Blockchain Urbanism and the Digital-Territorial Politics of ‘Exit’
Topics: Digital Geographies
, Urban Geography
, Political Geography
Keywords: blockchain, smart city, territory, urbanism, digital geographies
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 17
Authors:
Casey R Lynch, University of Nevada, Reno
Àlex Muñoz Viso, University of Nevada, Reno
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
Abstract
In February 2021 the Governor of Nevada announced a bill to establish “Innovation Zones” (IZ) on undeveloped, private land for the purpose of promoting technological investment in the state. Companies developing any “innovative technology” could form their own county and municipal government outside the control of existing local institutions. The proposal was put forward by cryptocurrency millionaire Jeffrey Berns who hoped to use the autonomy granted by the bill to develop a private blockchain-based ‘smart city’ in the desert outside of Reno. While the bill failed to gain support in the Nevada legislature and Berns withdrew his proposal in October of the same year, the broader idea lives on in new proposals. In this paper, we situate the IZ proposal as the latest iteration of a neo-reactionary digital-territorial politics of ‘exit’ – extreme proposals that aim to ‘exit’ existing democratic institutions to ‘start from scratch’ often through some combination of technocratic and autocratic rule. Territorial projects of exit have sought to create autonomous jurisdictions, such as through seasteading or the ZEDE jurisdiction in Honduras. Digital exit projects aim to challenge the authority of existing institutions through digital technologies that purport to supplant the functions of the state, like cryptocurrency, blockchain-based identity systems and the tokenization of assets. Proposals like the IZ demonstrate how digital and territorial imaginaries are combining as blockchain urbanism emerges as a neo-reactionary strategy to simultaneously promote rapid urbanization, the development of a crypto-economy, and the “disruption” of existing forms of democratic decision-making and state sovereignty.
Blockchain Urbanism and the Digital-Territorial Politics of ‘Exit’
Category
Virtual Paper Abstract
Description
This abstract is part of a session. Click here to view the session.
| Slides