Digital Infrastructure and Physical Displacement: The Use of Integrated Technology in Portland, Oregon
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Date
2020
Authors
Rosen, Marcella
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
In June 2018, the Portland City Council adopted Resolution 37371. This resolution aims to transition Portland, Oregon, into a Smart City via the continued creation of integrated urban technology infrastructure. This text investigates Resolution 37371’s obscured relationship to large tech conglomerations such as Google. It explores the political incentives that drive corporations to hide their influence over the urban built environment, and the digital facades that are created in order to do so. This thesis utilized a constructivist methodology that combined art, theory, physical analysis, digital investigation, and personal experience to draw conclusions. Ultimately through researching integrated technology in residential Southeast Portland, this thesis has built a framework for placing the rise of Smart City development projects within the larger context of contemporary urban planning models in the United States. In doing so we can understand the material differences yet social similarities between physical and digital urban development projects. The framework created relies on the work of contemporary theorists such as Shoshana Zuboff, Shannon Mattern, Maroš Krivý, We Are Plan C, Jennifer Clark, Orit Halpern, and Sharon Zukin. Additionally, Digital Infrastructure and Physical Displacement: The Implementation of Cybernetic Urbanism in Portland, Oregon, looks to art as a means of critiquing technocracy through appropriated visual systems of urban development. It examines 3D imaging as both a site of the militant developers’ gaze, as well as of resistance and catharsis specific to urban citizens. The precedent for this is set in part by contemporary artists Hito Steyerl, Vince Staples / CALAMATIC, and Guy Debord.
Description
58 pages
Keywords
Urban Technology, Art, SmartCity, Neoliberalism, Noopolitics, Portland, OR, Gentrification, Infrastructure, Digital Technology