Professor Rob Kitchin is one the leading scholars on issues that arise at the intersection between big data, ubiquitous computing and smart cities (how software mediates everyday life in cities, more broadly). He is also one of the main researchers at the Programmable City project.
Rob delivered last year an interesting presentation at OII here at Oxford, where he gave a good summary of the scholar discussion on big data and smart cities, presenting a critical view on the political dimension of smart urbanism. I've embedded the talk in this post, but you can also watch it here. Rob's presentation was based on this paper:
Kitchin, R. (2014). The real-time city? Big data and smart urbanism. GeoJournal, 79(1), 1-14. (ungated version).
Abstract:
‘Smart cities’ is a term that has gained traction in academia, business and government to describe cities that, on the one hand, are increasingly composed of and monitored by pervasive and ubiquitous computing and, on the other, whose economy and governance is being driven by innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship, enacted by smart people. This paper focuses on the former and, drawing on a number of examples, details how cities are being instrumented with digital devices and infrastructure that produce ‘big data’. Such data, smart city advocates argue enables real-time analysis of city life, new modes of urban governance, and provides the raw material for envisioning and enacting more efficient, sustainable, competitive, productive, open and transparent cities. The final section of the paper provides a critical reflection on the implications of big data and smart urbanism, examining five emerging concerns: the politics of big urban data, technocratic governance and city development, corporatisation of city governance and technological lock-ins, buggy, brittle and hackable cities, and the panoptic city.
