Urban Future Lab Visiting Scholar: Dr. Alberto Gómez

Dr. Alberto Gómez is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences (FADYCS), Director of the Media, Society, Culture and Technology Research Group, and founder of the Tamaulipas Media Lab at Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas. He is also co-founder and COO at Cityflag, a collaborative platform for communities in the public and private sector. The products optimize internal processes for local governments and make it easier for citizens to communicate with the government. At Cityflag, Dr. Gomez works with cities and governments in multiple countries, advising on the adoption and implementation of digital products. His work with the City of San Antonio, Texas, has been recognized with a Smart 50 Award for “Community Engagement Innovation” in the public sector category for obtaining more than 20K users and generating over 40K city requests in 12 months.

As a Visiting Scholar in the Urban Future Lab, Dr. Gómez recently represented the lab at CityFest, the Rivard Report’s annual urban ideas festival featuring thought leaders, elected officials, and community members discussing issues that are integral to progressive change in San Antonio. In the panel “Smart Data: Public Access in a Digital World” moderated by Iris Dimmick of the Rivard Report, he joined a robust discussion with Emily Royall, smart city coordinator for the City of San Antonio, Golareh Agha, chief of informatics at San Antonio Metropolitan Health, and Laura McKieran, executive director of Ci:Now. Dr. Gómez discussed the Southside Pilot Project and the gaps in big data the Urban Future Lab discovered in the Mission San Jose and Quintana communities, two of the lowest-income in the nation, detailing the lab’s strategies to work with neighborhood leaders in surveying the communities to collect personalized data. The lab aspired to develop an Archive of Collective Knowledge to rectify the disparities they found. Providing this community-generated data to Mission San Jose and Quintana has helped these vulnerable communities participate in conversations about their future in an informed way.

Dr. Gómez’s current focus on civic tech — what is being done to advance the smart cities agenda, citizen engagement in the digital age, big data, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, the advent of ubiquitous technologies — and the impact of emerging technology in media, culture, economy, and democracy contributes to the goals of the Urban Future Lab. He is interested in how different segments of society respond to these changes and mobilize in the physical and digital realms; media activism; digital methods; critical perspectives on Web 2.0 and Web 3.0; practice approaches; information ecology perspectives; digital journalism; and international perspectives on mediation, mediatization and social change.

He writes scientific papers on Youth, Digital Technologies, and Inclusion in Latin American, the democratization of the media and the means of production, and writes for online publications including the World Economic Forum.  He is member of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (SNI).

Dr. Gómez’s research center is working on a federal-funded research project about Youth and Digital Technologies, called “Diagnosis of the Use and Appropriation of Digital Technology Platforms in the South of Tamaulipas.” He holds a Ph.D. in Communication and Creative Industries from the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Learn more about the Southside Pilot Project here:
Archives of Collective Knowledge: Investigations Into Personalization and Commoning for a New Spatial Contract

The Urban Future Lab and the Southside Pilot Project were featured in UTSA Sombrilla Magazine’s “Experiential Learning” issue, in the article “Think & Do: Students translate community vision into value and aspiration in UTSA’s Urban Future Lab”.