Images of Resilience: GovTech, Data Buildings, and Artificial Biodiversity

Stephen Collier
City and Regional Planning
UC Berkeley

Christopher Kelty
Anthropology and the Institute for Society and Genetics
UC Los Angeles

Michael Osman
Architecture
UC Los Angeles

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Participants

This project convenes scholars in architectural theory, environmental humanities, design, anthropology, critical information studies, history and city/regional planning to explore emerging responses to climate change. The group will investigate the question: what is the “image of resilience” in contemporary cities and how is it made intelligible and sensible through new forms of high-tech, data-intensive tools that monitor human and non-human activity in built environments? The group will investigate these questions in three domains: – /GovTech/, the distributed, data-intensive tools of mapping, modeling, machine learning, and statistics that are in use in city and private development offices, and the industries and forms of regulation that govern it; /Data buildings/, the emerging forms of experimental architectural projects that measure and monitor local climate conditions and communicate with other buildings; and /Artificial biodiversity/, the changing practices of measuring and monitoring biodiversity in cities, managing novel ecologies, and restoring, or remaking landscapes to promote the adaptation of human and nonhuman residents of cities. The project’s goal is a series of online and in-person meetings that address these questions and will lead to the publication of an issue of the scholarly magazine Limn: https://limn.it/.