Making Sense of the Digital City
Cities today are increasingly shaped by data, digital infrastructures, and algorithmic systems. Sensors, algorithms, platforms, and surveillance technologies influence how urban life is organized, governed, and experienced. Yet these systems do not produce equal outcomes for everyone; they often generate and reinforce inequalities. At the same time, many of these digital interventions remain invisible and largely uncontested in everyday urban life.
The Centre for BOLD Cities approaches digital urban developments as social, political, and contested processes, rather than neutral innovations. We want to ensuring policies are democratically informed and reflect the lived experiences and values of all citizens, with transparency at all times. This means moving beyond both techno-optimism and techno-pessimism toward a balanced, critical approach that recognizes technology's impacts while acknowledging communities' potential to reshape it for their own needs.
This LDE Thesis Lab highlights community-led practices — such as participatory design, digital commons, and open-source movements — and explores how technology shapes social spaces, democracy, education, and collective imaginaries.
Themes
- Seeing the invisible City – How do we make urban data systems visible and understandable?
- Contesting the Digital City (Power, Ethics & Governance) - How can we critically engage with and challenge data-driven urban systems?
- Possible Futures - In what ways can data-driven urban systems contribute to more just and inclusive futures?
Within each theme we give example research questions, and also give space for students and their supervisors to come up with their own questions that are relevant to the topic from their disciplinary expertise.
Knowledge partners
Municipality of Rotterdam, Municipality of The Hague, Civic organisations and neighbourhood initiatives, Designers and artists working with data, Policy-makers and digital governance experts