Gerard Goggin presentation for Reimagining Australian via Disability and Media: Technologies, mobility, and representations panel, International Australian Studies Association (INSA) conference, 7-9 Dec 2016, Fremantle

1. Paper for
Reimagining Australian via Disability and Media:
Technologies, mobility, and representations panel,
International Australian Studies Association (INSA) conference, 7-9 Dec
2016, Fremantle
Gerard Goggin/@ggoggin
University of Sydney
Reimagining Disability and Digital
Technology in Urban Australia:
Driverless Cars, Smart Cities, and
the Future of Mobility

2. • Public culture & everyday life, in Australia is
reconfigured through social imaginaries,
practices, experimentation, design with
technology.
• This re-imagining & remaking of Australian life
via technology engages disability
• critical disability perspectives provide us with
insights into how technology & reimagining of
Australia.

3. • My focus is the technology dreaming
unfolding in urban Australia ( also implicates
non-metropolitan, rural, and remote Australia)
• Where does disability fit into such visions of
smart cities?
• How does smart cities relate to social
transformations of disability & accessibility,
design & rights?

4. ‘Newcastle is transitioning from a primarily industrial base to one that boasts a
broader diversity of economic foundations. … It will leverage the smart city movement
to improve liveability, sustainability and economic diversity, develop local innovation,
build international profile and attract talent and inward investment to our city. ’
‘Newcastle Smart City Initiative’

5. ‘Knowledge Economy & the Rise of the
Creative Class’
‘a smart city will in simple terms bring together
technology, government and society … • Use physical
infrastructure in a highly efficient way to support strong
economic, social, cultural development • Effectively and
promptly address change through innovating, learning
and adapting • Leverage open innovation processes and
e-participation to better engage with the community at
the local level, encouraging community participation and
collaboration • Support and leverage strong knowledge
and social networks and voluntary organisations in a low-
crime setting to achieve the preceding characteristics’
Fremantle’s Economic Development Strategy 2015-2020

6. ’Fremantle’s offer … Fremantle’s economy is
more resilient and sustainable, and exhibits a
greater number of smart city characteristics
resulting in increased innovation and creativity
among a growing knowledge-based workforce.’
Fremantle’s Economic Development Strategy
2015-2020

7. No mention of ’smart city’, or technology; although many good
goals & initiatives on inclusion, information & communication in
appropriate formats

8. smart cities are rather like
parenthood, who could
argue with their benefits?
Smart cities (magic of
digital tech + cities) =
all existing & future needs
of cities instantly met!!!

9. The problem we face is that smart cities – in their recent
incarnation – have been imagined by particular interests
(corporate; tech; govt);
Add to which many of the powerful ‘social imaginaries’ of
digital technology (‘the sharing economy’, ‘citizen sensor’,
‘data for social good/development’) assume use of
proprietary commercial platforms (AirBnB; Facebook;
Academic.edu)
In the meantime, many important needs & goals of actual
present & future cities, their people & environments,
have been left off the agenda – e.g. social & human
services; sustainability (despite lip service given to it);
social justice; social participation; and social inclusion

10. No mention of
inclusion,
accessibility, or
universal design, or
equity (except in
sense of capital
equity) in Fed govt
Smart Cities plan of
April 2016

11. Measuring Australia’s Digital Divide
2016 report
‘For people with disability, digital inclusion is low, but
improving steadily. People with disability have a low
level of digital inclusion (44.4, or 10.1 points below the
national average). However, nationally, their inclusion
has improved steadily (by 2.6 points since 2014),
outpacing the national average increase (1.8 points).’
Definition of ‘disability’: ‘Disability: people in this
category receive either a disability pension, or the
disability support pension’ (p. 7)
Thomas, J, Barraket, J, Ewing, S, MacDonald, T, Mundell, M & Tucker, J 2016,
Measuring Australia’s Digital Divide: The Australian Digital Inclusion Index 2016,
Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, for Telstra.

12. Given absence of social
justice/disability rights, we are in
process of ‘retrofitting’ smart
cities planning – to make sure they
actually address the lives that all
of us lead – and wish to lead – in
the places where we live

14. ‘ … self-congratulatory nature of the smart
city … what do we actually mean by the
term, and precisely what elements go into
making up a smart city? What underlying
ideological assumptions are made by
invoking the concept, and what are its
central social contradictions and
problems?’
Robert G. Hollands, ‘Critical Interventions in the Smart City’,
Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society (2014)

15. ‘Large scale visions of the smart city that are
presented in many academic research papers
and corporate marketing materials seem in
direct contrast to the ways in which citizens
envision it. The citizen’s vision and sense of scale
is a perspective that is largely absent from [this]
literature … our paper seeks to introduce the
concept of smaller, more tangible interventions
in the city that have the potential to be more
meaningful for citizens’
Vanessa Thomas et al., ‘Where’s Wally? In Search of Citizen
Perspectives on the Smart City’, Sustainability 2016

16. ’Smart cities are great, but first we need to explore being a “common
sense city” – one that nails the fundamentals of an enjoyable lifestyle
…’

17. inclusion is often invoked
in smart cities talk &
visions (as it is urban
planning & policy
generally); but the follow
thro’ & detailed plans are
lacking

18. Problem is 2-fold
1) the dominant ways that we have imagined
‘smart cities’ have been unbelievably narrow &
constricting (corollary - smart cities are very
likely to fail, more with a whimper than a bang);
2) there are ’scripts’ & ’recipes’ for some elements
of ‘smart cities’ – efficient, short commute,
enlivening public space with data & sensors etc;
but not inclusion, accessibility, social &
community development – in the crucial
inclusion aspects of smart cities, we are barely at
first base

19. Key questions:
Why is social participation & inclusion consistently
missing from the top level visions/principles of
smart cities?
Great to see accessibility sometimes mentioned –
but why the assumption that technology will deliver
accessibility (if current built environment – e.g.
public transport - is not accessible)?
Does the ‘big data’ vision of smart cities actually
deliver? what rights to citizens have to/over this
data? What are the ethics of this city of data?

20. Biggest stumbling block is that ‘smart city’ concepts
have been perhaps the MOST divorced from policy
& design & service & social realities of any recent
hi-tech dreaming (including National Broadband Network;
mobiles for development & social innovation; municipal WiFi;
Networking the Nation; and Information Superhighways)
So actual efforts at city level to do something useful
with ‘smart city’ have to find concepts & resources
that come from the lived experience & democratic
yearnings of all people in the city
e.g. what about cheap/free WiFi and
electricity/charging points for homeless people in
cities?

21. opportunity of disability & design
cutting edge way to reimagine
cities with technology (& formulate
useful smart city strategy)

24. Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Microsoft’s Chief Accessibility
Officer, announced the company’s support and
sponsorship of the initiative stating,
“Technology empowers persons with disabilities
to achieve more in the places where they live
and work. As cities evolve and integrate new
technologies, we can help them define what it
means to be smart – and accessible – to make
sure no one is left behind.”
Source:
http://www.g3ict.org/press/press_releases/press_release/p/id_95#sthash.TPuAMlxW.dpuf

25. disability helps us
reimagine cities &
technology

26. disability + mobile tech
in everyday life
disability is now recognized as a significant part of social
life & life course
digital technology – esp. computers, the Internet, mobile
media, social media, apps, geolocation technologies, and
now, ‘smart’ homes, wearable computers, mobilities
technologies including driverless cars - have emerged &
are being ‘imagined’ as a significant part of the
mediascape, cultural infrastructure, social support
system, and personal identity and repertoire of many
people with disabilities
mobile & mobilities are central to disability &
participation, esp. in cities

27. Are our cities ‘enabling’
rather than ‘disabling’?
What about: transport? housing? Work? Welfare?
health? Education? - for people with disabilities
living in cities?
Social, cultural & political participation in the new
spaces & polities of cities?
Where do digital technologies fit into the lives of
urban dwellers with disabilities?
Where does disability fit into smart cities? How
does disability help us reframe cities, media
technology & policy?

28. ‘A significant and persistent characteristic of society
is disabling spaces that are rarely sensitised to the
needs of disabled people … More often than not,
designed environments revolve around a spatial
logic that separates people by virtue of their bodily
differences and variations in cognitive and
physiological capabilities. Such separations are
tantamount to an infringement of disabled people’s
liberties, and curtail, potentially, their rights to
occupy, and to inhabit and be present in everyday
places, the use of which is intrinsic to a person’s
realisation of their well-being.’
Rob Imrie, ‘Space, Place, and Policy Regimes: The
Changing Contours of Disability and Citizenship’
(2014)

29. ‘Crippling the Landscape 1 : Québec City is a thirteen minute video that chronicles a
five kilometer journey from Laval University to the Ste- Foy train station. Join
filmmaker and disability activist Laurence Parent as she takes you on the trip of a
lifetime! Feel the experience of the road from the point of view of her wheelchair!’ –
see 53 s mark onwards

30. ‘the need to re-(politicise) the
body as part of the development of
what citizenship is or ought to be,
in ways whereby impairment
becomes regarded as the normalcy
of everyday life’
Rob Imrie, ‘Space, Place, and Policy Regimes: The Changing Contours of
Disability and Citizenship’ (2014)

31. 7 July, 2014,
‘ReWalk’
website,
reproduced
from Boston
Globe

33. Stacey Zoern’s Kenguru, from Paul Richoux, ‘Kenguru: the perfrect car for wheelchair
users?’, ‘Wheelchairs and Mobility’, 24 September, 2014

34. Mobility is very much a ‘blended’ digital affair,
involving communication technology
– finding an accessible train station by a digital map;
using location technology on mobile phone to navigate
a place; using an Opal card to ‘tap’ onto a train; calling
a taxi via Uber; posting updates/accessibility issues via
social media platforms; embedded digital technology in
mobility technologies (‘connected’/smart cars; scooters
& electronic wheelchairs; bicycles with GPS; walking
with Fitbits)

35. Challenge for universal design/inclusive/just
design in smart cities
• Digital technology is embedded in everyday life &
our environment combine virtual + physical
• This involves bringing many different technology
systems together
• Also brings many different other systems
together (communication + transport = driverless
cars)
• Yet our track record on universal, inclusive,
accessible design in any one digital technology is
mixed – e.g. case of web accessibility

36. Acknowledging disability - &
people with disabilities - as one
innovative set of perspectives &
resources on technology offers a
very helpful perspective on smart
cities

37. Further reading
Gerard Goggin, ‘Disability and Mobilities; Evening Up Social Futures.’ Mobilities 11.4
(2016)
Laurence Parent, Parent, L. 2016, ‘The Wheeling Interview: Mobile Methods and
Disability’, Mobilities 11.4
Rob Imrie, ‘Space, place and policy regimes: the changing contours of disability and
citizenship’, in Soldatic, K., Roulstone, A., and Morgan, H., (eds.), Disability – Spaces
and Places of Exclusion, Routledge, London, 2014, 13-30.
Charlotte Bates, Rob Imrie and Kim Kullman (eds), Care and Design: Bodies, Building,
Cities, 2017
Kim Sawchuk, K. (2014) ‘Impaired’, in Adey, P., Bissell, D., Hanman, K., Merriman, P.
and Sheller, M. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Mobilitie (London: Routledge, 570-
584)
Katie Ellis and Gerard Goggin. ‘Disability, Locative Media, and Complex Ubiquity.’ In
Ubiquitous Computing, Complexity, and Culture, edited by Ulrik Ekman, Jay David Bolter, Lily Díaz, Morten Søndergaard, and Maria Engberg,
270-285. New York: Routledge, 2016.