017R_On the difficulty of agreeing upon a universal logic for city standards - A response to Schindler and Marvin (research summary)
What is The Future for Cities?
English - November 29, 2021 22:00 - 12 minutes - 17.4 MBSocial Sciences Science Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Summary of the response article titled On the difficulty of agreeing upon a universal logic for city standards from 2019 by James Merricks White, published in the City – analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action journal.
This article is the response to the last research episode’s debate article, by Schindler and Marvin which was about three standards for the future of cities, and I highly encourage everyone to check that as well. But I thought it would be interesting to hear the contra arguments. This response article investigates and corrects Schindler and Marvin’s mistake of leaving out the system in which the chosen three ISO standards were conceptualised.
You can find the article through this link.
Abstract: In a paper published within the Debates section of City last year, Schindler and Marvin laid out an agenda for the study of city standards, which they argued impose a universal logic of control. While they described three published standards and situated city standards within the context of smart cities, their failure to consider the institutional setting of the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) led them to overemphasise the coherence and unity with which city standards are actually developed. In this response piece, I correct this omission by excavating the origins of TC 268, the technical committee dedicated to city standards. This reveals not a universal logic of control, but a body of expertise in contentious and contingent emergence. While ultimately, I agree with Schindler and Marvin that city standards are deserving of greater attention from critical urban scholars, I argue for a more situated response to their politics that leaves open the possibility of them having positive effects on urban equity and social change.
The transcript is available through this link.
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