Abstract
Digital information and calculations are changing the world of urban planning. Cities and buildings are taking on a dual existence in analog and virtual spaces. What was once planned as a one-off construction project can now be stored, modified, recombined and reproduced again and again with the help of Building Information Modeling (BIM). If, however, urban planning and building designs are increasingly shaped by new forms of digitally mediated spatial production, echo chambers of digitally conceived and perceived cities could emerge. They could lead to an era of platform urbanism driven by large technology companies with access to planning data in BIM. So far, debates about digital capitalism have focused on citizens' use of cell phones and the World Wide Web, on individual clicks and ephemeral preferences, but not on fixed urban structures and the built environment. The next step, however, could be the digital transformation of structural urban development, an extremely robust business for decades to come. Such a variant of platform capitalism based on building data from urban planning, architecture, and construction would profoundly change cities. We therefore outline the role that digitization, platform capitalism and planning data could play in the future of urban design.
Links and resources
Tags
community
