Global and national initiatives to adopt smart technologies in local governments, with the claim that opportunities presented by digitalisation will resolve the challenges of urbanisation – are now literally automating regional futures.
This project is the first comprehensive South-South investigation of the dynamics of digitalisation-as-urbanisation – the transition to automated planning processes in metropolitan regions, and its impacts on regional urbanisation. It involves research in peri-urban municipalities of three rapidly growing metropolitan regions where municipal digitalisation is directed towards strategic regional planning. These municipalities face major challenges with transforming paper-based colonial and postcolonial bureaucracies into automated planning processes within highly unequal contexts and therefore represent the wider experience of digitalisation-as-urbanisation in the global south. The project is funded by the European Research Council (2022-26) and led by Professor Ayona Datta, University College London. BIEA’s Senior Research Fellow Dr Catherine Gateri and Research Fellow Dennis Mbugua Muthama contribute to the Kenya case study.
See Regional Futures website for further information and updates.
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