Book launch: Designing More-than-Human Smart Cities

We invite you to join us for the Australian launch of our new book: Designing More-than-Human Smart Cities – Beyond Sustainability, Towards Cohabitation, co-edited by Sara Heitlinger, Marcus Foth and Rachel Clarke, published by Oxford University Press (2024).

The book brings together the latest interdisciplinary research and insights on designing cities that go beyond human-centric approaches.

To celebrate the launch of the book, please join the editors (Sara and Rachel virtually from London, Marcus in person) and special guest of honour Adj. Prof. Mary Graham (UQ), co-author of chapter 12: A City of Good Ancestors – Urban Governance and Design from a Relationist Ethos

Light nibblies and drinks provided courtesy of the QUT More-than-Human Futures research group.

Venue

This event will be held in the Advanced Engineering Building (#49), Level 5, in conjunction with OZCHI 2024 at the University of Queensland. (Google Maps > | parking and public transport >)

Please consider participating in the OZCHI 2024 conference as well as two workshops related to the book’s theme:

• Workshop 1, Saturday 30 Nov 2024, Full day (9:00am – 4:30pm): Engaging with Nature in a Digital World
• Workshop 6, Sunday 1 Dec 2024, Full day (9:00am – 4:30pm): More-than-Human Moments via Movement-based Design & Cultural Insights

Schedule

About the book

Heitlinger, S., Foth, M., & Clarke, R. (Eds.) (2024). Designing More-than-Human Smart Cities: Beyond Sustainability, Towards Cohabitation. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192884169.

Order online at OUP Global with promotion code ASFLYQ6 to save 30%!

Climate change, rapid urbanisation, pandemics, as well as innovations in technologies such as blockchain, AI and IoT are all impacting urban space. One response to such changes has been to make cities ecologically sustainable and ‘smart.’ The ‘eco smart city’ for instance uses networked sensing, cloud and mobile computing to optimise, control, and regulate urban processes and resources. From real-time bus information to autonomous electric vehicles, smart parking, and smart street lighting, such initiatives are often presented as a social and environmental good.

Critics, however, increasingly argue that technologically driven, and efficiency-led approaches are too simplistic to deal with the complexities of urban life. Sustainability in the smart city is predominantly performed in limited ways that leave little room for participation and citizen agency despite government efforts to integrate innovative technologies in more equitable ways. More importantly, there is a growing awareness that a human-centred notion of cities, in which urban space is designed for, and inhabited by, humans only, is no longer tenable. Within the age of the Anthropocene – a term used to refer to a new geological era in which human activity is transforming Earth systems, accelerating climate change and causing mass extinctions – scholars and practitioners are working generatively by acknowledging the entanglements between human and non-human others (including plants, animals, insects, as well as soil, water, and sensors and their data) in urban life.

In Designing More-than-Human Smart Cities, renowned researchers and practitioners from urban planning, architecture, environmental humanities, geography, design, arts, and computing critically explore smart cities beyond a human-centred approach. They respond to the complex interrelations between human and non-human others in urban space. Through theory, policy and practice (past and present), and thinking speculatively about how smart cities may evolve in the future, the book makes a timely contribution to lively, contemporary scientific and political debates on genuinely sustainable smart cities.