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Data labor and power in the context of Verkehrswende politics in Frankfurt, Germany 

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(Inv)isibilities in environmental and spatial data

Abstract

Municipal planning and monitoring practices increasingly deal with data-saturated urban environments, especially in the traffic sector: Here, data become a prevalent tool for contriving more climate-friendly ways of moving people and goods in the context of striving for quantified sustainability goals. Car-centered infrastructure is still dominant in most cities and inferring from STS scholarship, we assume that it has politics. Comprising not only what is visible on the roads — traffic lights, lanes, and intersections — traffic infrastructure also includes a growing invisible twin of counting points, induction loops and data-handling systems.  

Weiterlesen

Our research on the Verkehrswende (“mobility turn”) politics in Frankfurt, Germany, observes that the municipality automatedly collects extensive data on motorized individual traffic, while for other forms of mobility, it relies on modest data patches of singular locuses. Within our two case studies on A) civic and B) administrative data politics we find, however, that for all types of traffic, fields of action exist in which the administration only acknowledges communicated concerns when they are quantified. In this context data gain substantial power, as the recognition or disregard of various realities hinges significantly upon the availability or absence of numerical data. To increase the discursive and political power of cyclists and pedestrians, and their space in the city, civil society organizations frequently collect data themselves, exerting significant unpaid labor. By creating new data stories, they render visible what was not on the screens before. 

We argue that the unequal datafication of different mobilities in combination with uniform expectations for data-informed arguments fosters power imbalances. It seems as if the horsepower of a road user corresponds with their overall power position — not only on the streets, but also in the digital data sheets.

Autorinnen:

Catharina Dietrich

Janine Hagemeister

Lighting Bumpy Data Roads: Investigating Heterogeneous Data Supply Chains in Urban Traffic Transformation

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Demystifying Data Supply Chains: Perspectives from Markets of Data Sourcing, Production, and Brokerage

Abstract

Urban traffic infrastructure matters for a variety of actors: the municipal administration, private enterprises, and most numerously, citizens. Just as manifold as the relations between these actors are the traffic data they generate for different purposes at different locations, and the evolving supply chains.

This presentation is based on an ongoing research project on data politics in the proclaimed “sustainable traffic transformation” (Verkehrswende) of Frankfurt, Germany. We use the concept of data journeys (Bates et al. 2016) to trace how data is produced, processed, and shared within the complex networks at play.

Many actors obtain ambivalent roles in this entanglement: Citizens are simultaneously customers, objects of datafication, data consumers, or sometimes even data manufacturers, while the municipality acts as both a key data provider and a customer. In addition, relevant legal regulations and political interests contribute to a mixture of commodification logics and practices. As a public actor within private markets, the municipality finds itself in various double binds. 

Weiterlesen

We will illustrate the diversity of data trading practices on two examples. While the data purchases involved in the development of a new municipal traffic model follow traditional logics of marketization, other constellations elude those. In the case of pedestrian counters that were installed in Frankfurt, the agreements are based on an exchange of various services and mutual data provision instead of monetary payments. Attending to those diverse forms of bargain allows us to investigate the multifaceted practices of data valorization involved along different stages of the supply chains.

Authorinnen: 
Catharina Dietrich
Janine Hagemeister