Platformisation, Digital Placemaking and the Public Realm

Platforms and ‘smart’ technology have infiltrated public and private spaces in once unimaginable and often invisible ways. This session canvasses the extraordinary advances this technology enables - such as inclusive design for more accessible streets and public space - but also the ways in which global corporations such as Airbnb now exacerbate processes of gentrification and exclusion; through to the role of digital platforms and ‘smart tech’ in monitoring and even controlling the public realm through technological surveillance, digital profiling, and geofencing. We ask our panel of experts whether and how spatial planning processes and traditions should engage with the online forces now shaping urban space, and the implications for interactions in the public realm.
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Festival of Public Urbanism 2024
Great cities are defined by the quality of their public realm. From parks to civic architecture, well designed public infrastructure supports and enables the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of urban life. But are these public assets, along with public processes of urban governance and planning, under attack? Over the past fifty years key legacies of the modern urban project - such as publicly funded housing and urban infrastructure; or comprehensive planning for new development - have been eroded by waves of political and economic reform. Faith in market based ‘solutions’ has reduced public planning processes to ‘red tape’ and replaced public investment in rental housing with subsidies for private investors and households. At the same time, digital transformation under ‘platformisation’ has seen private corporations able to evade domestic regulations, disrupting every facet of urban life and governance.
The Festival of Public Urbanism will debate these topics and more. Join us to engage with academics, activists, politicians, industry leaders through our program of panel discussions, walking tours, and podcasts across Sydney and Australia.