Cities today are increasingly shaped by data, digital infrastructures, and algorithmic systems. Sensors, algorithms, platforms, and surveillance technologies influence how urban life is organized, governed, and experienced. Yet these systems do not produce equal outcomes for everyone; they often generate and reinforce inequalities. At the same time, many of these digital interventions remain invisible and largely uncontested in everyday urban life.
The Centre for BOLD Cities approaches these developments not as neutral innovations, but as social, political, and contested processes that shape how we live, move, and participate in the city. Contestability is central to this approach/here means that it enables the development of democratically informed policies that reflect the behaviors, lived experiences, and values of all citizens in digital urban contexts. Such processes must be transparent and explainable at all times.
This also requires moving beyond techno-solutionism, including both techno-optimism (the idea that technology alone can solve societal problems) and techno-pessimism (the rejection of technology due to its harms). Instead, this Thesis Lab promotes a balanced, critical approach that recognizes both the impacts of technology—on users, workers, and affected communities—and the potential for citizens and communities to reshape and reclaim technology to better serve their needs.
A key focus lies on community-led and grassroots practices, such as participatory design, digital commons, platform cooperatives, and open-source movements, which empower communities to engage with technology in more equitable ways. The Lab also highlights critical perspectives and explores how technology shapes social and public spaces, democracy, education, and collective imaginaries.
In order for datafied cities to develop policies and designs that harness digital technologies to support the everyday realities of all citizens, they must be both critically questioned and actively reimagined.
We therefore explore the city as a space from the perspective of:
- Visibility (What data systems are present, and how can we make them visible and understandable?)
- Contestability (Who controls these technological interventions, and how can they be challenged, along with the imaginaries that shape them?)
- Possibility (In what ways can these systems contribute to more just and inclusive futures?)