Abstract
Lack of access to services is one of the chief difficulties faced by marginalized urban communities. The proximity of digital technologies and data promises to remove a key constraint to greater access: the unequal distribution of information. However, issues of digital literacy and affordability and the local specificity of services make opportunities for achieving well-being both a technical and ethical concern. We discuss 2 community-based projects - one in Western Sydney, Australia, and the other in Dhaka, Bangladesh - that sought to unpack this interface through prototyping a combination of offline and online service directories. Through these, we explore what we have termed altruistic assemblages—circulations of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), researchers, local communities, service providers, hackathons, co-design events, and technology devices. The contributed time, resources, hopes and care of these assemblages do not presuppose a finite solution to urban service delivery but rather offer a prefigurative politics for the more equitable cities to come.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 618-629 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Journal of Urban Affairs |
Volume | 41 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Keywords
- Centre for Western Sydney
- Dhaka (Bangladesh)
- Western Sydney (N.S.W.)
- cities and towns
- globalization
- information technology
- marginality, social
- well-being