Urbanism after Data | Orit Halpern @ University of Virginia | School of Architecture

Data and digital technologies have transformed the way we see, conceptualize, and envision urban environments and their future. Data’s impact on urbanism and design extends from shaping global material geographies and infrastructural landscapes to informing the frameworks through which urban environments are understood and acted upon. However, urbanism, perhaps enamored by the many affordances of digital technologies, has been slow to form a critical response to this radical ascendance of data.

Urbanism after Data is part of a series of conversations organized by Professor Ali Fard and hosted by the School of Architecture's Urban Design Program, that aim to more critically engage with the aftermath of data as it profoundly infiltrates and alters contemporary urban practices. How do the uneven dynamics of data, with all their biases and discrepancies, inform contemporary urban practices? What alternative practices and media have emerged in response to the dominance of data in design? How do we rethink the responsibility of design in relationship to the emerging agencies, latent landscapes, and new practices that have developed in the wake of data? Urbanism after Data will bring together scholars and practitioners to respond to the urgent need to recalibrate our relationship to data and its socio-spatial imprints.