Community goals

Addressing the widely known and yet fragmentarily studied relationship between sustainability and digitalization requires a collaborative effort. Therefore, we aim to bring together experts concerned with the sustainable development of digital technologies. As such, the community bridges disciplines and builds new perspectives on digitalization that emphasize long-termism, sustainability, sobriety, and prudence. We focus on both critically addressing the environmental impact of and power structures that shape current digitalization endeavors and exploring alternative pathways for sustainable digitalization in diverse domains such as the circular economy, sustainable cities, and reduced energy consumption.

The Digital Pathways to Sustainability community aims to:

• Connect scholars from all faculties of the university;
• Strengthen societal and political debate on large-scale polluting digitalization practices, such as the energy demand of AI, the growth logic of big tech corporations, the disruption of urban AI in planning practices and ethical concerns;
• Bridge the developing divide between critical academic voices and often techno-optimistic policies and initiatives on the ground to jointly identify balanced forms of digitalization.