Call for papers

Digital Commonscapes, in, against and beyond smart cities.

Deadline 10 February 2018
RGS/Annual International Conference
28-31 August, 2018 | Cardiff, UK

During the last years digital commons have formed new geographical landscapes of virtual communities, hybrid spaces, and perpetual reproduction of intangible goods. In fact digital commons balance between the neoliberal smart cities and emancipatory communal practices. On the one hand city managers and policy makers tend to appropriate and distort urban commons in order to attract investments, creative class and tourists. Smart urbanism becomes a leitmotiv to enforce entrepreneurial governance strategies, gentrification, airbnbfication-uberfication, displacement of undesired groups, city branding and creative city policies. On the other hand, digital commons empower self-organised collectives, in sharing and solidarity economy, migrants and moving populations, as well as urban protests and revolts. Digital commoning practices and communities struggle for a transition into a postcapitalist world, confronting with digital capitalism but also with questions on the base of gender, race, age and (dis)ability.
In this direction, the panel welcomes proposals from various disciplines that:
a) follow dialectic, de-colonial and intersectional critical approaches on neoliberal smart urbanism;
b) focus on comparative studies on digital/urban commons, sharing economy and smart cities;
c) question how the urban and social movements could use digital commons in their effort to shape horizontal, egalitarian and alternative proposals for the cities.
Please submit your abstract of 250 words by 10th February 2018, to Natalia-Rozalia Avlona ([email protected]) and Charalampos Tsavdaroglou ([email protected]).