From Smart to Algorithmic City: Social Power and Governance In the Context of Digital Urban Transformation

Urban transformation is entering a new phase. What began as the smart city – a vision of urban efficiency fuelled by sensors and data – is evolving into the algorithmic city, where decisions are delegated to automated systems and data-driven infrastructures. This session invites participants to critically examine this transition, asking what cities are becoming, for whom, under whose authority, and at what social cost.

This shift is not merely technological, it reconfigures social power. Algorithms embedded in urban systems rank, classify, include or exclude, encoding normative assumptions that reflect and reinforce existing hierarchies. Alongside this, digital urban governance raises urgent questions about accountability, transparency, and legitimacy, particularly as algorithmic systems take over functions that previously involved democratic deliberation.

We invite contributions touching on at least one of four themes:

1. Tracing the transition: How has the smart city paradigm evolved, and what do AI and automated decision-making mean for urban social life?
2. Social power and inequality: How do algorithmic systems reproduce or reconfigure inequalities of class, race, gender, disability, or migration status?
3. Governing through data: How are algorithmic governance models designed, legitimized, and contested?
4. Global transformations: How does algorithmic urbanism unfold across different political economies, urban contexts, and regions?

We welcome empirical and theoretical contributions that advance a critical sociology of digital urban transformation, proposing alternatives, highlighting marginalized experiences and challenging techno-deterministic framings. This session aims to build a comparative sociological account of the algorithmic city, not as an inevitable future, but as a contested social and political project.