CFP for the annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers. April 5-9, 2017, Boston MA *Urban-economic perspectives on technology* Session organizers: Daniel Cockayne (University of Waterloo), Ryan Burns (University of Calgary) In this session we seek to bring together papers focussed on the topics of urban and economic geography that take up critical perspectives on technology. Research focussing closely on technology in geography has spoken to questions of big data, smart cities, workplace culture, representations of urban spaces online, and the impact of technology sectors on housing prices. Geographers have described the complexities that digital media and internet access introduce to the production of space, which they have described variously in terms of augmenting and facilitating existing inequality, as well as introducing new kinds of unevenness and productive power dynamics. Society and high technology are theorized as mutually imbricated, and co-produced through the complex interrelationship of labor and goods markets, working practices, and attentional economies. Digital media and technology in general are thus closely implicated in contemporary considerations of both uneven economic development and urban transformations. Research on technology that takes up urban and economic geographic perspectives has taken a variety of frameworks, from a focus on Marxian political economy, and Foucauldian biopolitics, to Stiegler’s writing on the economy of contribution. Still, with quickly changing and expanding implementations and effects of technology and data, as well as a general research focus on the global north, geographers have many further theoretical and empirical insights to contribute to urban and economic geography. Thus we aim in this session to create a space for urban and economic geographers (and others) to talk across sub-disciplines, to consider questions and concepts of common concern, and examine how technology as a topic, approach, empirical grounding, or framework for thought and research might bring together ideas from different traditions within geographical theory and scholarship. We welcome conceptual, empirical, and methodological papers in, but not limited to, these broad topics: - new urban digital economies - urban and economic variegations in data and technology production and use - technology, financial services, and the financialization of the tech industry - the urban process under digital capitalism - right to the smart city - technology and uneven development - datafication, profit, and biopolitics - digital media and gentrification - payment platforms, mobile money, and microloan apps Send abstracts of 250 words to Ryan Burns (ryan.burns1@ucalgary.ca) and Daniel Cockayne (daniel.cockayne@uwaterloo.ca) by October 1st. -- Ryan Burns, PhD Dept of Geography University of Calgary http://burnsr77.github.io