The volumetric regime and the city as an object
City digital twins and seeing like a god
This is the gaze that mythically inscribes all the marked bodies, that makes the unmarked category claim the power to see and not be seen, to represent while escaping representation. This gaze signifies the unmarked positions of Man and White, one of the many nasty tones of the word ‘objectivity’ to feminist ears in scientific and technological, late-industrial, militarized, racist, and male-dominant societies. (Haraway, 1988: 581)
One aspect of this power, in the context of urban management, is the ability to act on the city. This move from transparency to action is interrogated in Söderström’s (1996) short history of the forms of visibility embedded in professional planning practice as it emerged in the late nineteenth century:
This new space of representation simultaneously opened up a new space of action: urban space. Situated within the same simulated space, scaled down so as to be readily assimilable at a glance, forms that had hitherto belonged to incommensurable categories could now be apprehended by the mind and could therefore be manipulated as parts of a whole. (Söderström, 1996: 258)
The association of transparent visibility and absolute space with being able to take action on what is thus visualised must be understood as part of powerful masculine whiteness of the gaze mobilised with CDTs. CDTs are based on ‘the white spatial imaginary [which] idealizes “pure” and homogeneous spaces, controlled environments, and predictable patterns of design and behaviour’ (Lipsitz, 2011: 29). McKittrick argues:
If we imagine that traditional geographies are upheld by their three-dimensionality, as well as a corresponding language of insides and outsides, borders and belongings, and inclusions and exclusions, we can expose domination as a visible spatial project that organizes, names, and sees social differences (such as black femininity) and determines where social order happens. (McKittrick, 2006: xiv)
Further, the CDT imaginary universalises this way of seeing when it is claimed that CDTs simply offer ‘a very real, detailed, specific, and impactful visual experience’ (Deng et al., 2021: 128) which is seen in the same way by all CDT users. ‘An open and transparent visual experience helps everyone clearly see a scheme in context and understand how it will work’, according to VU.CITY’s website page for local authorities (VU.CITY, 2023). For example, it is argued that a CDT enables effective urban management also because it shows the same data to all its users. (There is no critical discussion of the production of near-real-time urban data in the CDT literature.) Tkacz (2022) has observed that the multiple screens in the smart city control room actually generate considerable uncertainty for urban managers, who have to make sense of constantly changing data, distributed across different screens, in different formats. In contrast, the CDT shows its data in one interface – the 3D model – and it is argued by proponents of CDTs that this eliminates what Tzack describes as the ‘doubt’ generated by control centre dashboards. Instead, a twin ‘orchestrates’ urban management by showing the same information to everyone:
Orchestration is the harmonious organization of activities (good planning) that enables informed decisions and helps to avoid costly ad-hoc problem solving. Digitization helps planning of activities by keeping track of essentials, and by facilitating the inclusion of stakeholders, because everyone can be updated to have the same and the latest information. (Lehtola et al., 2022: 1)
This is claimed to offer both resource efficiency and democratic inclusion. Displaying the same data is claimed to generate ‘a universal experience’ (Buildmedia, 2021) or a ‘common referential’ (Dassault Systèmes, 2017). The effect is ‘to uniformize the vocabulary used among the very different profiles involved in the urban sciences, be they planners, architects, policymakers, citizens, lawyers, computer scientists, and so on’ (Meta et al., 2021: 13).
3D city modelling enables enrichment of digital city models with external data and presentation of more knowledge-based city scenarios… Consequently, more informative and realistic city scenarios enable elimination of emotional statements and opinions during the decision-making process. (Hämäläinen, 2021: 6)
Moreover, not only is it assumed that seeing the city in the same way results in better decisions about city management but it is also assumed that this specific mode of seeing is the only way to manage cities. This extends to a key claim made by the CDT imaginary, which is its efficacy as a tool for community participation. This is mentioned repeatedly in discussions of city digital twins, by researchers, commercial software vendors and local city authorities, which suggests that criticism of the lack of democracy in many versions of the smart city is acknowledged (see for example Cardullo and Kitchin, 2019; Greenfield, 2013; Kitchin, 2015; Sadowski and Pasquale, 2015). However, the example of such participation that is repeatedly used in the literature is the ability to show planning proposals to citizens and communities.
3D model allows for the easy removal and addition of newly proposed buildings… Any proposed building plans can easily be added to the digital twin using the BIM model. This model would then allow citizens and public officials to walk around the digital twin and see the effect that the new building would have on the skyline from a number of different locations. (White et al., 2021: 5)
