The development of urban digital technologies and the deployment of digital information have evolved into a mutually reinforcing feedback loop between distributed sites of data production and extraction, and the planning and design of data-driven and evidence-based landscapes. Mobile social media, networks of sensors, and the ecology of connected devices termed the “Internet of things,” among others, constitute infrastructures that harvest information, while advancing techniques of analysis and visualization have begun to describe and design sociopolitical and built environments in their image. Digital Urbanisms is a one-day symposium bringing together urban researchers and practitioners – planners, architects, geographers, organizers, and entrepreneurs – to take stock of the digital processes and products shaping cities, their promises and problems, and discuss alternatives and approaches for operating within and against the uneven spaces they characterize.

The morning includes two panels to ground and contextualize the day’s discussion in design at multiple scales.