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On top of the built infrastructures in cities, application programming interfaces allow to weave new kinds of seams from static and dynamic data sources into the urban fabric. Contributing to debates about \u201curban informatics\u201d and the governance of urban information infrastructures, this article provides a technically informed and critically grounded approach to evaluating APIs as crucial but often overlooked elements within these infrastructures. The conceptualization of what we term City APIs is informed by three perspectives: In the first part, we review established criticisms of proprietary social media APIs and their crucial function in current web architectures. In the second part, we discuss how the design process of APIs defines conventions of data exchanges that also reflect negotiations between API producers and API consumers about affordances and mental models of the underlying computer systems involved. In the third part, we present recent urban data innovation initiatives, especially CitySDK and OrganiCity, to underline the centrality of API design and governance for new kinds of civic and commercial services developed within and for cities. By bridging the fields of criticism, design, and implementation, we argue that City APIs as elements of infrastructures reveal how urban renewal processes become crucial sites of socio-political contestation between data science, technological development, urban management, and civic participation.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/2053951719827619","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,2,11]],"date-time":"2019-02-11T01:49:05Z","timestamp":1549849745000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":28,"title":["Weaving seams with data: Conceptualizing City APIs as elements of infrastructures"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"6","author":[{"given":"Christoph","family":"Raetzsch","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin, Germany"}]},{"given":"Gabriel","family":"Pereira","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Aarhus University, Denmark"}]},{"given":"Lasse S","family":"Vestergaard","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Aarhus University, Denmark; Alexandra Institute, Denmark"}]},{"given":"Martin","family":"Brynskov","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Aarhus University, Denmark"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,2,10]]},"reference":[{"key":"bibr1-2053951719827619","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2016.10.031"},{"key":"bibr2-2053951719827619","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Asad M, Dantec CAL, Nielsen B, et\u00a0al. 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