Sustainability, resilience and the ‘cyborg city’: Exploring how changes in networked service operation may contribute to cities that are more sustainable and resilient

Our intensively and extensively networked urban environments constitute ‘cyborg cities’ (Latour 1993, Swyngedouw and Kaika 2004), an intricate blend of nature, science and technology, supporting ever-increasing levels of consumption and waste generation (otherwise known as cities’ metabolism). We depend on networks of water, energy, waste, communications and a myriad others that are most often ignored on a day to day basis, that is until breakdown or even disaster occurs, as in recent cases of floods, hurricanes and terror attacks that cities have suffered, leading to vast reconstruction costs and severe disruption. It is becoming clear that such an approach is not sustainable.

While networks have traditionally been construed, designed and operated to foster increasing levels of resource use with little regard for sustainability and resilience (Graham and Marvin 2001), there are signs that things are slowly changing, albeit in a piecemeal fashion, in both cities of the global North and the global South. One promising approach resides in de-centralised networked systems, i.e. distributed solar/wind energy at the neighbourhood/dwelling level as opposed to the big, distant power plants of the fossil fuel/nuclear ages; another is related to urban networks that work in conjunction with urban nature, such as road surfaces that absorb and filter runoff water instead of being impervious. In other terms, where networked systems are traditionally distant and/or hidden from view, treating the city as an end point of a process, new approaches see the city as an integral actor in the building and management of networked systems and services.

The research project will explore how changes in networked service operation may contribute to cities that are more sustainable and resilient (while critically questioning these notions), taking into account an appropriate and relevant range of economic, social and environmental aspects of the question. The research may focus on a city (or cities) of the global South/North, and may also be comparative. The candidate will need to possess an interdisciplinary mindset and skills, as this research is at the junction of planning, studies of the environment, and studies of science, technology and society. This research would contribute to a dynamic body of literature and research on the city and networked systems.