density of the global suburbs
(inspired originally by our own city of Toronto, Canada). We also wanted
to learn how vertical lives – literally, residents of these suburbs living
in high­rise buildings – are entangled with digital infrastructures and
systems.
For Highrise, we did not follow the conventional documentary pro­
cess of first finding subjects and experts to interview for a film, then
interviewing them based on our questions, and then disappearing into
an edit suite to shape an argument. We were mandated instead by the
NFB to experiment in both form and content. Inspired by the NFB’s
legendary Challenge for Change project in the 1960s and 1970s, we were
challenged to build the project out of a process rather than defining
the process by the end goal. Our process was informed by community­
based and cross­disciplinary methods of cocreation. The project grew
out of relationships and community engagements rather than arriving
with preset agendas.
For seven years, our team of documentarians worked alongside archi­
tects, urban planners, housing activists, technologists, scholars, and, most
importantly, high­rise residents themselves. Together, we built relation­
ships over time, and in so doing, we also jointly built the framing, the
questions, and the goals of each of the many projects that spilled out from
ix