Making an urban human? The digital order and its curious human-centrism

This article’s point of departure is the observed retreat of techno-centric conceptions of optimal cities and their replacement by a curious human-centrism in media, corporate, and policy discursive constructions of cities. This human-centrism hides an emerging urban order: the digital order. The digital order is realised through discourses and practices that promote controlled cities, not through coercion and visible policing, but instead through a technologized promise of seemingly progressive values. The multiple and contradictory claims to urban humans revealed in the digital order, the article concludes, demand renewed attention to the human – a critical humanist perspective to cities and technology.