Date and time: Thursday 4 September 2025, 13:00-14:00 CEST
Speaker: Roy Bendor, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands
Title: Democratic participation and actually existing Urban Digital Twins
Where: Digital Futures hub, Osquars Backe 5, floor 2 at KTH main campus OR Zoom
Directions: https://www.digitalfutures.kth.se/contact/how-to-get-here/
OR
Zoom: https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/69560887455
Host: Elina Eriksson, elina@kth.se
Bio: Roy Bendor is Associate Professor of Critical Design in the Department of Human-Centered Design at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, where he also directs the Design for Interaction (DfI) Master’s program. His research explores the capacity of design to disclose and promote alternative social, political and environmental futures.
Roy is a Fellow of the Urban Futures Studio at Utrecht University, former editor of the sustainability forum in the ACM’s magazine Interactions, author of Interactive Media for Sustainability (Palgrave, 2018), and co-editor of Rethink Design: A Vocabulary for Designing with AI (TU Delft Open, 2024). Find out more about him on his website www.digitalsustainability.com.
Abstract: In the push to develop and integrate Urban Digital Twins (UDTs), arguments about efficiency are often mixed with claims about democratic participation and governance. UDT’s, much in line with smart city rhetoric, will leverage the power of sensors, data and algorithms to usher in a new era of participatory city-making. Do these claims match reality? To what extent do they represent wishful thinking? In this seminar I will share insights from a three-year project that sought to explore the way two municipalities – Rotterdam and The Hague (in the Netherlands) – envision and develop UDTs in light of questions about visibility, inclusivity and empowerment.
The project included extensive interviews with municipal officials and technologists, and a series of speculative design workshops with residents. I hope the seminar will seed a critical conversation about actually existing UDTs and their democratic potentials and limitations.
