PhD Candidate in Urban and Regional Development at Polytechnic of Turin, Italy. Research interests: Philosophy of Technology, AI, Cybernetics, Posthumanist Geopolitics. Address: Karlsruhe, Germany
Significant resources and efforts have been devoted, especially in the USA, to develop predictive... more Significant resources and efforts have been devoted, especially in the USA, to develop predictive policing programs. Predictive policing is, at the same time, one of the drivers of the birth, and the ultimate material enactment of, the anticipatory logics that are central to the smart city discourse. Quite surprisingly, however, critical analyses of the smart city have remained divorced from critical criminology and police studies. To fill this gap, this article sets out the first critical, in-depth empirical discussion of Blue CRUSH, a predictive policing program developed in Memphis (TN, USA), where its implementation intersects long-term austerity for urban policy. The article, first, shows that there is no evidence of Blue CRUSH’s capacity to prevent crime, thus adding empirical material to skepticism over the role of predictive policing as a policy solution in the first place. And, second, it argues that, rather than making crime a matter of technological solutions, predictive policing shifts the politics therein – in short, it contributes to the expansion of policing into the field of urban policy at the same time as it disrupts present police work. These takeaways allow to further the critique of the salvific promises implicit in the smart city discourse.
La possibile commercializzazione, in un futuro più o meno prossimo, di auto-mobili a guida autono... more La possibile commercializzazione, in un futuro più o meno prossimo, di auto-mobili a guida autonoma ha dato vita ad un acceso dibattito circa gli effetti trasformativi dell'automazione dei trasporti sulle realtà urbane. Proponendo un rovesciamento di prospettiva rispetto alle linee proposte dalla ricerca Untitled per l'analisi degli spazi urbani, questo articolo tenta di rispondere al seguente quesito: in che modo la geografia essenzialmente ibrida delle città influenza lo sviluppo di sistemi autonomi di guida? Con intento descrittivo, vengono analizzate alcune specificità socio-spaziali urbane che, rendendo particolarmente difficile la visione artificiale dei veicoli autonomi, ne ostacolano l'introduzione all'interno città. Con intento speculativo, viene prospettata la possibilità che siano le stesse città a subire interventi di riconfigurazione volti ad accomodare questi nuovi attori spaziali non-umani.
The possible commercialization, in the near or distant future, of self-driving cars has led to a heated debate on the transformative effects of transport automation on urban realities. By proposing a reversal of perspective, if compared to the proposals at urban level offered by the Untitled project, this article attempts to answer the following question: how does the essentially hybrid geography of cities influence the development of automated driving systems? With descriptive intent , this work focuses on some urban socio-spatial specificities that, by making the computer vision of autonomous vehicles particularly difficult, hinder their introduction into the cityscape. With speculative intent, it is suggested that cities themselves might be reconfigured so as to accommodate these emerging non-human spatial actors.
Significant resources and efforts have been devoted, especially in the USA, to develop predictive... more Significant resources and efforts have been devoted, especially in the USA, to develop predictive policing programs. Predictive policing is, at the same time, one of the drivers of the birth, and the ultimate material enactment of, the anticipatory logics that are central to the smart city discourse. Quite surprisingly, however, critical analyses of the smart city have remained divorced from critical criminology and police studies. To fill this gap, this article sets out the first critical, in-depth empirical discussion of Blue CRUSH, a predictive policing program developed in Memphis (TN, USA), where its implementation intersects long-term austerity for urban policy. The article, first, shows that there is no evidence of Blue CRUSH’s capacity to prevent crime, thus adding empirical material to skepticism over the role of predictive policing as a policy solution in the first place. And, second, it argues that, rather than making crime a matter of technological solutions, predictive policing shifts the politics therein – in short, it contributes to the expansion of policing into the field of urban policy at the same time as it disrupts present police work. These takeaways allow to further the critique of the salvific promises implicit in the smart city discourse.
La possibile commercializzazione, in un futuro più o meno prossimo, di auto-mobili a guida autono... more La possibile commercializzazione, in un futuro più o meno prossimo, di auto-mobili a guida autonoma ha dato vita ad un acceso dibattito circa gli effetti trasformativi dell'automazione dei trasporti sulle realtà urbane. Proponendo un rovesciamento di prospettiva rispetto alle linee proposte dalla ricerca Untitled per l'analisi degli spazi urbani, questo articolo tenta di rispondere al seguente quesito: in che modo la geografia essenzialmente ibrida delle città influenza lo sviluppo di sistemi autonomi di guida? Con intento descrittivo, vengono analizzate alcune specificità socio-spaziali urbane che, rendendo particolarmente difficile la visione artificiale dei veicoli autonomi, ne ostacolano l'introduzione all'interno città. Con intento speculativo, viene prospettata la possibilità che siano le stesse città a subire interventi di riconfigurazione volti ad accomodare questi nuovi attori spaziali non-umani.
The possible commercialization, in the near or distant future, of self-driving cars has led to a heated debate on the transformative effects of transport automation on urban realities. By proposing a reversal of perspective, if compared to the proposals at urban level offered by the Untitled project, this article attempts to answer the following question: how does the essentially hybrid geography of cities influence the development of automated driving systems? With descriptive intent , this work focuses on some urban socio-spatial specificities that, by making the computer vision of autonomous vehicles particularly difficult, hinder their introduction into the cityscape. With speculative intent, it is suggested that cities themselves might be reconfigured so as to accommodate these emerging non-human spatial actors.
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The possible commercialization, in the near or distant future, of self-driving cars has led to a heated debate on the transformative effects of transport automation on urban realities. By proposing a reversal of perspective, if compared to the proposals at urban level offered by the Untitled project, this article attempts to answer the following question: how does the essentially hybrid geography of cities influence the development of automated driving systems? With descriptive intent , this work focuses on some urban socio-spatial specificities that, by making the computer vision of autonomous vehicles particularly difficult, hinder their introduction into the cityscape. With speculative intent, it is suggested that cities themselves might be reconfigured so as to accommodate these emerging non-human spatial actors.
The possible commercialization, in the near or distant future, of self-driving cars has led to a heated debate on the transformative effects of transport automation on urban realities. By proposing a reversal of perspective, if compared to the proposals at urban level offered by the Untitled project, this article attempts to answer the following question: how does the essentially hybrid geography of cities influence the development of automated driving systems? With descriptive intent , this work focuses on some urban socio-spatial specificities that, by making the computer vision of autonomous vehicles particularly difficult, hinder their introduction into the cityscape. With speculative intent, it is suggested that cities themselves might be reconfigured so as to accommodate these emerging non-human spatial actors.