All posts by Rob Kitchin

12 month postdoc post

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Come and join the Data Stories team. We are seeking a postdoctoral researcher to work on the ‘Data Stories: Telling Stories About and With Planning and Property Data’ project.

Details about the post: https://my.corehr.com/pls/nuimrecruit/apply?id=040543

The postdoctoral researcher will undertake a comprehensive data audit of the data terrain of housing, property and planning in Northern Ireland, conduct interviews with key stakeholders with respect to selected aspects of this terrain, and compare the findings to a data audit and interviews already undertaken in the Republic of Ireland. For selected topics, such as the planning and development pipeline, a data audit and comparison will be undertaken with respect two additional countries. The successful candidate will have experience of sourcing and handling administrative datasets, be able to compile a data directory, compare datasets and evaluate data quality, and be able to conduct interviews and analyse the transcripts. They will have domain knowledge relating to Human Geography, Urban Studies, Planning, GIScience, Critical Data Studies, or related disciplines.

The posts will be for 12 months, with an anticipated commencement of 1st July 2026.

Salary
Post-Doctoral Researcher (2026): €46,805 – €53,391 p.a.(6 points)
Or Senior Post-Doctoral Researcher (2026): €54,851 – €59,655 p.a. (4 points)

Closing Date:
23:30hrs (local Irish time) on Tuesday 31st March 2026.

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New paper: The temporal organisation and practices of planning work

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The project has a new paper published in Studi Organizzativi. 

Kitchin, R., Davret, J., Kayanan, C.M. and Mutter, S. (2025) The temporal organisation and practices of planning work: The temporalities of digital infrastructure, the digital infrastructuring of temporality. Studi Organizzativi 2(2025): 180-204.

An open-access, post-print version is available on MURAL

Abstract

Digitalisation is having a profound impact on the relationship between time and planning. The temporalities of planning’s bureaucratic infrastructure is being transformed through its digitalisation, introducing machine and network time and reshaping the relations between past, present and future. In turn, the temporalities of digital infrastructure has led to re-infrastructuring of planning’s temporalities, introducing a new timescape wherein the pace, tempo, timings, time patterns and temporal modalities of planning practice have been reconfigured. Yet, despite the profound effect of digitalisation on temporal relations, clock time remains important in the organisation and work of planning given the centrality of time rules and timetables, and this will continue to be the case. Using a case study of the development and control function of planning in Ireland, this paper examines temporalities of planning’s digital infrastructures and the digital infrastructuring of planning’s temporalities, illustrating the ways in which the temporal organisation and practices of planning work are being re-cast.

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New paper: The digital turn in planning and the production of ‘good enough’ planning systems

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The project has a new paper published online first in European Planning Studies.

Kayanan, C., Mutter, S., Davret, J. and Kitchin, R. (2025, online first) The digital turn in planning and the production of ‘good enough’ planning systems. European Planning Studies. doi: 10.1080/09654313.2025.2599869

An open access, post-print version is available on MURAL

Abstract

The digitalization of planning has taken place in a context where planning work is on-going and cannot be halted, and in which there are embedded institutional and technical systems and practices, as well as a number of technical, regulatory and sociocultural data frictions. This context has led to a sub-optimizing approach to digitalization. In this paper, we examine the digital mediation of planning through an in-depth case study of a multiscale planning development and control data ecosystem in Ireland. We detail the incrementalist nature of the digital turn in planning and how this institutionalizes a ‘good enough’ digitalized planning system; that is, a system that is functional and performs essential tasks, but not necessarily in an optimal manner and which is always open to potential improvements. We develop a conceptual basis for assessing ‘good enough’ and
through its application contend that ‘good enough’ planning is a sufficient and reasonable state of affairs given the substantive challenges of creating and maintaining a complex data
ecosystem and that there are incremental limits to achieving ‘better planning’. As such, any technological solutionist claims promising to radically reconfigure and fix planning’s operation shortcomings, such as the introduction of artificial intelligence tools, require careful assessment.

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Housing and planning publications hub for Ireland

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We have assembled over 1,800 academic, policy and sector publications relating to housing, property and planning in Ireland, which can be accessed via our publications hub at Zotero.

While we are collecting PDFs of these publications locally, we are only making the references accessible at present due to copyright issues. The database is inevitably partial and if there are publications missing which you would like us to add, please send them to us and we will do so.

Many thanks to Mick Byrne, Lorcan Sirr and Richard Waldron for sharing their reference libraries to aid the database construction, and to Lorena Borges Dias, Kerry-Ann D’Arcy and Elina Micah Musa for working on compiling the hub.

Danielle Hynes and Rob Kitchin, Data Stories project

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New paper: Data mobilities

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Our paper on data mobilities has been published in the journal Mobilities. Based on work undertaken for the Local Government Management Agency, the paper reconsiders how data is shared and circulated is conceptualised: in our case, using the empirical example the development and control functions of the Irish planning system.

Kitchin, R., Davret, J., Kayanan, C. & Mutter, S. (2025, online first) Data mobilities: rethinking the movement and circulation of digital data. Mobilities https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17450101.2025.2481309

Abstract

The mobility of data has been variously described as data: flows, streams, journeys, threads, transfers, exchanges, and circulation. In each case, data mobility is conceived as a movement from here to there; that data moves along a chain of receivers and senders. However, we contend that the metaphors of data flows (or journeys, threads, etc.) does not reflect well the processes by which digital data are shared. Rather, we propose moving from a metaphorical conceptualisation to a description of the actual mechanisms of mobility. Through a case study of the planning data ecosystem in Ireland, we detail how data replicate (replica copies produced), with the original source retaining the data and a new source gaining it, and data proliferate (multiply) across systems and sites when made available. As data replicate and proliferate, they are transformed through processes of data cleaning, data wrangling, and data fusion, producing new incarnations of the source data. Importantly, this rethinking of data mobility makes clear how and why various data incarnations are produced and, in so doing, create fundamental issues regarding the integrity of data sharing and data-driven work, the repeatability, replicability and reproducibility of science, and data sovereignty and the control of data use.

Keywords: Data mobilities, data journeys, replication, proliferation, data frictions, data seams

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New Book: Critical Data Studies

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The Data Stories project is please to announce the publication of a new book – Critical Data Studies: An A to Z Guide to Concepts and Methods – authored by Rob Kitchin and published by Polity Books.

The book is available as an open access download, as well in paperback and hardback, from the publisher website.

The book provides a glossary for the field, consisting of 413 entries about key terms. Each entry sets out a definition, a descriptive overview, and further reading.

The text is designed to be a pedagogic resource that enables students and researchers to look up terms that might be used in the classroom or in publications but in a way shorn of a detailed explanation of their meaning, and to act as a guide for discovering ideas, concepts, and methods that might be of value in their studies and analysis.

This information sheet lists all the entries by topic, which provides an overview of the content and might be useful for those seeking related sets of concepts and methods.

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Call for papers, AAG 2025: Data, Housing and Planning

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Call for Papers

DATA, HOUSING and PLANNING

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF GEOGRAPHERS Annual Meeting, Detroit, Michigan, March 24-28, 2025

Organisers: Rob Kitchin, Juliette Davret, Carla Kayanan (all Maynooth University) and Taylor Shelton (Georgia State University).

Sponsored by: Digital Geography Specialty Group (DGSG) and Urban Geography Specialty Group (UGSG)

Producing city and regional development plans, making planning decisions, formulating planning and housing policies, investing in real-estate ventures, guiding day-to-day property management, and organising counter-movements are ever more reliant on a variety of planning, property and land data, produced and made sense of by a range of stakeholders (e.g., state, business, NGOs, civil society, academia, media). A variety of data-driven systems and practices have been created for generating, managing and extracting insight from such data, including GIS, spatial decision support systems, modelling and analytic software, urban dashboards, city information modelling, and property platforms. Despite the centrality of housing and planning data to city and regional development, management and policy, they are treated largely at face value or solely consider their technical shortcomings. This session(s) aims to explore the data politics and data power at play across planning and property data lifecycles and in data use. In particular, the session aims to explore with respect to housing and planning:

  • The data lifecycle
  • The politics of measurement
  • Data access, data sharing and data mobilities
  • The constitution and operation of data assemblages and data ecosystems
  • Data labour and data practices
  • Data services, data markets and data capitalism
  • The construction of data narratives and telling of data stories
  • Data quality and data standards
  • Silences, gaps, occlusions and data debates
  • Data governance and data management
  • Data policy, data strategy and data futures
  • Data activism and counter-data actions
  • Data ethics and data justice

We invite submissions that focus centrally on the underlying evidence base rather than on housing and planning per se: that is, papers that tell stories about data, rather than stories with data.

Submission Guidelines: Please submit a title, abstract of up to 200 words, and 5 keywords to Rob.Kitchin@mu.ie by Friday, October 11th. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by Friday, October 18th with the recognition that the AAG’s abstract submission deadline is October 31st.

Conference Details: https://www.aag.org/events/aag2025/

For further information, please contact Rob.Kitchin@mu.ie, Juliette.Davret@mu.ie, Carla.Kayanan@mu.ie or jshelton19@gsu.edu

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3 artist/creative writer-in-residence posts for 2025

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We are pleased to advertise our 3 artist/creative writer-in-residence posts to work on the Data Stories project at Maynooth University (https://datastories.maynoothuniversity.ie/) from January 2025 to December 2025. The fee is €32,000, with duties expected to average 3 days a week working on two case studies, each running in parallel for the twelve months.

[Images – A data workshop facilitated by one of this year’s artists-in-residence, Joan Somers Donnelly. A map projecting onto our 3D model of Dublin by the project’s creative technologist, Olly Dawkins.]

The project has a broad view of what constitutes an artist or creative writer and will consider applications from: digital and media artists, performance and installation artists, craft workers, novelists, short story writers, playwrights, poets, cartoonists, essayists, and film and documentary makers.

Closing Date: 3rd Sept 2024

Information session on the posts will be held online on 13th August (details in job booklet).

Details are available at: https://universityvacancies.com/maynooth-university/3x-artistswriters-residence-12-month-maynooth-university-social-sciences

Data Stories Artist Briefing #2 (13/08/2024)

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The Data Politics of Housing and Planning, CFP + travel bursaries

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Call for papers, with travel bursaries

The Data Politics of Housing and Planning  

2nd – 3rd September, 2024

Maynooth University, Ireland

We are seeking participants for a two-day workshop that will explore the data politics of housing and planning. The workshop is organised as part of the ERC funded project, ‘Data Stories: Telling Stories about and with Planning and Property Data’ (https://datastories.maynoothuniversity.ie/). We are offering:

  • 4 travel bursaries for speakers of either up to €800 with 3 night’s accommodation (for beyond-Europe travel) or up to €250 with 2 night’s accommodation (for within-Europe travel)*. The bursary is open to doctoral students, early career researchers and senior academics.
  • 3 travel bursaries for doctoral students to attend the workshop of up to €250, plus 2 night’s accommodation.*

Speakers will be expected to contribute a full chapter to an edited book of the workshop proceedings.

Workshop focus

Planning and property data are the key evidence base for how cities are understood, planned and developed, informing public perception, guiding investments, and shaping policy. Administrative records, official statistics, commissioned surveys, spatial data, and industry information have long been used to facilitate these endeavours. More recently, there has been a proliferation of digital, data-driven systems and platforms for managing the planning system, construction and market activity, and property assets and tenants. Much of these planning and property data are proprietary and closed, used to drive competitive advantage, though data produced by city administrations are increasingly made openly available, enabling citizens to produce their own civic media and companies to create commercial apps and data products. In some cases, citizens create their own counter-data and enact forms of data activism to challenge housing and planning policies and market operations.

Despite the centrality and value of planning and property data for highly consequential decisions, little critical attention has been paid to them and their lifecycles, circulation, politics, power and use in policy and stakeholder decision-making. If attention is paid, it is usually concerned with the availability, coverage and veracity of datasets in a technical sense, rather than exposing the inherent politics and praxes in their generation and use. This workshop will address this lacuna by making data the central focus of analysis, exploring the data assemblages, data politics and data power of housing and planning. It is expected that papers will examine the nature of housing and planning data, the data governance and data politics of data-driven systems and evidence-informed policy and decision-making, issues of data justice and data sovereignty, and the enactment of data activism.

The workshop will have five sessions, with 30 minutes allocated for each paper (to include Q&A), plus panel discussion. It is anticipated that the sessions will cover the following topics, each focusing on their specific data politics.

  • Land registries, planning, construction activity and supply
  • Financialisation, housing, prop tech, residential/commercial real estate
  • Renting, evictions, vacancy
  • Homelessness and housing inequalities
  • Data activism, counter-data, and housing and planning

The workshop will be held immediately after the International Geographic Congress, which is taking place in Dublin, Ireland, 24th-30th August, https://igc2024dublin.org/

Application process

To apply to present a paper and receive a travel bursary please submit a short cover letter explaining why you would like to attend, a title and a short abstract (100-150 words) to Rob.Kitchin@mu.ie (using the subject line ‘CFP data politics of housing and planning’) by February 2nd 2024.

To apply for a doctoral student travel bursary to attend the workshop please submit a cover letter explaining why you would like to attend to Rob.Kitchin@mu.ie (using the subject line ‘Bursary data politics of housing and planning’) by February 2nd 2024.

A decision on selection will be made by the end of February.

For any queries please email Rob.Kitchin@mu.ie

* Payments will be made on a receipts basis for the amount paid for travel up to the value of the bursaries and travel plans will have to be confirmed with workshop organisers in advance. Any costs beyond the bursary will need to be met by the attendee.

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Arts-based methods for researching digital life

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Our first Data Stories working paper has been published via the university open access portal.

‘Arts-based methods for researching digital life.’ Data Stories Working Paper 1.

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the use of arts-based methods for undertaking research on the relationship between digital technologies and society. It first details the approach of research-creation in which research is conducted using of arts-based methods. This is followed by a discussion of specific arts-based methods used in research-creation: creative writing, artistic methods, and creative data stories. Next, it sets out ways in which research undertaken using traditional social science methods can be disseminated in creative ways using creative non-fiction and fiction, film and exhibitions. It closes by noting some critiques of arts-based approaches.

The WP is a draft of a chapter forthcoming in ‘Researching Digital Life’, a book co-authored with James Ash and Agnieszka Leszczynski

PDF: https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/16870/

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