In this episode, we speak with Burcu Baykurt.

Burcu is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her work centres the technological dimensions of statecraft, from its expressions in nationalism and borders, to the various kinds of automation being incorporated in local government infrastructures.

Our discussion centred more so on the latter, and specifically Burcu’s longstanding interests in Google as an increasingly influential agent in urban affairs. While the influence that Google and its parent company Alphabet exert on our worlds has hardly been ignored, in a strange way, less attention than we might expect has been directed to the unique place ‘Big Tech’ companies like Google have in an emerging ‘platform urbanism’, or in debates about so-called ‘smart cities’.

We spent some time discussing a special issue Burcu has co-edited with Antoine Courmont on what they call Google urbanism, before turning to her own extended research into Google in specific locales, in her case Kansas City. We end our discussion talking a bit about where Burcu’s research and writing is heading, specifically concerning the notion of a rising ‘test-bed urbanism’, and how the urban interventions of the tech sector interweave with local knowledge, practices, cultures, inequities and histories.

This interview, which was recorded on 26 February 2025, is Episode 8 within the Voices podcast series for Mediapolis Now, the podcast channel of Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture. In the Voices series, we interview thinkers and practitioners about their work at the junction of cities, culture and media.

Opening and closing music: ‘Mediapolis Now Theme’ by Scott Rodgers License: CC BY-NC (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)