Digital Lives in the Global City

Digital Lives in the Global City asks how digital technologies are remaking urban life around the world, from migrant work in Singapore to digital debt in Toronto, illegal buildings in Mumbai, and targeted policing in New York.

Digital technologies have changed the world, transforming how, where, and when we communicate, love, learn, create, produce, distribute, and consume. Digital Lives in the Global City examines the entanglements of urban life, investigating how urban land, governance, and the economy are being remade by advancing communication technologies. Digital infrastructures connect people and places across vast distances, yet they also extend the working day into personal time and space, increase the power of financial institutions, and enhance state and corporate surveillance capacities.

Digital Lives in the Global City intersperses critical scholarship with provocative short works from artists, activists, and citizens to engage with a wide range of issues wrought by digital infrastructure: struggles over unsafe and illegal buildings in Mumbai, the conditions of migrant work in Singapore, the question of digital debt in Toronto, and targeted policing in New York. This nuanced exploration reveals the profound connections between digital technologies and the social life of global cities.