Sensing Zones

Cities and urban societies are facing a multitude of challenges. Climate change, social problems, and the digital transformation are currently among the most pressing issues cities must deal with. The warming of the atmosphere is increasingly felt in urban areas, while zones of overheating emerge. Heatwaves affect cities in particular, endangering the health of vulnerable populations, especially the elderly and chronically ill. Meanwhile, environmental consequences of consumer-driven lifestyles such as flooding, drought, soil contamination, and toxic waste further exacerbate the problems. City authorities respond by developing strategies to address related risk zones – areas where residents face heightened vulnerability. These zones raise questions about the future habitability of both metropolitan and rural areas.

In urban design and city planning, "zoning" traditionally refers to dividing land into areas designated for specific uses: residential, commercial, industrial, or agricultural. More broadly, zoning is a tool of socio-spatial organization. It defines and structures urban space using statistical data, political agreements, and legal regulations. Zones may also be socially defined, inhabited by people with similar socio-economic backgrounds, often concentrated in either marginalized or privileged urban neighborhoods.

Beyond technical definitions, zones are key analytical concepts in social theory and urban studies. In The Urban Revolution (2003), Henri Lefèbvre discusses how rural societies are transformed into urban ones, eventually approaching a "critical zone" dominated by industrialization and capitalism. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (2020) examine "critical zones" as the fragile, thin layer of the earth where all life coexists; zones that at the same time challenge conventional cartographic representations of space. Robert Castel´s (2000) analysis of shifting labor markets identifies a diminishing "zone of normality" where people have access to stable employment. In contrast, the expanding "zone of precarity" is characterized by unstable, marginal, or poorly paid forms of work, raising concerns about long-term social cohesion. Keller Easterling’s analysis of “Extrastatecraft” highlights the spatial powers of zones as urban media infrastructures (Easterling 2014), which are conceived as digitally produced, realised and controlled urban territories exceeding state related regulations. By following the technocapitalist interests in urban planning and architecture, Orit Halpern and Robert Mitchell argue for the “the zones of smartness” (Halpern and Mitchell 2022), which are urban territories with limited access and with mere capitalist speculation on urban futures. Our annual theme "Sensing Zones" looks at such environmental, technical, and social aspects of zones and of zonings in the urban context. We examine how critical zones shape urban life and future livability in 21st century cities. Alongside qualitative research methods, we explore how sensor-based technologies can help detect, represent, and engage with them as “experimental zones” (Marguin et al. 2020) for critical analysis of urban designs and engagements with collaborative spatial field research. Using Hamburg as a case study, we ask: What kinds of zones are (in)visible in the city? How have these zones developed over time? Who are the social, spatial, technical, material actors involved? What are the strategies, interests and power relations that come into play? How are conflicts negotiated? How are boundaries of the zones drawn? Who and what is impacted? How do the zones enable, empower, or disable and constrain (future) urban life?