The idea of smart cities is to a great extent based on the belief of planners and city managers that substantial (and instrumental) use of information and communication technologies in the management of urban functions can make cities work better. This is also part of the coordinated discourse adopted by planners, managers and politicians around the world in an attempt to position their cities in the fierce competition for revenue, jobs and people. In this paper we will concentrate on gaining an understanding of informational territories built to support surveillance and control of public spaces. We seek to question this relation by making reference to several specific uses of information and communication technologies for surveillance purposes and to discuss it from the point of view of definitions of territory. Our goal is to discuss the fact that, under the ‘mantra’ of smarter cities and on the grounds of public security, there is a scattering of micro and macro informational territorial elements that overlap to undermine the meaningfulness of urban public spaces.
Apart from governments’ increased opportunities to monitor citizens, businesses, civil servants, and services, companies are mobilizing personal data to build profitable, algorithmically based business models with profound ramifications. With companies that have rapidly become giants in this sector, such as Uber, the phenomenon is spreading to various services at the same overwhelming speed as many companies bet on what is known as Uberization. In this paper, we aim to use one example of such a phenomenon from the Global South to show how a potential hyperconnected society is, in fact, creating the possibility for expanded patterns of immobilization for certain groups. We aim to show how highly indirect corporate surveillance involved in businesses such as Uber can run in parallel with a specific direct form of worker surveillance that, without any legal or social safeguards, increases the vulnerability of the weakest link in this chain.
Latin America has shown itself to be a fertile ground for the proliferation of surveillance cameras, especially in retail and in small-scale private security (homes, condominiums, shopping malls, etc.). In Brazil, this proliferation has occurred for three main reasons: the absence of specific legislation regulating how these systems are used; the limited scope of the debate about the deployment of surveillance technology and the implications of its widespread use; and a growing atmosphere of urban fear that affects the way people live in and move around large and medium-sized cities. In a study carried out in Brazil and Mexico and funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), various aspects of the use of surveillance technologies were mapped and described, focusing on existing legislation, related studies, research centers, current technologies and the market. In this article we present some of the results of this research as they relate to the proliferation of video surveillance in Brazil. The Brazilian market for video surveillance, which has grown steadily since the 1980s, is now booming, reflecting the growing interest this technology holds for the (property and personal) security market as well as the real estate market. Over the past 30 years, this interest centered on public areas with large numbers of people, such as parks, squares, and major commercial streets, or private spaces such as shopping malls, sports centers, and event centers. However, in recent years there has been an expansion in the security market as a result of the gentrification of large residential areas in mediumsized cities and metropolitan regions in Brazil. A consequence of these developments in the real estate market has been, indirectly, a growth in the use of CCTV systems as crime-and violence-prevention tools by small, medium-sized, and large private security companies targeting all social classes. In this study, we highlight the following aspects of video surveillance in Brazil: regulation of the use and proliferation of CCTV; involvement of the scientific community through debate and academic training; and the technologies used in electronic surveillance as a response to a growing demand by the urban security and real estate markets.
Augmented reality and augmented spaces have recently been linked to the widespread use of sophisticated technologies. This can also be described as the intensification of our communication skills which have been related to apparent unlimited possibilities of experimenting with and perceiving space with our bodies and minds, when connected with technological tools. However, by contrast with expanded experiences of the past at a personal level (such as in religion, magic, metaphysics or the arts), contemporary technological augmentation is becoming embedded into our daily lives to such an extent that we are starting to take this mixture of digital technologies and the built environment for granted.In this essay, we argue that, because of this influence on our interactional capabilities, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) might act as catalysing forces transforming various experimental and spatial dimensions of cities and urban places. In order to capture, interpret and understand these transformations in urban spaces, places and territories, we tentatively articulate the experimental and epistemological works of two contemporary Brazilian thinkers about urban studies. Lucré cia Ferrara and Nelson Brissac Peixoto inspire our arguments with their critical views about how urban space can be understood through its various interpretations, and how perceptions of it can be stimulated through artistic provocations of disquieting feelings of strangeness.
Curitiba, in Brazil, is known for the pioneering deployment of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in the 1970s, and its system became a reference model worldwide. However, from its very beginning, Curitiba's BRT competed with rail projects, from subway to light rail vehicles (VLT). These projects have been defended by many municipal technicians over the years as better solutions for urban transportation. From 1952, when the last tram ran in the city, up to 2009, when the municipality concluded a bid for a new subway project, eight projects were developed as attempts to resume rail transportation in town. In spite of the failure of all those projects, this article proposes that the major innovations in the BRT in Curitiba had their origins in those unimplemented rail projects, through technical and political advances that resulted from controversies, conflicts, and alliances among the main relevant social groups and artifacts involved during this period.
Surveillance cameras have become an integral part of the architecture of public and private spaces in large cities, like the eyes of the augmented city (Firmino and Duarte 2008). From the perspective of public security and with the supposed premise of reducing violence, the implementation of security systems and the installation of these "eyes" in critical places have emerged as options available to town planners. However, there are no reliable data confirming a direct relationship between video surveillance and increased security, only the discussion and debate that has been started in an attempt to justify the use of such surveillance. Furthermore, little is known, particularly in Brazil, about the monitoring strategies and procedures used by the professionals who operate a city's eyes. As cameras are electronic devices whose purpose is merely to record images, the people who control them play a fundamental role in determining how this recording of images influences the day-to-day existence of those being watched and the very way the public space that is 'under surveillance' is perceived. To understand monitoring from the perspective of those who carry it out (Kemple and Huey 2005), we propose to show analytically, based on the study of a unit for monitoring public spaces in the center of Curitiba, what the watcher's procedures and routines are. It is the analysis of the images and of how best to proceed as a result of these that serves as the basis for all the actions involved in the operation of the system. Our aim was to gain first-hand experience of the monitoring unit with the aid of techniques such as participant observation in order to better understand what happens behind the glass eyes of the contemporary city.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19; caused by SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has affected the healthcare system on a global scale, and we utilized the Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA) 2020 annual meeting to examine how COVID-19 might affect patients with psoriatic disease (PsD) and the clinicians who care for them. Pressing issues and concerns identified included whether having psoriasis increased the risk of acquiring COVID-19, vaccine safety, and the acceptability of telehealth. The general message from rheumatologists, dermatologists, infectious disease specialists, and patient research partners was that data did not suggest that having PsD or its treatment significantly increased risk of infection or more severe disease course, and that the telehealth experience was a success overall.
Este artigo tem como objetivo examinar a operacionalização do Sistema de Monitoramento e Alerta de Eventos Extremos de Blumenau (AlertaBLU), nos eventos ocorridos em outubro de 2015, assim como analisar as interfaces entre o sistema e as demais tecnologias utilizadas antes, durante e depois dos desastres. Argumenta que, embora o sistema represente um significativo avanço na gestão municipal dos riscos de desastres, aspectos endógenos e exógenos ao AlertaBLU comprometem a efetividade do sistema. Para desenvolver esse argumento foram utilizados três principais procedimentos: 1) pesquisa bibliográfica sobre desastres; 2) consulta sobre o AlertaBLU aos órgãos públicos municipais; 3) levantamento e análise de 84 notícias do principal jornal de Blumenau, 59 notícias no site da Defesa Civil e 34 notícias na maior página sobre desastres em Blumenau no Facebook. O texto está estruturado em torno de quatro principais seções: 1) introdução; 2) desastres e o sistema AlertaBLU em Blumenau/SC; 3) interfaces do AlertaBLU em outubro de 2015; 4) considerações finais. PALAVRAS-CHAVE:Desastres. TIC. AlertaBLU. Blumenau.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.