Welcome to the Edgelands blog, the collaborative blog of the Edgelands Institute.
Our blog is for people around the world thinking about how mass urbanization, the deployment of digital surveillance technologies to provide security services, and the pandemic are transforming the dynamics of power, who and how we trust, and the fabric of society of the cities of the world. Ours is an interdisciplinary approach. We bring together excellent research and policy, but also art, media, and the lived experience and experience of ordinary people, you, to understand these transformations.
The 21st century will not only be characterized by digital transformation. It will be characterized by how we meet the challenge of finding ways to live together in our increasingly globalized, urbanized and digitized world. The main risk is that segregation becomes the norm. That's a no-go for us. We believe that the time has come to rethink our social contract and reflect on what unites us all.
The “social lab” is Mi Sangre Foundation’s methodology for creating an ecosystem of transformation that relies on collaboration and capacity as modes of interrogation.
We were joined by the voices and ideas of experts, institutions, and advocacy actors from this city at a round table. Here are the main findings.
Edgelands had the chance to speak to a dozen female migrants in Geneva to hear their thoughts on the findings of our report.
Edgelands had the opportunity to engage with the senior community in Geneva to understand how the advent of digital technologies has impacted the social fabric of the city.
Edgelands was joined by politicians, journalists, privacy advocates, social workers, and experts in technology and society issues to discuss the digitalization of security and the impact of surveillance society in Geneva.
In Fall 2022, the Edgelands Institute and the Geneva Graduate Institute will host a Research Sprint, to explore the intersection between the issues of security, digital surveillance, and the urban social contract in Geneva.
While the algorithms running in AI programs are efficient in processing thousands of variables and computing millions of data, they are also opaque by nature in their operation.
International Geneva, as we call the cluster of foreign delegations and international organizations massed on the beautiful shores of Lake Geneva, hides a much darker side.
Global Trends and Local Responses to the Algorithmic Management of App-Based Delivery Workers.
We humans have a tendency, even a need, to share about our lives, from the most shocking events to the everyday.
The idea, as urban art often is, is to make the artifacts tell a story, inspire dialogue and interpretation, and send a message of resistance that is also visible in urban space.
On technology as a tool in a safety infrastructure.
The program, which we have launched in partnership with Universidad EAFIT, convenes 50 "sprinters" and topic experts once a week in conversation about the digitalization of urban security in Medellín.
How are digital surveillance technologies changing the social contracts in urban settings and what can people and cities do about it?
Mateus Guzzo explores the interaction between surveillance technology and entrepreneurialism.
What are pop-ups? A powerful tool for redefining urban areas, pop-ups can be a useful tool for reshaping the social contract, but how and where they are deployed can have significant consequences.
The Edgelands Institute sat down for a conversation with Christina Leigh Geros, an architect, landscape architect, and urban designer currently teaching in the Environmental Architecture program at the Royal College of Art in London. Her research focuses on how the relationship between deep soils and arid soils creates an attending set of political, social, and ecological relations. Prior to her position at the Royal College of Art, Geros worked on urban flooding issues in Jakarta, Indonesia, and she has continued to engage in projects around climate- and neuro-ecologies as they relate to the monsoon.