Policy failure revisited: The post-political urban development strategies of large digital corporations
Topics: Digital Geographies
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Keywords: Amazon, data centers, digital cities, Google, infrastructure
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 62
Authors:
Constance Carr, Geography & Spatial Planning, University of Luxembourg
Markus Hesse, Geography & Spatial Planning, University of Luxembourg
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Abstract
The role of large digital corporations like Google or Amazon are forging their position in the production of digital cities by taking up space (i.e. land, water and bodies) and building, operating, and controlling central infrastructures. At the same time, they are also driving the production of what one might refer to as their symbolic spaces. These are places like Amazon’s HQs and the digital city that Alphabet Inc. wanted to build in Toronto. Juxtaposing one another, the representative places are widely known: They that are prominent in the media, promoted as flashy, state-of-the-art integrated urban planning, often dishing out messages of sustainability, social equality, and a vibrant economy. On the opposing hand, there are the resource intensive infrastructures (data centers, fulfilment centers, fibre, or satellites) that are lesser known and quietly expanding. The former tends to fail, the latter does not. This is not a coincidence and can be explained by invoking the urban studies literature on policy failure and post-political technocractic managerialism. These conceptual lenses show that LDC-led digital cities is not so much about producing flashy cities equipped with avant-garde technologies as it is about endorsing post-political modes of urban governance that drain public institutions of resources to reconfigure state-society relations.
Policy failure revisited: The post-political urban development strategies of large digital corporations
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Virtual Paper Abstract
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