Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

In this study, I examine the relationship amongst urban social space, the rhythmic patterns of mobility within this space, the formation of subjectivity and the articulation of a public sphere and a rational critical public. In so doing I argue that the production of a public sphere and a rational critical public comprised of political subjects is a rhythmic and repetitive event, which exists as spatial and cultural ritual. The process of formation of the public sphere is threatened by three forms of spatial control within the smart city: The acceleration of subjects within the smart city, which functions through a regime of algorithmic governance, and in so doing speeds up spatiomaterial processes to that of real time, thereby accelerating subjective experience, now characterised by instantaneity and fragmentation. The smart city algorithmically increases the scope and speed of the mobility of its subjects. This leaves subjects vulnerable to what Yeung calls the ‘hypernudge’; the ability to influence decision-making through behavioural modification techniques in the algorithmic standards that delimit the choice architectures available to subjects moving through the city. The production of a perpetual arrhythmia within the city through the proscription of subjects’ movement. This is a tactic employed by the Israeli Defense Force in its occupation of the Palestinian territories and is enacted through a tripartite spatial matrix that employs barriers, roadblocks, checkpoints and layers of movement restrictions. In so doing the ability of Palestinians to establish and maintain the spatiotemporal rituals that are productive of a public sphere are short-circuited.