In this talk Anders will introduce ‘Soft City Sensing’ (SCS) as a form of data-driven urbanism rooted in computational humanities rather than engineering. After outlining its theoretical trajectory, Anders will present two cases where he have practiced SCS with Danish architects. ‘Do You Live in a Bubble’ used data from 300.000 Facebook users to construct an interactive cartography of urban political diversity. ‘Jernbanebyen’ used computer vision on Instagram photos to pre-screen the identity of a new development area. Both cases use big urban data to ‘slow down reasoning’ among actors that traditionally frame what the city is and should be. SCS is simultaneously a call for urban decision makers to expand their criteria for what serves as valid data inputs to urban planning and an opening for qualitative urban scholars to further their urban interest by ‘thinking with algorithms’.The papers that Anders will draw upon in his talk can be found here.
Bio:
Anders Koed Madsen is associate professor at Aalborg University where he serves as head of experimental practice at TANTLab. During the last five years he has developed ‘Soft City Sensing’ as a distinct framework for mapping and conceptualizing the social infrastructure of urban publics through the digital traces they leave of their urban life. This work draws on his distinct interdisciplinary background in pragmatist philosophy, computational humanities, internet studies and organizational analysis.
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