My work explores the interplay of digital capitalism, labor, and the built environment. Using an interdisciplinary methodology drawing on ethnography, visual research, theory, and story-telling, I investigate the impacts of the digital market economy on (sub)urban space and the way we organize life and work. The San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley (where I live) is my focus, but I’m interested in tech-led gentrification, data-driven urbanism, “new economy” company towns, digital and precarious labor, corporate co-working and co-living, the impacts of the gig economy, and urban activism everywhere.
I currently work on a dissertation entitled Bubble Worlds: Urban Space and Everyday Life in Silicon Valley’s New Company Towns, in which I examine how technology companies imagine, appropriate, and (re)produce urban space in the Bay Area and beyond.
all photos by Katja Schwaller
Upcoming:
Silicon Landscapes. Imaginationen, Materialitäten und (Geo-)Politiken eines Rohstoffs Invited Research Talk and workshop with Moritz Altenried, Erin McElroy, Alexander Hader, Mira Wallis, Loren Grbic, und Anna Pillinger at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt University in Berlin, May 22-23, 2025
Amazon & Co, Resistance is Not Futile Keynote Panelist, with Constance Carr, Maja-Lee Voigt, and Yonatan Miller at the conference “Urban Speculations: Cities, Technologies, Futures,” Leuphana University, Lüneburg, February 2025
City of Illusion, City of Exclusion: Contested Urban Futures in Meta’s Willow Village Paper Presentation at the conference “Urban Speculations: Cities, Technologies, Futures,” Leuphana University, February 2025
Recent Work:
Welcome to Google, Mountain View: How Big Tech Appropriates Participatory Urbanism to Build Cities and Offices “for People” Invited Research Talk and workshop with Valentin Niebler, Jochen Becker/MetroZones, Nilufar Vadiati, etc. in the spring colloquium series “In the Clouds? Situating the Digital,” at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt University in Berlin, July 12, 2024
Visiting Doctoral Fellow at Humboldt University, Institute for European Ethnology, “Culture, Society and the Digital,” Berlin, summer 2024
Sidewalk Labs: Imaginaries of Pedestrian Bliss and the Capture of Urban Space Stanford-Leuphana Summer Academy on “Art, Technology, and the Problem of Acceleration,” Berlin, June 2024
Cities and offices “for people”: how Big Tech appropriates participatory urbanism International Network for Urban Research and Action (INURA) Annual Conference in Malaga, June 2024
Google’s New (Sub)urban “Public Squares”: Architecture, Organization, and A Culture of Global Urban Activation Paper Presentation, Digital Aesthetic Workshop, Graduate Student Conference, Stanford University, May 2024
Between the Tech Office and the Public Realm: Silicon Valley’s New Company Towns Paper Presentation, American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Conference, Honolulu, April 2024
Verhärtungen unter der Oberfläche - Mike Davis im Plattform-Urbanismus Invited essay for the German peer-reviewed journal sub/urban, Zeitschrift für kritische Stadtforschung, Bd. 11 Nr. 3/4 (2023).
English abstract: Mike Davis In Platform Urbanism – Excavations in the (Future) Ruins of San Francisco’s Tech Booms
In words and photos, this essay discusses how platform companies and urban practices have shaped San Francisco’s “Twitter tax break corridor” through boom and bust. In an homage to Mike Davis, I wander around the boarded up office towers on Market Street and contemplate the fraud imaginaries and (future) ruins of digital capitalism in the heart of the Silicon Valley region.
Excavations in the (Future) Ruins of Platform Urbanism: Fieldnotes from San Francisco’s “Twitter Tax Break” Zone. Presentation at the June 2023 Zurich conference of INURA (International Network for Urban Research and Action)
In the Entrepreneurial Garden: Nature, Cognitive Labor, and the Corporate Campus
Paper Presentation, Society for the History of Technology Annual Conference, New Orleans/virtual, November 2021
“Durch den Monat mit Katja Schwaller” (1, 2, 3). Interview series by Daniel Hackbart, in Die Wochenzeitung WOZ, Zurich, July 2021
Love Where You Work? Gamifizierte Arbeitswelten, digitale Arbeit, und ein urbaner “Dotcom-Korridor”
Invited Public Lecture and Panel with Swiss Artist Romy Rüegger, Salon IDA 2021: Dancing (With) Robots,
Luzern University of Applied Sciences and Arts (virtual), May 2021
“Becoming Twitterlandia.” Essay on tech-led gentrification in San Francisco’s “Twitter tax break corridor,” in Counterpoints: A Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance, edited by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, accepted in 2018, published by PM Press in 2021
“Stadt und Pandemie: Silicon Valley Urbanismus, kritische Infrastruktur und “System-Relevanz.” 2-part essay on Big Tech, labor, and urban infrastructure during Covid-19 in the Berliner Gazette, Jahresthema Silent Works, December 8, 2020
“Stadt und Pandemie: kritische Infrastruktur und prekäre Arbeit im Plattform-Kapitalismus”. Essay on Big Tech, policing, and stratified labor in the Berliner Gazette, part 2, Jahresthema Silent Works, December 15, 2020
“How Invisibilized Work is Made Visible During the Covid-19 Pandemic.” Interview by Magdalena Taube and Krystian Woznicki, in Invisible Hand(s) – Hidden Labor, AI-Driven Capitalism, and the Covid-19 Pandemic, Multimedijalni institute, Zagreb 2020
Originally published in German in March 2020 in the Berliner Gazette and in English on Mediapart.
“Big Tech, Precarious Labor, and Critical Infrastructure in the Covid-19 Pandemic”
Invited Keynote at Silent Works Conference 2020: “Hidden Labor in AI-Capitalism,” Berlin, November 2020
„1500 Block of Adeline Street.“ Short essay on anti-foreclosure activism in Oakland in A People’s Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area, edited by Rachel Brahinsky and Alexander Tarr, University of California Press, 2020
Technopolis – Urbane Kämpfe in der San Francisco Bay Area. Edited volume on Big Tech and urban struggles, published with the academic press Seismo in Zurich and the independent publisher Assoziation A in Berlin in 2019
For this edited volume, I curated and translated a collection of essays by Bay Area scholars and writers, conducted long-form interviews with local activists, supplied dozens of photographs, and wrote an introduction and a chapter on digital labor, public space, and San Francisco’s “Twitter Tax Break” corridor. With Rebecca Solnit, Lori A. Flores, Adriana Camarena, Rachel Brahinsky, Kathleen Coll, Richard Walker, Ofelia Bello, Chris Herring, the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, Gay Shame, Silicon Valley Rising, Romy Rüegger, Stefan Niedriglöhner, and Sarah Schulman.
Table of Content / Read the introduction here / PDF
Reviews and interviews in nd Die Woche, derive – Zeitschrift für Stadtforschung, comùn, Die Tageszeitung taz, Die Wochenzeitung WOZ, Estadão, Midnight Sun, Berliner Gazette, enorm magazin, Bizim Kiez, detector fm, Berliner Mieter Echo, Trust, Vorwärts, etc.
Book launch events in Berlin, Zurich, and Winterthur in June 2019
„San Francisco: Willkommen in der Hyper-Gentrifizierung!“ Essay in Die Wochenzeitung WOZ No. 38/2018 from 20/08/2018
Reprinted in German as well as in French and Italian translation in a slightly shortened version as: “Der Google Bus fährt, aber nicht für alle.” In: SEV No. 14 from 10/11/2018
“Post-Public Spaces of Techno-Utopianism: Notes on the New ‘Commons' in San Francisco’s Mid-Market”
Paper Presentation, American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Conference, New Orleans, April 2018
“San Francisco: ‘Die ganze Stadt ist dein Büro!’” Essay in Die Rosengartenstrasse. Beruhigt in die Gentrifizierung? Zwischenberichte 002, edited Rahel Nüssli, Monika Streule, and Florian Wegelin. A project published by the Chair of Sociology, Department of Architecture ETH Zurich, Mai 2018
”Welcome to Twitterlandia: Reshaping Work and Public Space in San Francisco’s Mid-Market”
Invited Public Talk and Panel with Ellen Ullman and Dennis Hayes, Shaping San Francisco, Speeding through the Unseen: from Coding to Commons, San Francisco, October 2017