The Urban Tech Collective (UTC) convenes U-M faculty and students from various disciplines investigating the imaginaries, design, and use of digital technologies within urban everyday life. We are interested in topics related to physical and digital spaces; mediated representations of urban space and urban communities; digital rights and inequalities; datafication; urban intelligences; and social change. The collective meets throughout the academic year to share research, methodologies, and best practices for the study of technology and urban life, to host speakers, and reimagine the role of urban technology scholarship, design, and policy in affecting more equitable, sustainable futures. The Urban Tech Collective is part of the Digital Placemaking and Soft City Sensing Research Network, an interdisciplinary, international research network that aims to develop new methods to study how digitalization influences urban placemaking, focusing on how digital tools and platforms influence community-building, identity, and the urban social fabric in an era of increasing social segregation.
