Duty of Care Podcast

Today we have with us Stijn Oosterlynck speaking from Belgium. Stijn Oosterlynck is an Associate Professor in Urban Sociology at the University of Antwerp, Sociology department. He is the chair of the Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change (CRESC, formerly OASeS) and the Antwerp Urban Studies Institute. He teaches courses on urban studies, poverty and social inequality. His research is concerned with local social innovation and welfare state restructuring, new forms of solidarity in diversity and urban diversity policies. He is also the academic director of the newly established Hannah Arendt institute. Hannah Arendt advocated active citizenship in which plurality, connection, critical thinking and open dialogue are central. This is not only at the heart of a strong democracy, but it is also an important goal of the work of the institute: to make everyone participate in the debate and in society.

Today we have with us Efrat Cohen Bar, a representative of BIMKOM – Planners for Planning Rights, an Israeli non-profit organization working to strengthen democracy and human rights in the field of planning. Planning in Israel has commonly been used as a tool to oppress Palestinians and strip them of their rights. BIMKOM uses Israeli law to combat this. https://bimkom.org/eng/

Today we have with us Suraj Yengde speaking to us from the United States. Suraj is a Shorenstein Centre inaugural post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Public Policy. He’s the author of Caste Matters. In this explosive book, Suraj, who is a first-generation Dalit scholar educated across continents, challenges deep-seated beliefs about caste and unpacks its many layers.

Today we have with us Leilani Farha, speaking to us from Canada. Leilani was UN special rapporteur for the right to housing and is now director of SHIFT, a large NGO based in Canada that fights for and promotes the right to dignified housing. Leilani will talk more about the SHIFT, but it is important to highlight their philosophy. In their own words: “THE SHIFT recognizes housing as a human right, not a commodity or an extractive industry. The Shift restores the understanding of housing as home, challenging the ways financial actors undermine the right to housing. Using a human rights framework, The Shift provokes action to end homelessness, unaffordability, and evictions globally”. https://www.make-the-shift.org

This session addresses the concept of governance and how planners and designers can use the concept to plan better, more inclusive cities. Frequently, in discussions about urban development and urban planning, you’ll hear the word “governance.” You will probably wonder what “governance” is and how it is different from “government.” The “government” is an imprecise shortcut we use to refer to the public sector, or the ensemble of levels and branches of government with all their departments, divisions, authorities, and so on. Countries and cities have governments, but the way they are “governed” includes much more than formal governments. “In empirical terms, governance refers to a shift in public organization since the 1980s. The world of government has changed. Increasingly governments rely on private and voluntary sector actors to manage and deliver services. The State enters contracts with other organizations, for example, to manage prisons and to provide training to the unemployed. The state forms partnerships with other organizations, for example, to build roads and rail lines and to deliver humanitarian aid. Whereas the government had consisted in no small measure of bureaucratic hierarchies, the new governance gives greater scope to markets and networks.” Bevir (2012)

The primary purpose of this session is to teach future data scientists to look beyond the technical power of artificial intelligence and recognise the possibilities and limitations of data and the spatial inequalities that galvanise as a result of data-driven technology and policy. This session will engage students at the intersection of data science, urbanisation, and effective communication. By interrogating the sociotechnical nature of urban problems, students should then be able to approach solutions to these problems in ways that prioritise social equity and justice. In the last decade, technological advancements have led us to embed large-scale networked systems, sensors, and computers into the built environment. Urban data has emerged as an excellent stream of constant, real-time, and accurate information about all urban activities. The big data revolution, coupled with the capacity of infrastructure to be “smart” has enticed cities and urban managers worldwide to participate in machine learning-based decision-making for improving the course of humanity. But city planning has largely been instituted around loosely coupled organisations within municipal and regional governments, project developers, companies and investors, transport, water, and energy operators. While some communities have enjoyed the benefits of policies based on the use of big data, machine learning and AI, many have also suffered disproportionately by being pushed to the physical and technological periphery of rapid development in cities. As data scientists, and especially as engineering and policy analysts, it is our responsibility to interrogate the quality of data, the design of intelligent systems and their impact on communities.