Digital tools can serve everyone

Around the world, experimentation labs, employed as an approach to sustainable and just cities, are giving more and more people the opportunity to use and own digital devices. Fab Labs, for instance, are making digital fabrication accessible to all. 

In the digital sphere, although the use of data on the internet is often contested, ethical data collection can boost sustainability and social justice. The internet has also allowed small-scale and community initiatives for sustainability and justice to get started, thanks to funding generated by and collected via crowdsourcing. 

Digital technologies strongly rely on the production and consumption of services and products. For this reason, to put ‘digital tools at everyone’s service’ we need resilient and self-sufficient financing arrangements.

Making digital technology accessible to everyone directly addresses the injustice around material and livelihood inequality, according to which economic resources in the context of sustainability are distributed unequally. This has been addressed in the context of Smart Cities, where sustainability is pursued through digital technologies which are often too expensive and only present in the richer areas of cities. This links to injustices in access to effective knowledge to operate certain technology and digital tools, thereby constraining the potential for forward movement on sustainability and justice.

• Tech tools in the hands of citizens can be a gamechanger, as a way to reduce costs, enhance productivity, making repetitive tasks a breeze, prototypes in a blink of an eye.” (Rafel Caledo)
• Green technology and digitalisation will help the ecological transition but should not be seen as the only solution to the ecological crisis  
• Although technological tools contribute to make cities just and sustainable, we need to stay critical about how these tools were built, with what kind of labour, and what kind of material (working conditions, rare material, impact of extractivism, disposal circle…)