Over the last few decades, our cities have become increasingly digital. Urban environments are layered with data and algorithms that fundamentally shape our geographic interactions, impacting how we perceive, move through, and use space. It has become imperative to ask questions about who owns, controls, shapes, and has access to those augmented and hybrid digital/physical layers of place. Now that over half of humanity is connected to the internet, do we see greater levels of representation of, and participation from, previously digitally disconnected populations? Or are our digitally dense environments continuing to amplify inequalities rather than alleviate them?
For more than a decade, our team has examined these digital geographies at global, national and urban scales. We use methods from computational, social, and geographical sciences to identify and analyse the undesirable effects of contemporary digital geographies. Digital representations of place deeply affect our understanding of the world and our actions in the world, often in ways which are not immediately apparent, and as a result they can amplify existing inequalities and create new ones. Mapping such geographic inequalities allows us to develop understandings of how they matter – and ultimately to develop strategies that can help in the design of more equitable futures.
This website serves as a visual gallery of our research outcomes.