Revista Barcelona Metròpolis 110 - Ciutat digital

N110 - Jan 19

Digital city

The digital revolution and artificial intelligence will change life in the cities in ways we can not yet imagine. They are already changing it. But technology is not neutral. It can reinforce the concentration of power in few hands or it can extend and strengthen democracy. It depends on whether or not citizens are in control of the data they generate and of the rules we can establish between us all.

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DossierDigital city

Il·lustració d'un tub d'adhesiu amb etiqueta "Super city-3"
Digital cityFrom the imagined community to the practice community

Cities can adopt practices that will engage residents in communities of practice, building on making, doing, and sharing together as a base of identity that can provide real sense of...

Il·lustració d'una mà posant una papereta en una urna que és un candau
Digital cityThe right to the (digital) city

Cities and citizens, not companies, ought to own the data produced in cities and should be able to use said data to improve public services and put their policies into action. Data...

Il·lustració d'un senyor i una bossa, sembla la figura del Monopoly
Digital cityRethink the smart city

The infrastructure of the city offers major new opportunities for profit and power which makes them highly desirable for private platforms like Google, Uber and Baidu. The end result of...

Il·lustració d'un pont
Digital cityChallenges and opportunities of the platform economy for cities

The platform economy generates considerable challenges and opportunities. It’s necessary to to distinguish truly collaborative platforms, which must be promoted and protected, from the...

Il·lustració d'una fila de persones agafant cada una amb les mans el cap de qui té davant
Digital cityThe ecosystem of knowledge as a common asset

Urban environments are characterised by the opportunities they offer to think of a political culture where shared knowledge assets can be managed jointly by different sized groups with...

Il·lustració d'una pistola que enlloc de canó per les bales té un objectiu de càmara de vigilància
Digital cityWatched democracies

In most cities there are hardly any spaces left for public cohabitation: by neglecting parks and common areas, by closing cultural spaces, by cutting budgets for extracurricular...

Il·lustració d'un megàfon
Digital cityFrom smart city to democratic city

The adjective 'smart' is very much in vogue. It represents the idea that cities can be more intelligent and efficient thanks to technology, and the data that they and their inhabitants...

Braç robòtic presentat al 4YFN 2019
Digital cityBarcelona in figures: Industry 4.0

Information and communications technologies are a strategic sector in a city’s economy, not just because of the volume of investment and jobs they generate, but also because of...

Other contents

Il·lustració dossier "Ciutat digital" © Albert Tercero
The fight for digital sovereignty

We are moving towards the digital city. Technology is often identified with progress. It depends on the use to which they are put. Data has become the main...

Retrat de Sergio Fajardo © Santiago Sepúlveda
“I don’t believe in the politicians that say: ‘I do what the people want’”

Sergio Fajardo

Not affiliated with any of the traditional parties, he became mayor of Medellín in 2004 leading a citizen movement and completely renewed a city that had entered a...

Fotograma del film 'Human Flow' del director Ai Weiwei
View from the heights

It is always possible for anyone, even a "great" artist to address others or represent them visually without viewing them "from on high". This is not the case in ...

Persones mirant uns quadres en una exposició © Vicente Zambrano
Cultural vulnerability

Cultural workers live in a lamentable state of job insecurity, as we can see from the debate that opens this Culture Folder. The arts actually help us to recognise...

Precarious employment and the generation gap in culture

The 2008 crisis was devastating for culture. Cutbacks left many projects without funding and public services had to reduce or freeze hiring. Precarious...

Dada web
How to turn the creative market around block by block

Blockchain fans highlight that we may be witnessing the start of a new infrastructure which will revolutionise the relations between small and large agents,...

Un quadre de Charlotte Salomon
Charlotte

Charlotte’s story is the unique story of a girl immersed in a tragic family legacy, a lineage of suicides, a litany of inherited deaths which is abruptly...

Exposició 'Un segle breu: Col·lecció MACBA
Art as a reflection of history

Eric Hobsbawm, the British Marxist historian, coined the expression “a brief century” to refer to the period between the First World War (1914) and the collapse of...

Llibre: Gent de ploma i marabú. Thais Morales i Carme Pollina
“We may not be machos, but we’re too much”

A fascinating transgressive joy pervades the photographs gathered in this exhaustive round-up of the ‘queer’ Barcelona of the early 20th century to today. All the...

Llibre: Els límits del Quim Porta, de Josep Pedrals
Breaking the sound barrier

Els límits del Quim Porta, a book by Josep Perals, is bound to disturb and hypnotise. The whole book breathes poetry, lyrical sonority, ideas, constant...

Un home resa en un oratori islàmic © Eva Parey
Coexistence, yes; mosque…, no?

The opening of an Islamic prayer hall in Carrer del Japó, in the Prosperitat neighbourhood, has been fraught with tension because of the residents’ opposition to this...

Llibre: Barcelona feminista 1975-1988. Isabel Segura Soriano
I am an adulteress, too

Her name was María Ángeles Muñoz and she was the cause of the rebellious catchphrase of solidarity a multitude of women also adopted: ‘I am an adulteress, too”. This...

Il·lustració d'una moto
Murmurs

Often the things we will remember all our lives creep up on us like that, halfway between the murmur of intuition and the yearning of a wish. There was a time when I...

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