Rhizomatic data assemblages: mapping new possibilities for urban housing data

Abstract

ABSTRACT Data, how we conceptualize them, who uses them, and how they are used, are central to current questions about smart cities and critical data studies. This article develops a conceptual framework, rhizomatic data assemblages, to better understand how data-driven mapping practices call out, problematize, and attempt to change the social relations of housing in American cities. Kitchin and Lauriault outline the concept of data assemblages as an approach to how the production of data and social processes are interrelated. This paper employs that concept through a reading of Deleuze and Guattari’s writings on assemblage and of counter-mapping to emphasize the dynamic, creative, alternative social possibilities that data can help open. Two cases, the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project and Inside Airbnb, show how housing data can be produced and used in radically different ways than facilitating real estate transactions.