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Rethinking the Relational Socio-Technical Materialities of Cities and ICTs

This paper works through some of the tensions, contradictions, and issues that are brought to the surface when we think through carefully the shifting co-evolution of cities and communications technologies. Building on recent theoretical strands of urban studies, the paper suggests an alternative conceptual angle on ICTs and urban networks to the “inter-city” approach, which, while cognizant of the (in part digitally-mediated) relationality of cities, develops a more qualitative understanding of the urban as an assembled space of parts of other places. From this view, urban information flows are constructed, maintained, and experienced through an inherently socio-technical process based on the day-to-day activities and practices of a diverse set of actors, the contested relations they create and sustain with other actors, and the variety of tools and instruments they make use of in their work. This implies more, rather than less, engagement with the tangible materialities of ICT flows, and therefore (perhaps) more possibility for planners and practitioners to shape progressive place-based ICT strategies.