This paper set out to do three things: First, it proposes that a given technology (here drones) may prompt scholarly reflections around key ontological dimensions of the world. The advent of drones thus invite urban theorists to ‘think with the drone’ and reflect upon if our primarily two-dimensional conceptualisation of cities and spaces needs revision. Answering this in the affirmative leads to a need for so-called ‘volumetric thinking’ as the second task of the paper. The emergence of drones necessitates us to comprehend the ‘space between the buildings’ and the vertical dimension as key dimension of urban space (which for many still are confined to a simple two dimensional ‘flat world’ view). This touches upon the third ambition of the paper. By adding a new ‘point of view’ in a literal sense drones also prompt us to think about aerial visions of the city. How can volumetric thinking be coupled with the new aerial vision in such a way that it enhances our critical understanding of the spatial conditions of cities? The position of this paper is that we need the volumetric ‘corrective’ not just to counter old habits of ‘flat cartographies’, but also to prevent the new aerial views opened up by drone technologies to simply become an extension of the ‘old two-dimensional view’.

中文翻译：

---

用无人机思考——空中和体积思维的视觉课程

本文着手做三件事：首先，它提出一种给定的技术（这里是无人机）可能会引发围绕世界关键本体论维度的学术反思。因此，无人机的出现邀请城市理论家“用无人机思考”并反思我们对城市和空间的主要二维概念是否需要修改。肯定地回答这个问题导致需要将所谓的“体积思维”作为论文的第二个任务。无人机的出现让我们必须将“建筑物之间的空间”和垂直维度理解为城市空间的关键维度（对许多人来说，这仍然局限于简单的二维“平面世界”视图）。这涉及到论文的第三个目标。通过增加字面意义上的新“观点”，无人机也促使我们考虑城市的空中视野。体积思维如何与新的空中视野相结合，以增强我们对城市空间条件的批判性理解？本文的立场是，我们需要体积“校正”不仅是为了反击“平面制图”的旧习惯，而且是为了防止无人机技术开辟的新鸟瞰图简单地成为“老二”的延伸。维视图'。