What is Social Frame

This chapter engages with contemporary approaches to urban planning by introducing an analytic strategy rooted in the sociological approach of Science and Technology Studies. By demarcating a ‘social frame’ and comparing this to the established ‘engineering frame’ through different ‘architectures’, the paper reveals hitherto unrecognised features of the implementation of an intelligent transportation system called BLISS (the Bus Location and Information SubSystem). Through the ‘mobilities’ conceptual approach, the relationships between various aspects, including the urban space, the experience of passengers, drivers and managers, and component technologies, are revealed as forming an ‘assemblage’ of conflicting features, that at the same time move toward a form of ‘stabilization’. The underlying point, is that we need to engage not only with the technical difficulties of technology implementation in the city, but also with the contingent and experiential processes of those who use, and are affected by such implementations.