Digital urban futures: urban reconstruction efforts in the headquarter city of Kyiv and role of emerging innovation ecosystems (RE-DIGICITY)

The project at a glance

Start date:

01 Nov 2024
Duration in months:

24
Funding:

Horizon Europe – MSCA4Ukraine
Principal Investigator(s):

Constance CARR

About

RE-DIGICITY will examine the tech-ecosystem in the City of Kyiv, an East-European headquarter city subject to multiple urban reconstruction efforts in response to authoritarian aggression. RE-DIGICITY aims to understand and explain how tech enterprises both big and small shape reconstruction efforts and contribute to multiple digital urban futures. RE-DIGICITY is an extension to work (KYIV-DIGIURB) commenced at DGEO, exploring how large digital corporations such as Amazon or Google were involved in reconstruction and resilience in Kyiv. This work built on Carr’s (2021) project, entitled “Digital Urban Development – How large digital corporations shape the field of urban governance (DIGI-GOV).” Funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund, DIGI-GOV examines the role of large digital corporations in digital urban development in Toronto, Seattle, Washington DC, Luxembourg and Amsterdam (Carr/Hesse 2020, 2022; Bast/Carr/Madron/Syrus 2022; Carr/Bast/Madron/Syrus 2022). RE-DIGICITY expands the horizon to include Microsoft and Samsung as well as smaller enterprises, which together constitute an emerging tech-ecosystem in Kyiv. RE-DIGICITY thus offers fresh insight into processes of urban digitalization (Ash/Kitchin/Leszcznski 2016; Karvonen/Cook/Harstaad 2020) looking at how tech-ecosystems affect digital urban futures in an East-European headquarter city (Gnatiuk/Kryvets 2018; Mykhnenko 2020) undergoing post-disaster reconstruction. RE-DIGICITY is thus a chance to call attention to the ways that contemporary digital cities are (re)constructed and (re)planned. Image caption: © Olga Kryvets

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