The discourse of efficient speciality: Ambiguities of active participation in space with personalized location-based analytics

Abstract

Recent introduction of revolutionary tools for generating `meaningful? spatiality ? personalized location-based analytics and recommending services, set the trend for increased location-data analysis. This trend presents the promising possibility for the citizens to actively participate in construction and negotiation of urban space, and is promoted as a part of the `next urban utility network? for the future, intelligent cities. As I will show in this thesis, such notion of active participation is implicated with the mainstream discourses of efficiency, in which active participation becomes the necessary practical utilization of information potential, and the praised `personalization? becomes a form of self-regulation and efficiency compliance. I therefore problematize the notion of apparent `active participation? in urban space and set to answer the question if such systems indeed hold a position as a valuable ground for the user-generated cities, negotiation and re-appropriation of imposed spatiality, and under which conditions?