Technology is no stranger to the city. Cities are planned, built, maintained, governed, demolished, and destroyed by technical means. Yet, the city has yet to receive much attention within the philosophy of technology. This volume addresses this gap, and in doing so contributes to the much-needed discussion on technology-enabled urban futures from the perspective of the philosophy of technology. In this introductory chapter, the larger volume is introduced by reflecting on the rationale and need for such a collection, sketching the main themes analyzed throughout, and providing an overview of the contributions.

This paper examines the ethical dimensions of a critical urban infrastructure: streetlights. The development and proliferation of nighttime lighting has been fundamental and formative for urban nights, and streetlights constitute the primary source of illumination. Recent developments to lighting technologies, namely LEDs and ‘smart’ systems, are spurring a new generation of streetlights, with retrofits being rapidly undertaken around the world. While they may offer substantial energy savings, their long-term environmental effects are still under debate. Concurrent to these technological developments, the adverse costs and impacts of nighttime lighting—known as light pollution—have emerged as an ecological, economic, and ethical issue. This confluence of technological innovations and moral evaluations creates new challenges, but also an opportunity to envision and enact new strategies. For this, designing for darkness is presented as a value-sensitive framework for responsible lighting strategies that strives to incorporate and foster both substantive environmental values and meaningful nighttime experiences into the next generation of streetlights. First steps are taken to explore how this framework can be operationalized, and three design concepts are put forward as a means to create darker urban nights.

This paper undertakes a critical and constructive investigation into the applicability of value sensitive design (VSD) and design for values (DfV) methodologies for urban technologies, as a means to envision and enact responsible urban innovations. In particular, this paper focuses on the identification and analysis of values in urban technologies. First, an important methodological critique is highlighted, namely the vague articulation of ‘values' in VSD and DfV discourse. Next, cities are characterized as open, dynamic, and evolving systems, with ‘urban technologies’ as co-shapers of this process. This highlights the unique conditions requiring attention in order to arrive at a robust understanding of the relationship between values and urban technologies. Finally, these insights are combined to propose and sketch six heuristic principles aimed at surfacing and analysing values in urban technologies, offering a refinement of value-sensitive methodologies for the context of urban technological innovation.

This paper introduces the design principle of legibility as means to examine the epistemic and ethical conditions of sensing technologies. Emerging sensing technologies create new possibilities regarding what to measure, as well as how to analyze, interpret, and communicate said measurements. In doing so, they create ethical challenges for designers to navigate, specifically how the interpretation and communication of complex data affect moral values such as (user) autonomy. Contemporary sensing technologies require layers of mediation and exposition to render what they sense as intelligible and constructive to the end user, which is a value-laden design act. Legibility is positioned as both an evaluative lens and a design criterion, making it complimentary to existing frameworks such as value sensitive design. To concretize the notion of legibility, and understand how it could be utilized in both evaluative and anticipatory contexts, the case study of a vest embedded with sensors and an accompanying app for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is analyzed.

This chapter discusses how a comparative philosophical model can contribute to both substantive and procedural values in energy policy. We discuss the substantive values in the mainstream light-emitting diodes (LEDs) debate and Taylor Stone's alternative plea for darkness. We also explore Value Sensitive Design as a procedural approach. We conclude that the comparative philosophical model of Ulrich Libbrecht can appropriately broaden the set of substantive values used in VSD. We discuss the values of 'by-itself-so' and 'alter-intentionality', which come with the unforeseen necessity of accepting elements from other worldviews and of normativity in the procedural VSD approach.

This paper analyzes the increasing use of design tools and methods towards societal goals, and the interrelated approach to technology development it necessitates. Specifically, we argue that design research can assist in developing an anticipatory approach to technology development, which in turn widens future design possibilities. The paper proceeds in four steps. First, a distinction is made between different approaches to normative design, contrasting a precautionary approach (in which societal goals are constraints to design) from a directive approach (in which these goals are situated as design requirements). Second, a similar distinction between two types of normative technology development is made: precautionary (in which technology is created that safeguards societal goals) and directed (in which technology is created that realizes these goals). Third, an alternative approach to technology development is presented, aimed at enabling future technologies to realize precautionary or directed normative design for societal goals, termed anticipatory normative technology development. Such an anticipatory approach is thus conceptualized as an important enabler of normative design. Fourth, questions of how design research can support normative design is explored, highlighting two key roles: design research can create methods for normative design, and it can provide tools for anticipatory normative technology development that enables future normative design. Related to the latter, design research can draw from its established knowledge and methods for driving innovation. To contextualize this analysis, a running example is used throughout: The development of autonomous vehicles for reducing light pollution. Developing the navigation and sensors of autonomous vehicles to operate in low-light conditions is shown to anticipate an emerging social and environmental goal, thus creating the possibility for future normative design innovations.