Metro Manila's digital infrastructure ecosystem. Insights into critical data centre studies in the majority world
Michel B, Dammann F (2026)
Publication Type: Journal article
Publication year: 2026
Journal
Book Volume: 10
Article Number: 100177
DOI: 10.1016/j.diggeo.2026.100177
Abstract
This article contributes to the growing field of critical data centre studies. A key contribution of these debates is to understand data centres as powerful socio-technical assemblages and as an infrastructural foundation of digital worlds. This interdisciplinary research highlights the role of data centres in materialising, fixing, and embedding data flows, and it brings to the fore the geographies, politics, economies, and environmental relations of digital infrastructures. While much of this research focuses on large hyperscalers in peripheral regions of the Global North, on Western Big Tech companies, and on the growth of data centres for AI, this article broadens this perspective by looking at data centres in and around Metro Manila, a city that might be considered an unlikely candidate for a booming data centre industry. This shifts the focus to the specifics of the development of data centres and digital infrastructures in a postcolonial setting and its particular path dependencies and geopolitical intricacies and this brings into focus an infrastructural ecosystem that cannot be neatly integrated into the grand narratives of global platform power. Focusing on Metro Manila's data centre ecosystem also highlights the more ordinary data centres and the broader set of actors that enable everyday internet connectivity and cloud services, which are vital for integrating the city and its hinterlands into the global digital economy.
Involved external institutions
Germany (DE)How to cite
APA:
Michel, B., & Dammann, F. (2026). Metro Manila's digital infrastructure ecosystem. Insights into critical data centre studies in the majority world. Digital Geography and Society, 10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diggeo.2026.100177
MLA:
Michel, Boris, and Finn Dammann. "Metro Manila's digital infrastructure ecosystem. Insights into critical data centre studies in the majority world." Digital Geography and Society 10 (2026).
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