IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/zbw/espost/261202.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Three shades of ‘urban-digital citizenship’: borders, speculation, and logistics in Cape Town

Author

Listed:
  • Antenucci, Ilia
  • Tomasello, Federico

Abstract

Drawing upon case studies from Cape Town, ‘Africa’s smartest city’, this article proposes three theses on ‘urban-digital citizenship’. First, we suggest that urban-digital citizenship is defined by borders which operate: i) at a socio-spatial level, through the unequal distribution of digital infrastructures across the urban space; ii) through the algorithmic techniques of monitoring, profiling, and sorting, which filter access to urban services, mobility, and participation. Our second argument is that urban-digital citizenship is ‘speculative’. The algorithmic infrastructures that have increasingly come to govern urban life operate according to logics of preemption and experimentation that seek to model, and act upon, an array of possible future scenarios. The digitalisation of emergency and security response in Cape Town offers powerful examples of the ways in which urban citizens are caught in a mechanism of machine-learning speculations on future risks and anticipatory interventions. Finally, we propose that digital citizenship has a logistical character. Increasingly, ‘smart’ cities such as Cape Town function as clusters in global circuits of data, technology, and finance. As data centres and tech startups are concentrated in the urban area, urban citizens have become a testbed for new technological products and a crucial node in the geography of cloud computing.

Suggested Citation

  • Antenucci, Ilia & Tomasello, Federico, 2022. "Three shades of ‘urban-digital citizenship’: borders, speculation, and logistics in Cape Town," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue Latest Ar, pages 1-1.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:261202
    DOI: 10.1080/13621025.2022.2073088
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/261202/1/Full-text-article-Antenucci-et-al-Three-shades-of.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13621025.2022.2073088?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrea Pollio & Liza Rose Cirolia, 2022. "Fintech urbanism in the startup capital of Africa," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(4), pages 508-523, July.
    2. Orgad, Liav, 2018. "Cloud Communities: The Dawn of Global Citizenship?," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 251-260.
    3. Andrea Pollio, 2020. "Making the silicon cape of Africa: Tales, theories and the narration of startup urbanism," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(13), pages 2715-2732, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Liza Rose Cirolia & Rike Sitas & Andrea Pollio & Alexis Gatoni Sebarenzi & Prince K Guma, 2023. "Silicon Savannahs and motorcycle taxis: A Southern perspective on the frontiers of platform urbanism," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(8), pages 1989-2008, November.
    2. Marta Gancarczyk & Óscar Rodil-Marzábal, 2022. "Fintech framing financial ecologies: Conceptual and policy-related implications," Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation, Fundacja Upowszechniająca Wiedzę i Naukę "Cognitione", vol. 18(4), pages 7-44.
    3. Jeffrey Muldoon & Younggeun Lee & Eric W. Liguori & Saumyaranjan Sahoo & Satish Kumar, 2024. "Mapping the entrepreneurship ecosystem scholarship: current state and future directions," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 3035-3080, December.
    4. Ofori, Isaac K. & Gbolonyo, Emmanuel Y. & Ojong, Nathanael, 2024. "Heterogeneous Effects of Frontier Technology Readiness on Economic Growth in Africa," MPRA Paper 121247, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Giannopoulou, Alexandra & Wang, Fennie, 2021. "Self-sovereign identity," Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin, vol. 10(2), pages 1-10.
    6. Cirolia, Liza Rose & Hall, Suzanne & Nyamnjoh, Henrietta, 2022. "Remittance micro-worlds and migrant infrastructure: circulations, disruptions, and the movement of money," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 110472, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Andrea Pollio & Liza Rose Cirolia & Jack Ong'iro Odeo, 2023. "ALGORITHMIC SUTURING: Platforms, Motorcycles and the ‘Last Mile’ in Urban Africa," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(6), pages 957-974, November.
    8. Makoza, Frank, 2023. "The role of digital nomadism in COVID-19 recovery strategy of the tourism sector: Case of Cape Town, South Africa," EconStor Preprints 270980, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    9. Kalypso Nicolaidis & Michele Giovanardi, 2022. "Global PeaceTech: Unlocking the Better Angels of our Techne," RSCAS Working Papers 2022/66, European University Institute.
    10. Anna Blue, 2021. "Evaluating Estonian E-residency as a tool of soft power," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 17(4), pages 359-367, December.
    11. Reijers, Wessel & Orgad, Liav & de Filippi, Primavera, 2022. "The rise of cybernetic citizenship," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue Latest Ar, pages 1-1.
    12. Ofori, Isaac K. & Gbolonyo, Emmanuel Y. & Vezzulli, Andrea, 2024. "Heterogeneous Effects of Frontier Technology Readiness on Economic Growth in Africa," MPRA Paper 121246, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Ofori, Isaac K. & Gbolonyo, Emmanuel Y. & Vezzulli, Andrea, 2024. "Heterogeneous Effects of Frontier Technology Readiness on Economic Growth in Africa," EconStor Preprints 298787, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    14. Jaroslaw Korpysa & Uma Shankar Singh & Swapnil Singh, 2023. "Validation of Decision Criteria and Determining Factors Importance in Advocating for Sustainability of Entrepreneurial Startups towards Social Inclusion and Capacity Building," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-21, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:261202. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.