This document summarizes a presentation about infrastructure disruptions caused by extreme events. It discusses how modern societies have become highly dependent on complex infrastructure networks for mobility, resources, and connectivity. When these infrastructure systems experience failures or disruptions, it can expose vulnerabilities in urban political ecologies and have cascading impacts. The document examines examples like blackouts, natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, disease outbreaks like SARS, conflicts that involve targeting civilian infrastructure, and how infrastructure disruptions can frontstage the normally invisible backstage systems and destabilize taken-for-granted services. It argues that infrastructure networks are more vulnerable and unpredictable than often assumed.
Stephen graham infrastructure disruptions as extreme eventsStephen Graham
An overview of how disruptions to the networks of infrastructure than keep cities running -- water, energy, transport and communications -- bring crises and emergency on a highly urbanised planet
Network Society: A Presentation to the CMI Guernseyguernseywebdesign
Introducing the concepts of network society to the Guernsey branch of the Chartered Management Institue.
Case study led with an emphasis on convergent technologies presented in a case study format.
Analysing Social, Cultural and Economic aspects of evolving technologies.
This presentation is a call for critical urban research to address the vertical as well as horizontal aspects of social inequality. It seeks, in particular, to explore the important but neglected causal connection between the demonisation and dismantling of social housing towers constructed in many cities between the 1930s and 1970s and the contemporary proliferation of
radically different housing towers produced for socio-economic elites. The argument begins with a critical discussion of the economistic orthodoxy, derived from the work of Edward
Glaeser, that contemporary housing crises are best addressed by removing state intervention
in housing production so that market-driven verticalisation can take place. The following two sections connect the rise of such orthodoxy with the ‘manufactured reality’—so
central to neo-liberal urban orthodoxy—that vertical social housing must necessarily fail because it deterministically creates social pathology. The remainder of the paper explores
in detail how the dominance of these narratives have been central to elite takeovers, and ‘luxification’, of the urban skies through the proliferation of condo towers for the super-rich.
Case studies are drawn from Vancouver, New York, London, Mumbai and Guatemala City and the broader vertical cultural and visual politics of the process are explored. The discussion finishes by exploring the challenges involved in contesting, and dismantling, the hegemonic dominance of vertical housing by elite interests in contemporary cities.
Stephen graham infrastructure disruptions as extreme eventsStephen Graham
An overview of how disruptions to the networks of infrastructure than keep cities running -- water, energy, transport and communications -- bring crises and emergency on a highly urbanised planet
Network Society: A Presentation to the CMI Guernseyguernseywebdesign
Introducing the concepts of network society to the Guernsey branch of the Chartered Management Institue.
Case study led with an emphasis on convergent technologies presented in a case study format.
Analysing Social, Cultural and Economic aspects of evolving technologies.
This presentation is a call for critical urban research to address the vertical as well as horizontal aspects of social inequality. It seeks, in particular, to explore the important but neglected causal connection between the demonisation and dismantling of social housing towers constructed in many cities between the 1930s and 1970s and the contemporary proliferation of
radically different housing towers produced for socio-economic elites. The argument begins with a critical discussion of the economistic orthodoxy, derived from the work of Edward
Glaeser, that contemporary housing crises are best addressed by removing state intervention
in housing production so that market-driven verticalisation can take place. The following two sections connect the rise of such orthodoxy with the ‘manufactured reality’—so
central to neo-liberal urban orthodoxy—that vertical social housing must necessarily fail because it deterministically creates social pathology. The remainder of the paper explores
in detail how the dominance of these narratives have been central to elite takeovers, and ‘luxification’, of the urban skies through the proliferation of condo towers for the super-rich.
Case studies are drawn from Vancouver, New York, London, Mumbai and Guatemala City and the broader vertical cultural and visual politics of the process are explored. The discussion finishes by exploring the challenges involved in contesting, and dismantling, the hegemonic dominance of vertical housing by elite interests in contemporary cities.
Planning for Success: Surviving and Thriving through understanding the Value ...Simon Tanner
Public lecture given for the Medieval and Modern Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age (MMSDA) 2014, Cambridge, UK.
@SimonTanner
http://simon-tanner.blogspot.co.uk/
Modern Telecommunications: Linking people everywhere! (LINK IT), EESTEC LC Zagreb & University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, Zagreb, Croatia (2011)
Presentatie The Internet of Things iBestuur Congres 2013 door Ben van LierCentric
Ben van Lier van Centric sprak op 24 januari tijdens het iBestuur Congres in ’s Hertogenbosch samen met Jean-Louis Roso van TNO over The Internet of Things. De sessie opende met de trailer van de science fictionfilm Prometheus, waarin mensen en technologie voor hun functioneren en overleven van elkaar afhankelijk zijn. Is dit fictie of is The Internet of Things dichterbij dan we denken? Van Lier legde in zijn presentatie uit dat de onderlinge verbondenheid in netwerken van mensen en dingen verstrekkende gevolgen heeft voor ons leven en de manier van werken. Hij liet bestuurders, beslissers en experts uit en rondom het i-overheidslandschap zien dat de afhankelijkheid van technologie groeit in onze alledaagse wereld.
Presentation for a guest lecture for a colleague's Media History and Contemporary Issues course. She wanted me to cover technological determinism and social constructivism, as well as through in some content about my research on multitasking and online reading.
Public policies for productive innovation in information societySusana Finquelievich
Despite the assumption that large cities produce more innovation than smaller cities, evidence shows that innovation-friendly policies and the use of digital technology to open new pathways to innovation are more important than the city size.
A meditation on the current role of technology in disaster risk reduction and response to major emergencies. An investigation of the consequences of the primacy of the hazards paradigm over vulnerability studies during the last three decades.
Planning for Success: Surviving and Thriving through understanding the Value ...Simon Tanner
Public lecture given for the Medieval and Modern Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age (MMSDA) 2014, Cambridge, UK.
@SimonTanner
http://simon-tanner.blogspot.co.uk/
Modern Telecommunications: Linking people everywhere! (LINK IT), EESTEC LC Zagreb & University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, Zagreb, Croatia (2011)
Presentatie The Internet of Things iBestuur Congres 2013 door Ben van LierCentric
Ben van Lier van Centric sprak op 24 januari tijdens het iBestuur Congres in ’s Hertogenbosch samen met Jean-Louis Roso van TNO over The Internet of Things. De sessie opende met de trailer van de science fictionfilm Prometheus, waarin mensen en technologie voor hun functioneren en overleven van elkaar afhankelijk zijn. Is dit fictie of is The Internet of Things dichterbij dan we denken? Van Lier legde in zijn presentatie uit dat de onderlinge verbondenheid in netwerken van mensen en dingen verstrekkende gevolgen heeft voor ons leven en de manier van werken. Hij liet bestuurders, beslissers en experts uit en rondom het i-overheidslandschap zien dat de afhankelijkheid van technologie groeit in onze alledaagse wereld.
Presentation for a guest lecture for a colleague's Media History and Contemporary Issues course. She wanted me to cover technological determinism and social constructivism, as well as through in some content about my research on multitasking and online reading.
Public policies for productive innovation in information societySusana Finquelievich
Despite the assumption that large cities produce more innovation than smaller cities, evidence shows that innovation-friendly policies and the use of digital technology to open new pathways to innovation are more important than the city size.
A meditation on the current role of technology in disaster risk reduction and response to major emergencies. An investigation of the consequences of the primacy of the hazards paradigm over vulnerability studies during the last three decades.
Stephen graham Nature, Cities and the ‘Anthropocene’Stephen Graham
An analysis of what the idea of the 'Anthropocene' -- our latest Geological epoch marked by the human shaping of the Earth -- means for how we think about cities
Vertical ground: making geology graham icus 2016Stephen Graham
Key note presentation at the Island Cities and Urban Archipelagos 2016. 07-12 March 2016, Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong
See http://www.islandcities.org/icua2016.html
Life support the political ecology of urban air (Paper)Stephen Graham
Humans, increasingly, manufacturer their own air. In and around the three-dimensional aerial environments within and above urban regions, this manufacture of air reaches particular levels of intensity. For a species which expires without air in two or three minutes, this anthropogenic manufacture of air is of incalculable importance. Curiously, however, urban air remains remarkably neglected within the political-ecological literatures. Accordingly, this paper suggests a range of key themes which a political ecology of urban air needs to address. These address, in turn, the links between global warming, urban heart-island effects and killer urban heat-waves; urban pollution crises; the paradoxes of urban pollution; horizontal movements of polluted air; the vertical politics of urban air; the construction of vertical condominiums structures for elites; the vicious circles that characterised air-conditioned urbanism; heat-related deaths of workers building air-conditioned structures in increasingly hot climates; and, finally, the growth of large-scale air-conditioned environments.
Super-tall and ultra-deep: The Politics of the ElevatorsStephen Graham
Entire libraries can be filled with volumes exploring the cultures, politics and geographies
of the largely horizontal mobilities and transportation infrastructures that are
intrinsic to urban modernity (highways, railways, subways, public transit and so on).
And yet the recent ‘mobilities turn’ has almost completely neglected the cultural
geographies and politics of vertical transportation within and between the buildings of
vertically-structured cityscapes. Attempting to rectify this neglect, this article seeks,
first, to bring elevator travel centrally into discussions about the cultural politics of
urban space and, second, to connect elevator urbanism to the even more neglected
worlds of elevator-based descent in ultra-deep mining. The article addresses, in turn:
the historical emergence of elevator urbanism; the cultural significance of the elevator
as spectacle; the global ‘race’ in elevator speed; shifts towards the ‘splintering’ of
elevator experiences; experiments with new mobility systems which blend elevators
and automobiles; problems of vertical abandonment; and, finally, the neglected vertical
politics of elevator-based ‘ultra-deep’ mining.
Prof, Stephen graham Newcastle University disrupted cities: when infrastruct...Stephen Graham
This presentation explores what happens when the infrastructural flows or metabolisms of the modern city, that so often come to be considered so ‘normal’ that urbanites may even come to see them as culturally banal, invisible, even boring, are suddenly interrupted or disturbed. Drawing from the 2009 Routeldge book 'Disrupted Cities: When Infrastructure Fails,' the presentation illustrates what happens when technical malfunctions, interruptions in supplies of resource, wars, terrorist attacks, public health crises, labour strikes, sabotage, network theft, extreme weather and other events usually considered to be ‘natural’ (floods, earthquakes, tsunami etc.) disrupt the flows of energy, water, transportation, communication and waste that are the very lifeblood of the contemporary city. Cases are drawn largely, but not exclusively, from North America and include very high profile events such as the September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the 2003 power blackout in the North Eastern seaboard, the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the infiltration of the global airline system by the SARS virus in 2003. The presentation complements these studies with analyses of much less well-known but equally important infrastructural disruptions: the deliberate targeting of city infrastructures in Iraq and the Occupied Territories by the US and Israeli state militaries; the hidden scleroris of city sewers caused by disgarded fats; the ways in which concern about disruptions is being used to politically reorganize and securitize global port systems in the wake of the ‘global war on terror;’ and the normal disruptions of city infrastructure that tends to characterize life in the burgeoning mega-cities of the global south – at least for the populations of informal settlements.
Stephen graham switching societies off: war, infrastructure, geopoliticsStephen Graham
A detailed look at how contemporary war involves the devastation of the essential civilian infrastructures of cities by state militaries. The presentation also looks in depth at the devastating and often hidden effects of these actions on urban civilians
Offering a critical response to the dominant vision of the smart city, this talk seeks to look beyond the seductive imagery and hype that surrounds emerging smart city paradigms. In their place, it explores arrange of critical perspectives to smart city planning that are emerging across the social sciences and activist communities, in various places across the world. These critiques centre, broadly, on ways in which smart city paradigms radically deepen urban surveillance ; the way they embed power into corporate urban operating systems; the way the glossy hype and marketing hides tendencies toward authoritarianism and centralized power ; and the way in which ‘smart’ city labels are used to camouflage the construction of highly elitist urban enclaves. The talk will finish by exploring efforts to mobilise digital media to more democratic and egalitarian urban vision.
Final Paper Draft Outline – Week 7 For the second to last.docxcharlottej5
Final Paper Draft Outline – Week 7
For the second to last homework, you need to submit an outline of your final paper. What does
that mean? You need to read the article “Writing for College: What is an Academic Paper” and
conceptualize what the paper assignment for this course is about:
https://depts.washington.edu/owrc/Handouts/What%20is%20an%20Academic%20Paper.pdf
Next, you need to read the “Final Paper Minimum Requirements” to get a sense of how you shall
start creating the paper. Think of a topic that you are interest the most – it can be a critical paper,
project, applicative hacks – and then apply the instructions from the first two sources indicated.
The draft outline needs to answer:
• what is your topic,
• what are your main sections in the paper,
• what are the preliminary sources you will use,
• how you plan to write in each of these sections/use the sources.
The APA, IEEE, or MLA is required for this assignment. Why? You can just use the same
document to proceed with actually writing the paper, project report, or the white paper of the
hack. You can find the formatting guidelines in the “Paper Guidelines” module in D2L.
Once you have finalized your homework, please take a look at the document named “How to
Read an Academic Paper” that is also attached together in the same D2L module as the other
two. Make sure you read it – it is an excellent and critical tool that you will need in reading the
academic sources you plan to build upon in your paper.
Risking Security: Policies and Paradoxes
of Cyberspace Security
Ronald J. Deibert
University of Toronto
and
Rafal Rohozinski
University of Toronto
Conceptualizations of cyberspace security can be divided into two related
dimensions, articulated as ‘‘risks’’: risks to the physical realm of computer
and communication technologies (risks to cyberspace); and risks that arise
from cyberspace and are facilitated or generated by its technologies, but
do not directly target the infrastructures per se (risks through cyberspace).
There is robust international consensus, growing communities of practice,
and an emerging normative regime around risks to cyberspace. This is less
the case when it comes to risks through cyberspace. While states do collabo-
rate around some policy areas, cooperation declines as the object of risk
becomes politically contestable and where national interests vary widely.
These include the nature of political opposition and the right to dissent
or protest, minority rights and independence movements, religious belief,
cultural values, or historical claims. The contrast between the domains has
led to contradictory tendencies and paradoxical outcomes.
Globalization is generating new security challenges. Modern societies confront a
myriad of risks that threaten economic prosperity, undermine the safety and
security of citizens, and cause significant disruption to society and politics. These
risks range from empowered and mili.
Graham, Stephen. "Switching cities off: Urban infrastructure and US air power...Stephen Graham
In this follow-up to a piece originally published in City 8(2), Stephen Graham offers a detailed portrait of the tactics and techniques of contemporary urban warfare. As cities have become more reliant than ever on networks, and as their infrastructures have become more fragile due to the vagaries of neoliberal privatization, urban-based warfare, which targets the systems—informational, medical, agricultural, and technological—that sustain the civilian populations of cities, has had disastrous consequences. Although terrorists have chosen to target urban infrastructures in an attempt to disrupt modern urban life, Graham suggests that the greater threat to metropolitan existence comes from systematic attempts by traditional powers, such as the United States, to disrupt urban networks, thereby effectively ‘switching cities off’. Policies of what Graham calls ‘deliberate demodernization’ have become the hallmark of US air power. Although such policies are thought to bring about asymmetrical military advantage, they also place civilian populations at risk. Such policies represent thus perpetuation of total war in a different key. Graham concludes by calling for further research into the new geopolitics of infrastructural warfare.
Elite Avenues: Flyovers, Freeways and the Politics of Urban MobilityStephen Graham
Development and planning elites across many of the burgeoning megacities of the global south still work powerfully to fetishise elevated highways or flyovers as part of their efforts at “worlding” their cities. In such a context, and given the neglect of such processes in recent urban and mobilities literatures, this article presents an international and interdisciplinary analysis of the urban and vertical politics of raised flyovers, freeways and expressways. It argues that such highways need to be seen as important elements within broader processes of three-dimensional social segregation and secession within and between cities which privilege the mobilities of the privileged. The paper falls into six sections. Following the introduction, the complex genealogies of flyover urban design are discussed. Discussion then moves to the vertical politics of flyovers in the west Bank and post-Apartheid South Africa; the elite imaginings surrounding flyover construction in Mumbai; the political struggles surrounding the ribbons of space beneath flyover systems; and the efforts to bury or re-appropriate the landscapes of raised flyovers.
Bunkering down the geography of elite residential basement development in londonStephen Graham
Much has been written about the “luxified skies” – “high-rise”, “super-prime” housing for the super-rich – that has been sprouting up across London. Thus far, less attention has been paid to what has been happening to the subterranean city. The “luxified skies” are highly visible reminders of elite “verticality” but, what we might term, “luxified troglodytism” is also an important aspect of London’s changing geometries of wealth, power and architecture. In this paper, we map out in detail the emerging subterranean geography of residential basement development across London since 2008. The very wealthy, it turns out, have been “bunkering down” across certain parts of London, to an extent hitherto little understood. Some 7,328 new residential basements underneath existing houses had been granted planning permission up to late-2019. Over 1,500 of them are of a size that their locations might best be thought of as marking out a distinct plutocratic “basement belt”.
Vertical : The city from satellites to bunkersStephen Graham
A revolutionary reimagining of the cities we live in, the air above us, and what goes on in the earth beneath our feet
Today we live in a world that can no longer be read as a two-dimensional map, but must now be understood as a series of vertical strata that reach from the satellites that encircle our planet to the tunnels deep within the ground. In Vertical, Stephen Graham rewrites the city at every level: how the geography of inequality, politics, and identity is determined in terms of above and below.
Starting at the edge of earth’s atmosphere and, in a series of riveting studies, descending through each layer, Graham explores the world of drones, the city from the viewpoint of an aerial bomber, the design of sidewalks and the hidden depths of underground bunkers. He asks: why was Dubai built to be seen from Google Earth? How do the super-rich in São Paulo live in their penthouses far above the street? Why do London billionaires build vast subterranean basements? And how do the technology of elevators and subversive urban explorers shape life on the surface and subsurface of the earth?
Vertical will make you look at the world around you anew: this is a revolution in understanding your place in the world.
Transcending the surface graham: The New Techno-Utopian Dreams (and Realities...Stephen Graham
A presentation about a range of utopian projects for moving about cities above and below the surface via tunnels. orbital travel, supersonic airliners and vertical take off and autonomous 'sky taxis'.
Subterranean urban politics: Insurgency, sanctuary, exploration and tourismStephen Graham
A presentation, drawing on my book 'Vertical', exploring the politics of the urban subterranean. The wide-ranging discussion explores the subterranean as a source of class threats and insurrections; as a sanctuary; as a space of exploration; and as a site for tourism.
Elite avenues: Flyovers, freeways and the politics of urban mobilityStephen Graham
Development and planning elites across many of the burgeoning megacities of the Global South still work powerfully to fetishise elevated highways or flyovers as part of their efforts at ‘worlding’ their cities. In such a context, and given the neglect of such processes in recent urban and mobilities literatures, this paper presents an international and interdis- ciplinary analysis of the urban and vertical politics of raised flyovers, freeways and express- ways. It argues that such highways need to be seen as important elements within broader processes of three-dimensional social segregation and secession within and between cities which privilege the mobilities of the privileged. The paper falls into six sections. Following the introduction, the complex genealogies of flyover urban design are discussed. Discussion then moves to the vertical politics of flyovers in the West Bank and post-Apartheid South Africa; the elite imaginings surrounding flyover construction in Mumbai; the political struggles surrounding the ribbons of space beneath flyover systems; and the efforts to bury or reappropriate the landscapes of raised flyovers.
Vertical noir: Histories of the future in urban science fictionStephen Graham
Unerringly, across its whole history, urban science fiction has offered up imagined cities that
operate about remarkably similar and highly verticalised visions. These are heavily dominated
by politics of class, resistance and revolution that are starkly organized around vertically
stratified and vertically exaggerated urban spaces. From the early and definitive efforts
of H.G. Wells and Fritz Lang, through J.G. Ballard’s 1975 novel High Rise, to many cyberpunk
classics, this essay – the latest in a series in City on the vertical dimensions of cities1 –
reflects on how vertical imaginaries in urban science fiction intersect with the politics and
contestations of the fast-verticalising cities around the world. The essay has four parts. It
begins by disentangling in detail the ways in which the sci-fi visions of Wells, Lang,
Ballard and various cyberpunk authors were centrally constituted through vertical structures,
landscapes, metaphors and allegories. The essay’s second part then teases out the
complex linkages between verticalised sci-fi imaginaries and material cityscapes that are
actually constructed, lived and experienced. Stressing the impossibility of some clean and
binary opposition between ‘factual’ and ‘fictional’ cities, the essay explores how verticalised
projects, material cities, sci-fi texts, imaginary futures, architectural schemes and urban theories
mingle and resonate together in complex, unpredictable and important ways which do
much to shape contemporary urban landscapes. The third section of the essay explores such
connections through the cases of retro-futuristic urban megaprojects in the Gulf and forests
of towers recently constructed in Shanghai’s Pudong district. The essay’s final discussion
draws on these cases to explore the possibilities that sci-fi imaginaries offer for contesting
the rapid verticalisation of cities around the world.
Vertical: The City From Satellites to Bunkers Stephen Graham Stephen Graham
A presentation outlining some of the themes to my new book, 'Vertical: The City From Satellites to Bunkers' (Verso, 2016).
"A revolutionary reimagining of the cities we live in, the air above us, and what goes on in the earth beneath our feet
Today we live in a world that can no longer be read as a two-dimensional map, but must now be understood as a series of vertical strata that reach from the satellites that encircle our planet to the tunnels deep within the ground. In Vertical, Stephen Graham rewrites the city at every level: how the geography of inequality, politics, and identity is determined in terms of above and below.
Starting at the edge of earth’s atmosphere and, in a series of riveting studies, descending through each layer, Graham explores the world of drones, the city from the viewpoint of an aerial bomber, the design of sidewalks and the hidden depths of underground bunkers. He asks: why was Dubai built to be seen from Google Earth? How do the super-rich in São Paulo live in their penthouses far above the street? Why do London billionaires build vast subterranean basements? And how do the technology of elevators and subversive urban explorers shape life on the surface and subsurface of the earth?
Vertical will make you look at the world around you anew: this is a revolution in understanding your place in the world."
See https://www.versobooks.com/books/2237-vertical
Vertical noir: Histories of the future in urban science fictionStephen Graham
Unerringly, across its whole history, urban science fiction has offered up imagined cities that operate about remarkably similar and highly verticalised visions. These are heavily dominated
by politics of class, resistance and revolution that are starkly organized around vertically stratified and vertically exaggerated urban spaces. From the early and definitive efforts
of H.G. Wells and Fritz Lang, through J.G. Ballard’s 1975 novel 'High Rise', to many cyberpunk classics, this essay – the latest in a series on the vertical dimensions of cities –reflects on how vertical imaginaries in urban science fiction intersect with the politics and contestations of the fast-verticalising cities around the world. The essay has four parts. It begins by disentangling in detail the ways in which the sci-fi visions of Wells, Lang, Ballard and various cyberpunk authors were centrally constituted through vertical structures, landscapes, metaphors and allegories. The essay’s second part then then teases out the complex linkages between verticalised sci-fi imaginaries and material cityscapes that are actually constructed, lived and experienced. Stressing the impossibility of some clean and binary opposition between ‘factual’ and ‘fictional’ cities, the essay explores how verticalised
projects, material cities, sci-fi texts, imaginary futures, architectural schemes and urban theories mingle and resonate together in complex, unpredictable and important ways which do much to shape contemporary urban landscapes. The third section of the essay explores such connections through the cases of retro-futuristic urban megaprojects in the Gulf and forests of towers recently constructed in Shanghai’s Pudong district. The
essay’s final discussion draws on these cases to explore the possibilities that sci-fi imaginaries offer for contesting the rapid verticalisation of cities around the world.
Histories of the Future in Contemporary Megastructures
An exploration of the development of multi-level cities around the world, and their links to historic futurism
Life support: The political ecology of urban airStephen Graham
Humans, increasingly, manufacture their own air. In and around the three-dimensional
aerial environments within and above urban regions, this manufacture of air reaches particular
levels of intensity. For a species that expires without air in two or three minutes,
this anthropogenic manufacture of air is of incalculable importance. Curiously, however,
urban air remains remarkably neglected within the political–ecological literatures. Accordingly,
this paper suggests a range of key themes, which a political ecology of urban air needs
to address. These touch upon the links between global warming, urban heat-island effects
and killer urban heatwaves; urban pollution crises; the paradoxes of urban pollution; horizontal
movements of polluted air; the vertical politics of urban air; the construction of vertical
condominium structures for elites; the vicious circles that characterise air-conditioned
urbanism; heat-related deaths of workers building air-conditioned structures in increasingly
hot climates; the growth of large-scale air-conditioned environments; and, finally, the
manipulation of urban air through political violence.
Vertical cities: Representations of urban verticality in 20th-century science...Stephen Graham
Vertical cities: Representations of urban verticality in 20th-century science fiction literature
Lucy Hewitt and Stephen Graham
This paper seeks to intersect two recent trends in urban research. First, it takes seriously the recognition that established traditions of research concerned with urban space have tended to privilege the horizontal extension of cities to the neglect of their vertical or volumetric extension. Second, the paper contributes to the resurgence of interest among social scientists in the validity of fiction – and especially speculative or science fiction – as a source of critical commentary and as a mode of knowledge that can exist in close reciprocity with non-fictional work. From these two starting points the paper develops a reading of the dialogue between the representations of vertical urban life that have featured in landmark works of 20th-century science fiction literature and key themes in contemporary urban analysis.
Water Wars in Mumbai
Stephen Graham, Renu Desai, and Colin McFarlane
Beyond the Pale
The Mumbai Mirror, January 8, 2010. A photograph shows a line of proud Mumbai police officers standing behind row upon row of what appear at first sight to be rusted machine guns (see fig. 1). But this is not one of the arms caches regularly unearthed to demonstrate the force’s effectiveness against the myriad terrorist networks that regularly target urban sites in contemporary India. Rather, the objects are water booster pumps, confiscated in a new campaign of dawn raids targeting “water theft” by slum dwellers in the Shivaji Nagar and
Govandi districts (see fig. 2 map below).
“Stealing Water to Earn a Few Bucks?” the headline reads. “Pay a Hefty
Price!” (Sathe 2010). The article details how the raids are being backed up by new legal moves to criminalize certain uses of water. Hundreds of people, arrested for installing and using the pumps, are to be prosecuted under draconian and nonbailable laws such as the Prevention of Damages to Public Property Act. All this activity is portrayed unproblematically as a heroic response to the threat that water theft in slums poses to the wider, formal, legitimate, and law-abiding city. “Pilferages, if not controlled,” writes the author, “could exhaust the potable water reserves before the next monsoon” (Sathe 2010).
Such statements tap into a mainstream discourse according to which recent poor monsoons have led to a major “water crisis” in Mumbai, necessitating radical, emergency measures to address widespread “water theft” or “water pilferage”— especially by the urban poor. What such discourses occlude, however, are the ways that current systems of urban water provision work to systematically dehydrate and profit from urban slum communities, while water wastage by the affluent and their preferred urban facilities goes unchecked.
Super-tall and Ultra-deep: The Cultural Politics of the ElevatorStephen Graham
Entire libraries can be filled with volumes exploring the cultures, politics and geo- graphies of the largely horizontal mobilities and transportation infrastructures that are intrinsic to urban modernity (highways, railways, subways, public transit and so on). And yet the recent ‘mobilities turn’ has almost completely neglected the cultural geographies and politics of vertical transportation within and between the buildings of vertically-structured cityscapes. Attempting to rectify this neglect, this article seeks, first, to bring elevator travel centrally into discussions about the cultural politics of urban space and, second, to connect elevator urbanism to the even more neglected worlds of elevator-based descent in ultra-deep mining. The article addresses, in turn: the historical emergence of elevator urbanism; the cultural significance of the eleva- tor as spectacle; the global ‘race’ in elevator speed; shifts towards the ‘splintering’ of elevator experiences; experiments with new mobility systems which blend elevators and automobiles; problems of vertical abandonment; and, finally, the neglected ver- tical politics of elevator-based ‘ultra-deep’ mining.
Life-support: The Political Ecology of Urban Air (Presentation)Stephen Graham
Humans, increasingly, manufacturer their own air. In and around the three-dimensional aerial environments within and above urban regions, this manufacture of air reaches particular levels of intensity. For a species which expires without air in two or three minutes, this anthropogenic manufacture of air is of incalculable importance. Curiously, however, urban air remains remarkably neglected within the political-ecological literatures. Accordingly, this paper suggests a range of key themes which a political ecology of urban air needs to address. These address, in turn, the links between global warming, urban heart-island effects and killer urban heat-waves; urban pollution crises; the paradoxes of urban pollution; horizontal movements of polluted air; the vertical politics of urban air; the construction of vertical condominiums structures for elites; the vicious circles that characterised air-conditioned urbanism; heat-related deaths of workers building air-conditioned structures in increasingly hot climates; and, finally, the growth of large-scale air-conditioned environments.
Vigar, Geoff, Stephen Graham, and Patsy Healey. "In search of the city in spa...Stephen Graham
Summary. This paper addresses the ways in which urban regions are represented in contemporary urban policies. In doing so, it critically examines how urban trends are reflected in diverse notions of ‘cityness’ in contemporary policy discourses about spatiality and territoriality. Through a detailed case study of the use and construction of the word ‘city’ in a range of urban governance contexts in Newcastle upon Tyne, this paper analyses the political work done by diverse representations and invocations of ‘cityness’ in contemporary urban governance. Such representations matter because the way in which contemporary cities are conceptualised influences policy formulations and policy outcomes. In addition, considerable emphasis is being placed in contemporary urban policy on ‘joining-up’, ‘integrating’ and co-ordinating governance efforts. How conceptions of the city are mobilised to do such integrating work provides insight into the challenge such ambitions present. The evidence from the case study suggests that the capacity of local actors to think about the processes of change in metropolitan regions, and to define the ways in which they can respond, is often limited, as they struggle to define what their ‘city’ actually might be these days. This tends to be to the detriment of collective attempts to maximise conditions for citizens and for investment.
Graham, Stephen. "Bridging urban digital divides? Urban polarisation and info...Stephen Graham
The societal diffusion of information and communications technologies (ICTs) remains starkly uneven at all scales. It is in the contemporary city that this unevenness becomes most visible. In cities, clusters and enclaves of ‘superconnected’ people, rms and institutions often rest cheek-by-jowel with large numbers of people with non-existent or rudimentary access to communications technologies. In such a context, this paper has two objectives, reected in its two parts. The rst part of the paper seeks to demonstrate that dominant trends in ICT develop- ment are currently helping to support new extremes of social and geographical unevenness within and between human settlements and cities, in both the North and the South. The paper’s second part aims to explore the prospect that such stark ‘urban digital divides’ might be ameliorated through progressive and innovative policy initiatives which treat cities and electronic technologies in parallel. It does this using a range of illustrative exemplars from a variety of contexts
Crang, Michael, Tracey Crosbie, and Stephen Graham. "Variable geometries of c...Stephen Graham
Summary. This paper proposes a new way of conceptualising urban ‘digital divides’. It focuses on the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) unevenly affect the pace of life within the urban environment. Based on a detailed case study of how ICTs are being used in an affluent and a marginalised neighbourhood in Newcastle upon Tyne, the paper suggests that urban digital divides need to be understood as more than uneven patterns of access. They emerge in this work as more than the presence or absence of specific technological artefacts. Rather, it is argued that different styles and speeds of technologically mediated life now work to define urban socio- spatial inequalities. The paper distinguishes between two such key styles and speeds. First, the paper argues that affluent and professional groups now use new media technologies pervasively and continuously as the ‘background’ infrastructure to sustain privileged and intensely distanciated, but time-stressed, lifestyles. Secondly, more marginalised neighbourhoods tend to be characterised by instrumental and episodic ICT usage patterns which are often collectively organised through strong neighbourhood ties. For the former, mediated networks help to orchestrate neighbourhood ties; for the latter, it is those neighbourhood ties that enable on-line access.
Graham, Stephen. "“Homeland” insecurities? Katrina and the politics of “secur...Stephen Graham
This intervention explores the paradox that although the Bush administration has repeatedly stressed the purported insecurity of U.S. urbanites to “terroristic” threats since 9/11, it has simul- taneously undermined the preparedness and resilience of U.S. cities in the face of catastrophic weather and seismic events. Arguing that Katrina needs to be seen as an event that unerringly exposes the politics of urban security in post-9/11 U.S. cities, the piece explores the relationships between neoconservative, antiurban ideology; the “homeland security” drive; and climate change, catastrophic weather events, and oil geopolitics.
‘वोटर्स विल मस्ट प्रीवेल’ (मतदाताओं को जीतना होगा) अभियान द्वारा जारी हेल्पलाइन नंबर, 4 जून को सुबह 7 बजे से दोपहर 12 बजे तक मतगणना प्रक्रिया में कहीं भी किसी भी तरह के उल्लंघन की रिपोर्ट करने के लिए खुला रहेगा।
role of women and girls in various terror groupssadiakorobi2
Women have three distinct types of involvement: direct involvement in terrorist acts; enabling of others to commit such acts; and facilitating the disengagement of others from violent or extremist groups.
हम आग्रह करते हैं कि जो भी सत्ता में आए, वह संविधान का पालन करे, उसकी रक्षा करे और उसे बनाए रखे।" प्रस्ताव में कुल तीन प्रमुख हस्तक्षेप और उनके तंत्र भी प्रस्तुत किए गए। पहला हस्तक्षेप स्वतंत्र मीडिया को प्रोत्साहित करके, वास्तविकता पर आधारित काउंटर नैरेटिव का निर्माण करके और सत्तारूढ़ सरकार द्वारा नियोजित मनोवैज्ञानिक हेरफेर की रणनीति का मुकाबला करके लोगों द्वारा निर्धारित कथा को बनाए रखना और उस पर कार्यकरना था।
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In a May 9, 2024 paper, Juri Opitz from the University of Zurich, along with Shira Wein and Nathan Schneider form Georgetown University, discussed the importance of linguistic expertise in natural language processing (NLP) in an era dominated by large language models (LLMs).
The authors explained that while machine translation (MT) previously relied heavily on linguists, the landscape has shifted. “Linguistics is no longer front and center in the way we build NLP systems,” they said. With the emergence of LLMs, which can generate fluent text without the need for specialized modules to handle grammar or semantic coherence, the need for linguistic expertise in NLP is being questioned.
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2. Infrastructure and Urbanization
• 2007 50% of world’s population live in
urban areas
• These 3.3 billion people concentrated
on 2.4% of earth’s surface
• Rely on spectrum of mobilities and
connections
• Once infrastructure networks are
successfully built, "unconnected
localities" can be linked through what
Latour calls "provisionally
commensurable connections" (Latour,
1997; 2).
• In such a context, ‘Acts of God’ or
“environmental Hazards' mediated
profoundly by complexes of urban
infrastructure
3. Technosocial and Technonatural Assemblages
• Organise, and mediate, the
distribution of people, goods,
services, information, wastes,
capital, and energy between
multiple scales within and between
urban regions.
• The contemporary urban process
involves complex ‘cyborg’ liaisons
and multiple, distanciated
connections.
• Straddle many scales and link more
or less distant elsewheres.
• Crucial to “Anthropocene”
4. Cyborg Urbanization
• Blending of social into technical (and vice versa) ; technological into
natural/organic ; and social into natural/organic
• Complexes of ‘infrastructure’ involve all three processes of blurring:
socio-technical (cyborg bodies); socio-natural (urban water systems;
resource commodity chains); techno-natural (urban metabolism &
ecology)
• "The city", writes Erik Swyngedouw, "cannot survive without capturing,
transforming and transporting nature's water. The 'metabolism of the city'
depends of the incessant flow of water through its veins" (1995, 390).
5. • “The modern home, for example, has become a complex
exoskeleton for the human body with its provision of water, warmth,
light and other essential needs. The home can be conceived as
‘prosthesis and prophylactic’ in which modernist distinctions
between nature and culture, and between the organic and the
inorganic, become blurred” Gandy 2004
6. Bill Joy: When Turning Off Becomes Suicide
• Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems,
recently caused a furore amongst, suggested
that the mediation of human societies by
astonishingly complex computerised
infrastructure systems will soon reach the
stage when "people won't be able to just turn
the machines off, because they will be so
dependent on them that turning them off
would amount to suicide" (2000, 239).
7. How are Technosocial complexes ‘black boxed’ as
the ‘engineer’s stuff’ of ‘infrastructure
• For Susan Leigh-Star (1999) nine characteristics.
• embedded (i.e. “sunk into other structures);
• transparent (“it does not need to be reinvented
each time or assembled for each task”);
• offers temporal or spatial reach or scope;
• is learned by its users;
• is linked to conventions of practice (e.g. routines of
electricity use);
• embodies standards;
• is built on an installed base of sunk capital;
• is fixed in modular increments, not built all at once
or globally;
8. And yet, paradoxically,
often only noticed when they fail
• Finally, infrastructure “tends to become visible
upon breakdown.”
• When infrastructure networks "work best, they
are noticed least of all" (David Perry, 1995).
• Modern urbanism associated with progressive
veiling of infrastructure, physically and
discursively, beneath the urban scene, as part
of emergence of “Wired-Piped-Tracked”
Metropolis
• Kaika and Swyngedouw (2000) "the networks
became buried underground, invisible,
banalised, and relegated to an apparently
marginal, subterranean urban world".
9. The ‘Fronstaging’ of the Urban ‘Backstage’
• Irving Goffman’s (1959)
terms, the built
environment’s “backstage’
becomes momentarily
“frontstaged”
• The sudden absence of
infrastructural flow creates
visibility just as the
continued, normalised use of
infrastructures creates a
deep taken-for-grantedness
and invisibility.
10. ‘Unblackboxing’
• Technosocial ‘blackboxes” are
momentarily undone
• Cultures of normalised and taken-forgranted infrastructure use sustain
widespread assumptions that urban
‘infrastructure’ is somehow a material
and utterly fixed assemblage of hard
technologies embedded stably in place
which is characterised by perfect order,
completeness, immanence and internal
homogeneity rather than leaky, partial
and heterogeneous entities.
11. Myth of Fixed and Stable
Emplacement
• Infrastructures regarded as "symbols of the complexity,
ubiquity and the embodied power of modern
technology" (Summerton 1994).
• “we sometimes seem to view mature Large Technical
Systems as invulnerable, embodying more and more
power over time and developing along a path whose
basic direction is as foreseeable as it is impossible to
detour [But] systems are more vulnerable, less stable
and less predictable in their various phases than most of
us tend to think (Summerton, 1994)
12. • Cultures and economies of infrastructural repair and
improvisation almost invisible within urban studies
14. The Electromateriality of
‘cyberspace’
• “When servers are
down, panic sets in.
Electronic power
failures, internal surges,
the glitches that corrupt
and destroy memory,
mirror our relation with
power itself” (Grossman,
2003, 23).
• a single server farm
consumes as much
electrical power as a city
the size of Honolulu.
15. Blackouts and the ‘Global’ City
• “We are talking about
Mumbai as the next
Shanghai”, a general
manager for a major Mumbai
advertising firm, faced with
losing 30% of its revenues
due to daily 4 hour power
cuts, reported in 2005. “And
here we are faced with the
possibilities of
blackouts” (SAND, 2005).
16. Blackouts and Neoliberal Dogma
• Electricity deregulation in the USA had actually ignored the
economic and geographical fundamentals of an industry that
necessitates reliable, material connectivities between generation
and use; that is prone to cascading and spiralling failure as
transcontinental and transnational markets in supply are
established within “complex interactive networks,” with dramatic
unintended consequences ; and where the hard infrastructures are
ageing and organised with a baroque level of complexity and local
fragmentation.
17. ICTs and Cascading Effects
• On July 19, 2001, a train shipping hydrochloric acid, computer paper,
wood-pulp bales and other items from North Carolina to New Jersey
derails in a tunnel under downtown Baltimore. Later estimated to have
reached 1,500 degrees, the ensuing fire is hot enough to make the
boxcars glow. A toxic cloud forces the evacuation of several city blocks.
By its second day, the blaze melts a pipe containing fiber-optic lines laid
along the railroad right-of-way, disrupting telecommunications traffic on a
critical New York-Miami axis. Cell phones in suburban Maryland fail. The
New York–based Hearst Corporation loses its email and the ability to
update its web pages. Worldcom, PSINet, and Abovenet report problems.
Slowdowns are seen as far away as Atlanta, Seattle, and Los Angeles,
and the American embassy in Lusaka, Zambia loses all contact with
Washington.
•
Kazys Varnelis
18. Political Ecological
Disruptions: Katrina
• Urban political
ecologies rendered
starkly visible
• Metabolized nature
disturbed; politically
constructed
vulnerabilities exposed
22. Forced Disconnection: Infrastructural Warfare
• "There is nothing in the
world today that cannot
become a weapon" (Liang
and Xiangsui, 1999)
• "If you want to destroy
someone nowadays, you
go after their infrastructure.
" (Phil Agre, 2001)
23. “Global Guerillas” and Infrastructural insurgencies
“Global economic networks, like today's oil
networks, are typically sparse (few nodes),
hierarchical (an inverted pyramid of
distribution), concentrated (big hubs), and
vulnerable (not built with security in mind).
Complex infrastructure often exhibits extreme
levels of vulnerability to non-planned events.
The reason for this is may be found in an area
of complexity research called highly optimized
tolerance (HOT). HOT research has found that
complex networks, like most global
infrastructure, exhibit behaviors explained by
the design considerations of its makers. The
end-result of this planning is a network that is
extremely robust against certain types of
anticipated failures/insults but conversely is
hypersensitive to unanticipated classes of
uncertainty”. John Robb
27. •
"the next Pearl Harbor will be
both everywhere and nowhere at the
same time. It's targets will not be the
U.S. military or defense system but,
instead, the U.S. public and its postindustrial and highly informatized
lifestyle. What is now a tool for
comfort, an object of leisure, or a
necessary support for work [..] will soon
become the world's deadliest
weapon” (Debrix, 2001).
28.
29.
30.
31. State-Backed Infrastructural War
• John Warden’s “Enemy as a
System”. Basis for US doctrine :
“Strategic Ring Theory”
• Legitimises civilian infrastructures
as ‘dual-use targets’
• Ritzer "by declaring dual-use
targets legitimate military
objectives, the Air Force can
directly target civilian morale".
32. •
Edward Felker’s (1998)
embellishment of Warden
•
Infrastructure, rather than a
separate 'ring' of the 'enemy as a
system', in fact pervades, and
connects, all the others to actually
"constitute the society as a
whole"
•
"If infrastructure links the
subsystems of a society," he
wrote, "might it be the most
important target ?" (1998).
33. First Order Effects
Second Order
Effects
Third Order Effects
No light after dark or in
building interiors
Erosion of command
and control capabilities
Greater logistics
complexity
No refrigeration
Increased requirement
for power generating
equipment
Decreased mobility
Some stoves/ovens non
operable
Increased requirement
for night vision devices
Decreased Situational
Awareness
Inoperable hospital
electronic equipment
Increased reliance on
battery-powered items
for news, broadcasts,
etc.
Rising disease rates
No electronic access to
bank accounts/money
Shortage of clean water
for drinking, cleaning
and preparing food
Rising rates of
malnutrition
Disruption in some
transportation and
communications
services
Hygiene problems
Increased numbers of
non-combatants
requiring assistance
Disruption to water
supply, treatment
facilities, and sanitation
Inability to prepare and
process some foods
Difficulty in
communicating with
non-combatants
34.
35. ‘Bomb Now, Die Later’ :
The ‘War onGlosson 1991 : ”I want to put every--[Iraqi] household in an
1991-2003
• General Buster Public Health’ in Iraq
autonomous mode and make them feel they were isolated… We wanted to play
with their psyche"