Do algorithms have a right to the city? Waze and algorithmic spatiality

ABSTRACT

This article introduces the notion of algorithmic spatiality as a way to capture the unique spatial knowledge created by digital mobile media, and the way that this knowledge acts upon space, and is perceived by other actors involved in the production of space. Focusing on the navigation giant Waze, it asks how this new spatial actor legitimates the knowledge it creates about space and the effects incurred by this knowledge. In theoretical terms, it asks how Waze asserts its ‘right to the city’ through a discourse of a superior knowledge of space. These questions are discussed in light of a case study of the clash between Waze and local residents over the application’s common practice of diverting large volumes of traffic through side-roads, located in quiet neighbourhoods and villages in Israel. Over a period of two years, these clashes – by legal, political, and discursive means – reached public discussions in news outlets and social media, and these form the corpus of the research. The article shows how along long-established forms of knowledge which underlie different actors’ right to the city – experts’ knowledge, democratic knowledge, market knowledge, and local knowledge – emerges a new kind of knowledge, backed by big-data and algorithms and managed by a quasi-monopolistic platform, which claims a legitimate right to the production of space. Traditionally a right upheld by underprivileged groups and individuals, the right to the city is currently upheld by a socio-technical assemblage.

KEYWORDS:

• Navigation
• locative media
• Waze
• spatiality
• algorithms
• right to the city

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Anat Ben-David for making invaluable comments on an earlier version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article was supported by a grant from the Israel Science Foundation No. 696/16.

Notes on contributors

Eran Fisher

Eran Fisher is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication at the Open University of Israel. He studies the link between digital media technology and society. His work has been published in the European Journal of Social Theory, Journal of Labour and Society, Media, Culture, and Society, Information, Communication, and Society, and The Information Society. His books include Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Internet and Emotions (co-edited with Tova Benski, 2014), and Reconsidering Value and Labour in the Digital Age (co-edited with Christian Fuchs, 2015).