Kitchin, Rob (2016) Algorhythmic governance: Regulating the ‘heartbeat’ of a city using the Internet of Things: The Programmable City Working Paper 22. Working Paper. The Programmable City Working Paper.

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Abstract

To date, research examining the socio-spatial effects of smart city technologies have charted how they are reconfiguring the production of space, spatiality and mobility, and how urban space is governed, but have paid little attention to how the temporality of cities is being reshaped by systems and infrastructure that capture, process and act on real-time data. In this paper, we map out the ways in which city-scale Internet of Things infrastructures, and their associated networks of sensors, meters, transponders, actuators and algorithms, are used to measure, monitor and regulate the polymorphic temporal rhythms of urban life. Drawing on Lefebvre (1992[2004]), and subsequent research, we employ rhythmanalysis in conjunction with Miyazaki’s (2012, 2013a/b) notion of ‘algorhythm’ and nascent work on algorithmic governance, to develop a concept of ‘algorhythmic governance’. We then use this framing to make sense of two empirical case studies: a traffic management system and sound monitoring and modelling. Our analysis reveals: (1) how smart city technologies computationally perform rhythmanalysis and undertake rhythm-work that intervenes in space-time processes; (2) three distinct forms of algorhythmic governance, varying on the basis of adaptiveness, immediacy of action, and whether humans are in, on-, of-, off-the-loop; (3) and a number of factors that shape how algorhythmic governance works in practice.

Item Type:	Monograph (Working Paper)
Additional Information:	This paper has been submitted to the Algorithms in Culture workshop to be held in University of California Berkeley, 1-2 December 2016. Published as an open access pre-print on SocArXiv: https://osf.io/bp7c4/. The research for this paper has been conducted under the Programmable City project, funded by a European Research Council Advanced Investigator award (ERC-2012-AdG-323636-SOFTCITY). We would like to thank our interviewees and the staff of the traffic control room for their help in conducting the empirical research and answering additional questions.
Keywords:	algorhythm; algorithmic governance; rhythmanalysis; Internet of Things; smart cities; time geography;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > National Institute for Regional and Spatial analysis, NIRSA
Item ID:	9235
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/BP7C4
Depositing User:	Prof. Rob Kitchin
Date Deposited:	09 Feb 2018 16:23
Publisher:	The Programmable City Working Paper
Funders:	European Research Council Advanced Investigator Award
URI:	http://progcity.maynoothuniversity.ie/
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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