E30: Co-Authoring the City: Audrey Tang on Digital Democracy, Civic AI and Who Gets to Decide

What does it mean for a city to be genuinely co-authored by the people who live in it? 

In Episode 30 of Talking Place, host Tanisha Raffiuddin speaks with one of the most consequential figures in the global conversation about digital democracy: Audrey Tang, Taiwan's Cyber Ambassador-at-Large and the world's first openly non-binary cabinet minister.

Audrey didn't enter government by campaigning. She occupied the parliament - as a civic hacker during Taiwan's 2014 Sunflower Movement, helping coordinate deliberation among half a million people on the streets of Taipei. Out of that moment came vTaiwan: a participatory platform that turned citizen voices into legislation, resolving disputes from Uber to social media scam advertising by surfacing the ideas both sides could actually live with.

In this conversation, Tanisha and Audrey explore:

• What it means to be a civic hacker, and how to hack a city

• How vTaiwan works, and why it rewards bridging voices rather than outrage

• Why the biggest risk of the smart city is that it becomes smarter than its citizens

• The difference between data as oil (extractive) and data as soil (tended together)

• What mayors and city leaders should actually be doing about AI today

• How to move cities from tick-box consultation to genuine co-authorship

If you work in urban planning, development, or local government - or you just care about the places you live in - this episode is for you.

Episode recorded during SXSW London 2026, Shoreditch, London

Links and mentions:

• Audrey Tang: audreyt.org
• Right Livelihood Award: rightlivelihood.org
• Plurality (public domain): plurality.net 
• Civic AI toolkit: civic.ai