Professor Martín Tironi, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

Urbanisation is increasing much more rapidly in the global South. Many cities still struggle to provide basic services for all citizens. The lecture will discuss the human interaction and improvement of sustainable urban development, with a case study in Santiago, Chile. The case “Shared Streets for a Low-Carbon District” that was implemented by the NGO Ciudad Emergente, in September 2016, tried to encourage citizen participation to a more sustainable mobility, shows how new ways of knowing the urban space by smart devices should be not separated from the emergence of idiotic data, putting into question the versions of citizen participation and smartness at stakes. It will include theoretical discussion in relation to Smart City, the “experimental” and “citizen” dimensions of Smart City; STS perspective in participation (Marres, 2012), interventions of co-creation, inspired by tactical and prototype urbanism, peer-to-peer and do-it-yourself culture; notion of “idiotic city”.

Speaker’s profile:

Martín Tironi is an Associate Professor, School of Design at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. He holds a PhD from Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation (CSI), École des Mines de Paris, where he also did post-doctorate studies. He received his Master degree in Sociology at the Université Paris Sorbonne V and his BA in Sociology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. He is currently involved in a 3-year research project (FONDECYT) about algorithmic governance, titled Datafication of urban environments and individuals: analyzing the designs, practices and discourse around the generation of digital data in Chile. His research interests include urban and digital infrastructure, urban mobility, critical data studies, design anthropology and maintenance /repair studies.