Selected Publications

‘Platformization’ and urbanization have exploded the very notion of citizenship. We propose three coordinates — new scalar assemblages, platformization processes and extended citizenship — to grapple with this critical tension.

With this Comment, we have indicated some possible lines of investigation to open a field of research that is capable of addressing the critical tension that is redefining contemporary urbanity in digitalization. Adopting urban citizenship, its practices and its mutations as a privileged point of view seems to us a productive angle. The challenge is to extend the concept of citizenship by overcoming the dichotomies and rigid spatial forms through which it has generally been understood. Emerging scalar assemblages, platformization processes, and the unprecedented dimensions and practices of citizenship in the age of urban AI seem to us useful coordinates to extend urban research towards new directions.

This article analyses how digital platforms challenge and redefine the way in which urban forms of citizenship are shaped. What we call ‘platform urbanisation’ accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic when digital platforms penetrated with increasing rapidity into every aspect of urban life. While these digital platforms have facilitated new possibilities for engagement, access to services, efficiency in processing data, and customising responses to people online and offline, they also pose political challenges related to inequality, privacy, exclusion and social polarisation. Developing a techno-political urban environment built upon inclusion, equality, and respect for the rights of users, necessitates leveraging the potential of digital platforms to empower citizens and acknowledging and incorporating the political nature of this new urban environment. Furthermore, the intersection between the political influence of platforms on the governance of citizens and everyday life has a biopolitical dimension, since the power of platforms is exercised through policies and practices that affect individuals and collectivities. The article clarifies two essential facets of platform urbanisation: (1) the political nature of such a process, which requires a reframing of citizenship and (2) the role of both material and immaterial infrastructures in this process, which serve thus to constitute it as a new biopolitical territory. This conceptual expansion allows us to interpret digital platforms as an inextricable merging of political rationality, administrative techniques and technology. 

Keywords: biopolitics, (urban) citizenship, infrastructure, pandemic, platform urbanisation, techno-politics

Planting Angsana tree, integral to Singapore's "Garden City" vision in the 1960s, provided immediate lushness, ample roadside shade, and transformed Singapore into desirable urban areas. However, as political and aesthetic visions evolved, the tree's prominence waned due to misalignment with new urban ideals and recurring disease. This paper explores this rise and fall of Angsana tree’s history along the urbanization of Singapore, intersecting the domains of nature (with a focus on plants), politics (urban planning), and space (the physical realm), and questioning how urban studies can overlook the intricate relationships between human and more-than-humans as the formation of the city is not only purely led by human's intentions but also plants' story. This study advocates for a more mobile positioning analytical framework that acknowledges the agency of more-than-human subjects and their contributions to urban transformation. It first argues that planting is a joint practice, process and a close interaction between human and more-than-humans, which helps us to go beyond the universal and simply statement of urban greening. Second, this study embodies the botanical study with historical analysis of planting Angsana, by examining how the Angsana tree's lifecycle—growth, adaptation, and eventual decay aligns with and resists human urbanization goals. This goes further shift from the traditional understanding of nature by either scientific or social constructed to contextualizing more-than-humans within the social and ecological fabric of the city.

This Special Issue presents new perspectives on the idea of digital citizenship by delving into the nexus between its emerging concepts, the consequences of the global pandemic crisis, and the urban environment. It does so by addressing a wide range of case studies from three continents and developing two main hypotheses. First, the COVID-19 outbreak has expanded the impact of digital technologies on citizens’ everyday life. Second, the urban realm is the environment where new citizenship regimes are emerging through platformization, datafication, and the rescaling of the state. To introduce the Special Issue, this article: (i) examines recent scholarship about the effects of the pandemic on digital citizenship; (ii) discusses and expands concepts of digital citizenship through case studies; and (iii) assesses how emerging forms of digital citizenship are fostered by uneven ‘pandemic citizenship’ regimes worldwide.

Keywords: digital citizenship, pandemic citizenship, nation-state rescaling, datafication, platform urbanization, techno-politics,  inequalities, urban citizenship

Digital platforms operating on a global scale (social media, commerce, services, e-government and e-management services) are increasingly critical means for communication, exchange, and daily life, even without a direct use of platforms or connected devices. Their growing ecosystem and locally specific variations increase possibilities for data collection and targeting specific user profiles. Work life has become increasingly dependent on platforms including, for example, Microsoft's power platform, Google cloud, or the Apple iOS system. But also within community services and urban development, platforms are increasingly forming a firm component that may be for submitting taxes, getting health services, reporting suspicious activities in the neighborhood, profiling a political campaign, monitoring energy performances, or providing new employment opportunities. We argue that these processes in fact describe a specific kind of urbanization that is driven and administered through the digital means of platform technologies. This process of platform urbanization imbues every aspect of the urban environment and has experienced an acceleration during the recent pandemic. This contribution introduces the concept of platform urbanization and investigates the implications on citizenship and its digital realm, followed by an attempt to expand its conception. To bolster our argument, we discuss the case of Singapore, where the monitoring and control of the virus spread expedited the nation’s digitization efforts and where platform corollaries of the pandemic were seamlessly incorporated into an increasingly digital urban environment. In what follows, the last section brings about a series of questions addressing an urban digital citizenship scenario within platform urbanization as a space of empowerment, inclusion and participation.

Keywords: platform urbanization, citizenship, COVID-19, Singapore, planetary urbanization

In the context of COVID-19 the production and governance of urban space has experienced a rapid digitization, creating new challenges for citizenship. The urban realm is the environment where a new standard for digital development is set. This special issue explores roles played by digital citizenship in the context of the political, social, and economic aftermath of COVID-19. The main objective is to reframe the concept of digital citizenship by connecting it to the increasing digitization of urban environment as a corollary of pandemic. 

Reinvestment and intensification are common processes in many urban areas across the world. These transformations are often analyzed with concepts such as ‘urban regeneration’, ‘urban renaissance’, or ‘gentrification’. However, in analyzing Shimokitazawa (Tokyo), Centro Histórico (Mexico City), and Downtown Los Angeles, we realized that these concepts do not fully grasp the qualitative changes of everyday life and the contradictory character of the urbanization processes we observed. They do not take into consideration the far-reaching effects of these processes, and particularly do not address the underlying key question: how is urban value produced? Therefore, we have chosen a different analytical entry point to these transformations, by focusing on the production, reproduction, and incorporation of the intrinsic qualities of the urban. We found Lefebvre’s concept of ‘urban differences’ and Williams’ concept of ‘incorporation’ particularly useful for analyzing our empirical results. In this contribution, we compare the ‘incorporation of urban differences’ in the three case study areas and offer this concept for further discussions and applications. 

Keywords: difference, incorporation, commodification, gentrification, Henri Lefebvre, Raymond Williams, comparative urban studies, urbanization processes

This book provides theoretical and empirical perspectives on the urban impact of mega-events globally. It takes mega-events as an instance to analyse urban transformations and their effects on citizenship. 

With contributions from leading scholars in the field, the book presents innovative and multidimensional analyses of mega-events with an international selection of case studies. The work provides a grounded theorisation of mega-events in the first part and scrutinizes its practices and processes in the second. Each chapter explores mega-events as crucial drivers and accelerators of urban and citizenship transformations. Rather than just focusing on a staged momentum, this book takes stock of the ‘before’and ‘after’that these events imply for the urban condition. 

This book will be of interest to students and scholars in urban studies, human geography, economics, architecture, planning, sociology, political science. It will also appeal to professionals and policy makers engaged in the planning, hosting and management of mega-events.

Globally operating platforms (social media, commerce, services, e-government and e-management services) are increasingly critical means for communication, exchange, and daily life. Their growing ecosystem and locally specific variations also increase possibilities for data collection and addressing specific user profiles.

Urban transformation is increasingly determined by singular mega interventions. Some are outlined as mega-developments from the outset, others are initiated with a seemingly temporary character like Olympic Games, however, the legacy of these projects has become an integral part of these events over the past two decades. Both, mega projects and mega-events have the capacity to change the international image of their cities and impact their urban development lastingly. For mega projects as well as events, a spectacular moment of spatial commodification is a key element that allows to gather the resources necessary to realize such projects. Many of them are unthinkable without the accompanying branding strategies, advertisement campaigns, including logoization of key spaces, ribbon-cutting, and opening and closing ceremonies.

Mega-events are contested drivers of contemporary urban development. They are powerful catalysts as much as agitators within a planetary urban environment, triggering change for local project development practice, global representation and citizenship rights, entitlements, and provisions wherever they take place. This book frames “mega-events” as large-scale cultural, economic, sport, political, or media events with a global profile and impact. Mega-events are by definition temporary. Over the past few decades, however, their legacy has become an integral concern of their making. They require extensive and complex planning and all have long-term consequences for the urban areas they are situated within (Müller and Gaffney 2018a). Rather than focusing on a specific typology (Olympic Games, Expos, international fairs, etc.), we opt for the category of “mega-events” to be able to discuss a logic of urban development linked to a matrix of transnational interconnection and the capacity to reposition cities and places in the global arena. More specifically, we are interested in the ways in which mega-events are crucial drivers of urban and citizenship transformations as there is always a ‘before’ and ‘after’ for the urban context these events are invested in.

Many of the defining characteristics of the urban are shifting to virtual platforms. This process imbues all dimensions of urban life, from governance to politics and participation. During the global pandemic and the lockdown in many countries, this shift has gathered speed and is changing the way we communicate and work, challenging the everyday life of our cities. As a result, we are confronted with a new topology of negotiation, participation, governance, and control in a virtual realm. With that, rights and duties of citizens are also being transformed, which creates a new dynamic that needs to be captured to ensure an alternative way to perform and enable citizenship. What we refer to as “platform urbanization” is a planetary phenomenon that needs to be investigated as a new driving force in the transformation of the urban condition and in terms of the impact it has on citizenship and the way cities are produced. 

Keywords: platform urbanization, megaproject, urban citizenship, techno-politics

Urban Megaprojects – here referred to as Grands Projets – are increasing in number all over the world. They have become major drivers for urban intensification and manifestations of the larger economic and political agenda of their city. As such, Grands Projets offer a productive moment to investigate current urban trends in a globally connected form of concentrated urbanisation. This book looks into the adaptive and inclusive capacities that urban megaprojects can offer to shape the future of our cities. Featuring eight unique case studies: Marunouchi Tokyo, Lujiazui Shanghai, West Kowloon Hong Kong, Marina Bay Singapore, HafenCity Hamburg, La Défense Paris, 22@ Barcelona and King’s Cross London, the book provides a new and comprehensive reading of selected urban megaprojects in Asia and Europe, and a comparative view of key aspects regarding their role in contemporary urban developments. The text draws from the perspective of a broad range of stakeholders involved in the making of Grands Projets. With a focus of the spatial practices, our findings aim to not only broaden the scholarship of urban megaprojects but also to provide applicable insights for planners, managers, policymakers and other urban actors. 

Tokyo's seemingly endless sea of buildings has grown incrementally over the past centuries, leading to an urban condition that is both coherent and contradictory at the same time. The understanding of Tokyo as a continuous and interdependent urban complex is a much-neglected perspective in previous readings of the city. An attachment to the land, strong civic commitment, and a deep appreciation of the immaterial has produced a nested megastructure of smaller communities. These places have all evolved in a related way, briefly and temporarily disrupted by earthquakes and a devastating war. Over time, a set of distinct urban patterns emerged through centralisation processes, the "manshon urbanisation", the relocation of various types of manufacturing, and other developments. What might appear homogeneous in composition and rhythm is in fact a configuration of distinctly different spaces, created by the routines of everyday life that make the district of Shinjuku different from Shimokitazawa or Kitamoto. This book not only provides the first comprehensive reading of the many urbanisation processes shaping Tokyo today, but also seeks an entirely new approach for looking at megacity regions: through their differences, and the way those differences are produced in the course of everyday life.

This paper presents a comprehensive study of large-scale, master-planned urban developments in Asia and Europe. Increasing in numbers all over the world since the 1980’s, these urban mega-projects—here referred to as Grands Projets—have become major drivers of urban intensification. Set forth to actuate urban renewal or to augment city expansion, Grands Projets have become spatial manifestations of cities’ larger economic and political agendas. In their development process, they have triggered a change in the urban condition beyond the very boundaries of their sites. As such, they offer a productive means of investigating current urban trends in a globally connected form of concentrated urbanisation. This research, based at the ETH-Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) in Singapore, examines eight case studies in Asia and Europe through five analytical frames: a project’s conception, design, implementation, operation and implications. This approach addresses various spatial and temporal scales within different theoretical and material practices, allowing a comprehensive discussion of Grands Projets within and across varying socio-political contexts. This paper sheds light on the specific urban conditions of Grands Projets despite their global development trends, transnational owners or financing alliances and internationally regulated planning practices. Often dependent on exceptional regulations outside statutory planning procedures, they are subject to context-specific challenges, project-specific briefs and unique configurations of actors and stakeholders, all of which have created different manifestations of Grands Projets in space. This analytical framework, as presented in this paper, will form the basis of a larger comparative endeavour to be completed at a later stage in our work. 

Contemporary processes of urbanisation present major challenges for urban research and theory as urban areas expand and interweave. In this process, urban forms are constantly changing and new urban configurations are frequently evolving. An adequate understanding of urbanisation must derive its empirical and theoretical inspirations from the multitude of urban experiences across the various divides that shape the contemporary world. New concepts and terms are urgently required that would help, both analytically and cartographically, to decipher the differentiated and rapidly mutating landscapes of urbanisation that are being produced today. One of the key procedures to address these challenges is the application of comparative strategies. Based on postcolonial critiques of urban theory and on the epistemologies of planetary urbanisation, this paper introduces and discusses the theoretical and methodological framework of a collaborative comparative study of urbanisation processes in eight large metropolitan territories across the world: Tokyo, Hong Kong/Shenzhen/Dongguan, Kolkata, Istanbul, Lagos, Paris, Mexico City and Los Angeles. In order to approach these large territories, a specific methodological design is applied mainly based on qualitative methods and a newly developed method of mapping. After the presentation of the main lines of our theoretical and methodological approach we discuss some of the new comparative concepts that we developed through this process: popular urbanisation, plotting urbanism, multilayered patchwork urbanisation and the incorporation of urban differences. 

Keywords: agglomeration/urbanisation, comparative urban research, displacement/gentrification, informality, method, planetary urbanisation, theory 

Park Connector Network (PCN) is a system of greenways strategically planned to link parks and open spaces across the entire Singapore (Tan 2006). It functions both as nature corridors that effectively strengthen biodiversity and ecological resilience, and open spaces for people’s everyday life that help to enhance community resilience and social sustainability. However, literature on Park Connector Network largely centred on its ecological performance. Little is known about people’s daily use of the greenways, and how their activities are related to the physical environment.

This research aims to bridge this knowledge gap using cutting-edge deep learning technologies and big data analytics. First, a three-stage location-tagged video survey with GoPro Hero 5 and Canon 5D was conducted to capture people’ use of the PCN throughout the entire network. Their presence was plotted and geo-registered using object detection with a Mask R-CNN model (He et al. 2018). And the specific physical, social and recreational activities were identified and inferred using spatio-temporal action localization with models trained on AVA datasets (Gu et al 2018). Second, the physical environment of PCN was assessed at a fine-grained scale using semantic segmentation with a PSPNet model (Zhao et al 2017), which can detect and quantify up to 150 different objects such as sky, trees, buildings, chairs, lampposts, etc., based on a large number of panoramic images of the greenways captured with NCTech iSTAR Camera. A huge database was then constructed that enables in-depth examination of the correlations between environmental qualities and human activities, and identification of the most salient environment features on PCN usage.

These innovative methods for measuring, analysing and evaluating environment-behaviour relations potentially can help to inform decision making in the planning and design of future PCN and other green spaces in Singapore to further enhance its ecological and social resilience.

Keywords:  greenway; environment-behaviour relation; deep learning; big data analytics