From smart cities to neural urbanism: Marvin and McCay reveal the risks of neurotechnologies that integrate human thought into the governance of a metropolis.

What would be left of our freedom if street lights changed color based on our stress levels, or if an algorithm decided traffic flow by reading our brain waves? This is the perhaps slightly disturbing prospect addressed by Simon Marvin e Allan McCay a commentary just published in the magazine Urban Geography.

The authors introduce the concept of Borg Urbanism to examine the implications of neurotechnologies that enable direct, bidirectional interfaces between human brain activity and urban systems.

Borg Urbanism: The Final Frontier of Living

Simon Marvin He is one of the most influential theorists of contemporary urbanism worldwide. He was the author, with Stephen Graham, of the famous text Splintering Urbanism, in which he explains how technology can fragment cities, creating super-connected areas and completely isolated “second-class” areas. Allan McCay He is a pioneer in the fields of law and neurotechnology, as well as one of the world's most recognized and authoritative voices on the application of the law to brain-computer interfaces.

The two authors have identified an emerging field of study that requires immediate action. They have called it, somewhat provocatively, Borg UrbanismThe city of the future, according to Marvin and McCay, might want to not only observe what citizens do, but also decode what they think and feel, transforming them into small nodes of an immense beehive which recalls, precisely, the structure of the Borg Collective. The reference to the Star Trek cyborg species renders a powerful image: that of a dense dark ocean that assimilates every fragment of uniqueness, extinguishing it forever, replaced by a monolithic collective feeling that does not allow silence or rebellion (“Resistance is futile" is the dogma of the Borg).

The Borg assimilate individuals of other species by injecting nanoprobes into their bodies, neural implants that closely resemble Elon Musk's Neuralink chips. But, scientists point out, there is also strong interest today in the so-called wearable neurotechnology, less invasive but equally "assimilating". We are talking about Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) which use sensors placed on the skin to pick up electrical signals from the brain and blood oxygen levels to interpret emotional states and stress levels.

City vs. Brain: A Symbiotic and Disturbing Relationship

Despite the use of the image derived from Star Trek, we are not talking about science fiction: the smart helmets which monitor levels of tiredness and concentration, for example, have already been tested in industrial and military fields, while the emotional monitoring bands They have already been the subject of several neuro-urbanism experiments that have measured people's biological and cognitive reaction to the urban environment.

Urban studies have been largely concerned with analyzing how urban environments, including noise, density, green spaces, and architectural design, affect mental health and stressThis type of research, however, sees the brain essentially as a “passive receiver of environmental influence”. The Borg Urbanism that Marvin and McCay discuss, instead, identifies an emerging logic that surpasses this approach with a substantial leap. As stated in the study, we are talking about “cities that can read, anticipate, and respond to neural states in real time and, in doing so, to integrate cognition itself into the governance infrastructure".

In this approach, which uses the Borg metaphor as a critical provocation, we are not only faced with a city that influences people's lives, but also with neural states detected by sensors and interfaces of various kinds, which can guide the adaptive reconfiguration of urban space in real time:

Borg urbanism envisions a feedback relationship in which neural activity in turn reconfigures the environment. The urban context becomes neuro-responsive, like a space that reads and writes to the brain.

we read in the research.

The Hive System: When the Mind Becomes Infrastructure

But how does this r decline?bidirectional contribution between cities and brains? According to researchers,

Cities could not only soothe or relieve stress, but also begin to respond to neural data. If enough people had access to neural devices, a lighting network could change color based on the brainwaves of nearby residents, or a traffic management system could adapt to collective concentration levels. Urban infrastructure would continuously tune into mental states, while brains would adapt to these reactive environments.

Borg nanoprobes aren't yet widely available, researchers point out, but wearable neurotechnology is rapidly expanding into the consumer sector, driven by investors like Meta. EEG headbands already on the market, for example, enable mind control of games and drones, as well as attention monitoring.

If such data were to fuel buildings, transportation, or public services,

“Mental states could configure infrastructure, for example, through a ‘neural dashboard’ that aggregates a neighborhood’s collective influence to manage energy consumption, safety, or the atmosphere.”

The result is a city that does not simply host life, but metabolizes it to optimize itself.

The concrete risks of a Borg Urbanism

The Borg metaphor, the researchers explain, serves to highlight the risks of assimilation, loss of mental autonomy and normalization of cognitive surveillance which truly seems to belong to the realm of science fiction. The final image is that of a total surveillance system, in which brain activity becomes an instrument of governance, and therefore of control:

Living in such a city could mean constantly participating in a system where mental privacy is obsolete. The challenge for research and urban policy is to imagine safeguards before these infrastructures become established.

the authors explain. The real risk is that city dwellers become part of a cybernetic whole with a collective nervous system like the Borg, where only the Queen has the luxury of exercising an intention. Except here, the Queen is a software system.

“Armies and corporations may already be building parts of this future, but it is the job of critical urban geography to unmask and counter it.”

Marvin and McCay warn. And to do so, it is necessary to face this transformation. before it becomes a consolidated reality.

Neurotechnology-based urbanism can evolve responsibly, but it is necessary to recognize these emerging cognitive infrastructures as an integral part of the evolving urban condition since, the researchers conclude, “reconfigure questions of power, autonomy and spatial justice at the level of thought itself".

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