Emerging urban drone geographies: the practices, politics, and volumes of density governance in the post-pandemic city.

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This proposed research investigates the uneven social, spatial, and ethical implications of mobilizing drone technologies in contemporary urban governance efforts, focusing on Singapore. Technologies originally designed for military application, drones are increasingly used in 'smart' governance, particularly in managing various forms of densities (e.g., crowd control, infectious disease hotspots). By enabling new 'vertical visualities', drone interventions have not only shifted the spatiality of density management from a two- to three-dimensional plane, but also ushered in new predictive anticipatory actions in urban governance. Despite the rise of new drone technologies in cities today, in-depth research on their implications on urban space and life remains limited. Building upon recent literature around density, volume, and the politics of drone technology and algorithms, this timely study will: (a) trace how the city and its densities are known and managed through drone technologies, (b) examine theconsequences of drone algorithms in anticipating densities,and (c) assess the contribution of studying urban drone usesto urban theory. Using an innovative methodologycombining interviews and an ethnography of density algorithms, this research will generate rich empirical resources for theorizing the volumetric shifts in urban politics in this drone age, challenging the surface-focusedtradition in critical urban thinking. Besides yielding early, grounded perspectives into the politics and ethics of emerging urban drone robotic developments, the researchwill also contribute to a more nuanced, topological theorization of density that takes seriously the anticipatory effects of algorithms, building on recent efforts in problematizing density as a universal grammar of urbanism.