Newly Released: Grounding the Cloud—Urbanism in the Shadow of Data
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Author: Ali Fard
July 2026
University of Minnesota Press
Since the 1990s, technologists have promoted a vision of the “cloud” as a shapeless and intangible entity. Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data peers through this hazy façade to reveal the earthly material foundations of global computing and data extraction. Tracing the historical and technological development of the cloud computing paradigm, Ali Fard exposes an ever-evolving project in which ideologies, economic models, and marketing images collude to shape our shared urban environments.
Demonstrating how technology’s spatial footprint now stretches to nearly every corner of the globe, Grounding the Cloud analyzes the often-hidden infrastructures that facilitate platform capitalism—from the mines extracting rare earth minerals in remote regions to the vast global network of fiber-optic cables at the bottom of the oceans to the nondescript data centers that sit on the peripheries of major urban areas. Meanwhile, with compelling examples of smart-city initiatives and corporate campuses, Fard shows how the future of urbanism is deeply intertwined with the growing economies of data extraction.
Breaking down the myth of a clean and efficient tech urbanism, this book makes visible the complex material geographies and geopolitics that undergird today’s most powerful and omnipresent corporations. A timely critique of the growing agency of tech platforms in determining the future of urban space, Grounding the Cloud offers an essential framework for understanding the shifting relationship between technology and urbanization.
Timely and important Grounding the Cloud reflects current developments in contemporary industrial architecture and places them within the historical perspective of earlier infrastructure projects. Fard’s unique perspective offers a truly compelling investigation of the physical and spatial manifestations of the digital economy.
—Dietmar Offenhuber, author of Autographic Design: The Matter of Data in a Self-Inscribing World
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Contents
- Introduction: Down Into the Cloud
- Visions: The Sociotechnical Construction of the Cloud
- Interface: Urbanizing the Cloud
- Shadows: Hidden Forms and Territorial Instruments
- Concentrations: Campuses and Enclaves
- Extensions: Farms, Pipes, Mines
- Conclusion: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data
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Grounding the Cloud
Book Talk
Friday, November 20, 2026
12pm
Campbell Van Lengen Lobby
Event Details
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About the Author
Ali Fard is a researcher, designer, and Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Virginia School of Architecture where he directs the MIST (Media, Infrastructure, Speculative Territories) Lab. Fard's work operates at the intersection of design and global urban processes. He is particularly interested in the spatial imprints of technology and the urban disposition of infrastructure, and how design research can help ground the operational complexity, spatial hybridity, and territorial scales of large technical systems. His work has been published in journals, including Footprint, MONU, MAS Context, Bracket, Telematics and Informatics, and Harvard Design Magazine, among others. He is coeditor of New Geographies, 7: Geographies of Information (Harvard University Press, 2015).
