Creating a City for All of Us: The Possible Role of the Fediverse in Archiving Civic Urban Memory

Abstract

This paper attempts to build a case for adopting the model of the Fediverse to archive digital citizen-generated urban memory. Examining literature from several relevant fields of debate acts as a pragmatic foundation for reasoning to then outline potential core technical functionality for provision of such an archive, using the Mastodon app as an example. This ‘civic urban memory’ archive is considered as open, curated by citizens themselves and owned by them through civic public ownership in a context of technological sovereignty. Reflecting on issues of citizen self curated and moderated memory collection archives, and the potential for opt-in or anonymous archive posting may offer some mechanisms for fair and open curation, moderation and privacy protection in such archives. Conceptual backdrop for a civic urban memory archive is placed in current debates concerning civic technological platforms acting as a digital public good in a context of a techno-social contract for learning, with a co-constructed shared civic urban memory forming part of open incidental lifelong learning in a future learning city.