The Emergent Artificial Intelligence of Green Spaces

Abstract

The paper focuses on the digital logic that informs debates on urban ecology and green spaces in Asia. First, the paper builds a case regarding how pervasive digitalization is embedding everyday activities with artificial intelligence. This process, the paper argues, reconfigures existing social relationships of power and creates new modes of articulation, engagement, contestation, and negotiation. Second, the paper specifically looks at how this process informs material productions of space, spatiality, and territoriality of urban ecology. As case studies, the paper maps the narratives and discourses about Mumbai’s Mithi River and Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon and the way in which they are anchored to technoscapes and an overarching digital logic. This paper, concludes that this reconstituted urban ecology leads to ‘green narratives’ that are reductionist and simplistic.