UBC Press Digital Lives in the Global City book Paperback 288 pages

Digital technologies have changed the world, transforming how, where, and when we communicate, love, learn, re/create, produce, distribute, and consume. Digital infrastructures connect people and places across vast distances, yet they also extend the working day into personal time and space, increasing the power of financial institutions, and enhance state and corporate surveillance capacities.Digital Lives in the Global City examines the entanglements of urban life, investigating how urban land, governance, and the economy are being contested and remade by advancing communication technologies. How do digital infrastructures influence complex human intimacies and perspectives? What does this mean for citizenship and political life in the city?Emerging from a multi-year partnership between scholars, documentary filmmakers, and communities, Digital Lives in the Global City intersperses critical scholarship with a series of provocative short works from activists, artists, and citizens. Moving beyond the so-called smart cities of the global north, leading thinkers engage with a wide range of issues wrought by digital infrastructure: struggles over unsafe and illegal buildings in Mumbai, the conditions of migrant work in Singapore, the question of digital debt in Toronto, and targeted policing in New York. This nuanced exploration reveals the profound connections between digital technologies and the social life of global cities.