Open Cities, Open Data: Collaborative Cities in the Information Era
Abstract
Today the world’s largest economies and corporations trade in data and its products to generate value in new disruptive markets. Within these markets vast streams of data are often inaccessible or untapped and controlled by powerful monopolies. Counter to this exclusive use of data is a promising world-wide “open-data” movement, promoting freely accessible information to share, reuse and redistribute. The provision and application of open data has enormous potential to transform exclusive, technocratic “smart cities” into inclusive and responsive “open-cities”.
This book argues that those who contribute urban data should benefit from its production. Like the city itself, the information landscape is a public asset produced through collective effort, attention, and resources. People produce data through their engagement with the city, creating digital footprints through social medial, mobility applications, and city sensors. By opening up data there is potential to generate greater value by supporting unforeseen collaborations, spontaneous urban innovations and solutions, and improved decision-making insights. Yet achieving more open cities is made challenging by conflicting desires for urban anonymity, sociability, privacy and transparency. This book engages with these issues through a variety of critical perspectives, and presents strategies, tools and case studies that enable this transformation.
... Smart governments have built platforms and portals to provide information, drive collaboration, and encourage citizen participation. Therefore, it is necessary to create public value by listening to the voices of citizens through the portal and working together for urban innovation [7][8][9]13,14,48,49,88,89]. ...
... In other words, project collaboration, and international cooperation were combined into collaboration, complaint processing and service speed were combined into complaint processing, and a total of 11 key features were organized. In addition, 11 key features were classified into three groups, focusing on information disclosure [11][12][13]20,35,[39][40][41][42]46,[60][61][62][63], citizen participation [28,[46][47][48][49][60][61][62][63], and civil petition service [13,[46][47][48][49]52,[60][61][62][63]67], which are the key keywords most importantly emphasized in the literature review on governance and government portals. Three key feature groups were defined as evaluation criteria for analyzing the 'Smart Seoul' portal. ...
... In other words, project collaboration, and international cooperation were combined into collaboration, complaint processing and service speed were combined into complaint processing, and a total of 11 key features were organized. In addition, 11 key features were classified into three groups, focusing on information disclosure [11][12][13]20,35,[39][40][41][42]46,[60][61][62][63], citizen participation [28,[46][47][48][49][60][61][62][63], and civil petition service [13,[46][47][48][49]52,[60][61][62][63]67], which are the key keywords most importantly emphasized in the literature review on governance and government portals. Three key feature groups were defined as evaluation criteria for analyzing the 'Smart Seoul' portal. ...
Currently, the efforts of many cities around the world, including Seoul, are aimed at transforming themselves into smart cities under a governance vision. Thus, the purpose of this study is to propose a reinforcement plan for the ’Smart Seoul’ portal to develop into a cooperative, participatory, and network governance. We select four representative smart city portals from Barcelona, Amsterdam, Columbus, and Singapore and evaluate their main features and roles. We sort the features analyzed in each portal based on certain governance strategies, employing their key features as part of our evaluation criteria model. These evaluation criteria are used to analyze the ‘Smart Seoul’ portal and create a strengthening plan. The plan comprises a set of actions intended to improve the portal’s capabilities in terms of disclosure of information, the participation of stakeholders, and civil petition services. When this plan is implemented, the resulting optimal information disclosure through the ‘Smart Seoul’ portal will ensure the transparency of Seoul’s administration and create an environment in which citizens can actively participate in solving urban problems and making decisions. In addition, the results of this study will be an important guideline for the design and operation of smart city portals, and the catalogs for key features are expected to be used to make smart city portal design regulations in the future.
... For this reason, digital planning support systems with intuitive interfaces can assit communities to evaluate the limitations and strengths or their own districts and localities. Such approaches are helpful in both lobbying governments for funding and for commitment to new urban green infrastructure [101,102]. ...
... Globally, there is a lack of such comparative measures and these could help cities both assess their own performance and to generate political momentum and investment in this area. Open data is a key aspect of this challenge [101,102] and whilst nations such as Australia have excellent publicly available census and spatial data, this is not analyzed and presented in ways that make it accessible to the population to support debate and decision making. There is, therefore, a procedural dimension of justice that is lacking here. ...
During times of stress and social pressure, urban green space provides social, cultural, and economic resources that help individuals and communities cope. Green space accessibility is, therefore, an important indicator related to people’s health and welfare. However, green space accessibility is not even throughout urban areas, with some areas better served with green space than others. Green space patterning is, therefore, a major environmental justice challenge. This research uses GIS approaches to analyze and understand urban green space access of urban communities in the Australian metropolitan areas of Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. We calculate indicators to describe green space access in relation to different green space patterns within different metropolitan zones, including the inner urban, suburban, and peri urban. We use the best available open data from the Australian census of 2017 to calculate green space accessibility. Our results describe the relationship between population density and green space distribution and patterning in the four metropolitan areas. We find that even cities which are generally thought of as liveable have considerable environmental justice challenges and inequity and must improve green space access to address environmental inequity. We also find that a range type of measures can be used to better understand green space accessibility. Accessibility varies greatly both within metropolitan areas and also from city to city. Through improving our understanding of the green space accessibility characteristics of Australian metropolitan areas, the result of this study supports the future planning of more just and equal green cities.
... The third one is the renewal of the Open Data portal through the CKAN tool [136], to ensure that public, private and personal data can be transformed into a new data-driven social infrastructure. It is worth pointing out that the city-wide data governance model of Barcelona is an extension of the open government agenda promoted by several cities around the world [137], [138], whereby cities support Open Data platforms for civic engagement and improved digital services to address a range of broader challenges, such as the implementation of Smart Cities. In order to make clear what follows, it is useful to recall the EU DECODE (Decentralised Citizen Owned Data Ecosystem) project [50]. ...
The goal of Digital Transformation of the Public Sector is the achievement of a better quality of life for citizens, via a more responsive and transparent administration and governance. By now it is clear that technological innovation, both in terms of computer architectures and software systems, is a crucial component of it, yet not sufficient. Indeed, a cultural, organizational and legal shift in how public organizations operate and relate to the citizens is also required. Nevertheless, computer scientists can play a key role in such a transformation and, given its impact on Society, it is essential to achieve a broader level of awareness of it and involvement in it of those scientific and professional figures. To this end, a technical map specifically designed for computer scientists, but properly placed in the context of the cultural, organizational and legal changes mentioned above, would be highly beneficial. To date, such a map is missing, to the best of our knowledge. The main contribution of this Tutorial is to provide it, together with a guided tour describing which key technological aspects enable and drive such a transformation. More specifically, based on a careful analysis of the available scholarly literature, that does not seem to include any Computer Science textbook material, a model of such a transformation is proposed, together with carefully selected examples incarnating it to show its validity: the cities of Barcelona and Chicago. Finally, a look at the future of this area is also provided.
... The third one is the renewal of the open data portal through the CKAN tool [217], to ensure that public, private and personal data can be transformed into a new data-driven social infrastructure. It is worth pointing out that the city-wide data governance model of Barcelona is an extension of the open government agenda promoted by several cities around the world [25,84], whereby cities support Open Data platforms for civic engagement and improved digital services to address a range of broader challenges, such as the implementation of Smart Cities. ...
Digital Transformation (DT) is the process of integrating digital technologies and solutions into the activities of an organization, whether public or private. This paper focuses on the DT of public sector organizations, where the targets of innovative digital solutions are either the citizens or the administrative bodies or both. This paper is a guided tour for Computer Scientists, as the digital transformation of the public sector involves more than just the use of technology. While technological innovation is a crucial component of any digital transformation, it is not sufficient on its own. Instead, DT requires a cultural, organizational, and technological shift in the way public sector organizations operate and relate to their users, creating the capabilities within the organization to take full advantage of any opportunity in the fastest, best, and most innovative manner in the ways they operate and relate to the citizens. Our tutorial is based on the results of a survey that we performed as an analysis of scientific literature available in some digital libraries well known to Computer Scientists. Such tutorial let us to identify four key pillars that sustain a successful DT: (open) data, ICT technologies, digital skills of citizens and public administrators, and agile processes for developing new digital services and products. The tutorial discusses the interaction of these pillars and highlights the importance of data as the first and foremost pillar of any DT. We have developed a conceptual map in the form of a graph model to show some basic relationships among these pillars. We discuss the relationships among the four pillars aiming at avoiding the potential negative bias that may arise from a rendering of DT restricted to technology only. We also provide illustrative examples and highlight relevant trends emerging from the current state of the art.
... Smart cities and geospatial technologies have been promoted as a way to address and confront the challenge of gendered cities (Hawken et al., 2020b). These emerging technologies are able to source, capture, record and analyse new streams of information that can challenge the status quo (Hawken et al., 2020a). Geospatial technologies fall within the umbrella of intelligent systems that enable location-based analytics and the application of a "systems perspective" of social and environmental issues at different scales -from local to global (Li et al., 2020). ...
Smart technologies have a remarkable potential for making our cites more liveable and safer. However, gender equity and gendered violence is largely ignored by mainstream smart cities and intelligent spatial planning approaches. Current approaches can exacerbate existing inequalities and violence due to the lack of awareness of the scale of the problem. For example, recent data form the Australian Bureau of Statistics Personal Safety Survey show that nine out of 10 women who experience a sexual assault do not report the incident to the police with the repercussion that mainstream approaches overlook the seriousness and extent of gendered violence. Counter to this, there is a burgeoning movement amongst tech and gender activists to identify and raise awareness around such problems and to apply technology to make urban spaces safer and more inclusive for women and gender diverse people. A range of social entrepreneurs and gender activists have revealed the extent of street harassment and gender-based violence in public areas and begun to suggest approaches for tackling this injustice. This chapter reviews recent innovative initiatives to harness the Internet of Things and Big Data to address such injustice in a two-part approach. Firstly, to investigate the range of safety tech available and critique these initiatives. And secondly to identify gender-based safety factors relevant for designing and creating safer urban environments. To foster intelligent and safer environments spatial technologies offer an innovative approach to analyse these issues at scales ranging from local to national, and the uptake of such tools is likely to improve liveability in cities worldwide. To answer these questions, this chapter methodically reviews a database of 82 papers to identify 21 relevant peer-reviewed articles and critiques twelve innovative urban technology initiatives focused on gender and urban safety. Our findings are presented as a set of recommendations that can help urban managers better understand how to address, for example, UN Sustainable Development Goals 5 (gender equality) and 11 (sustainable cities) and a range of related inclusive initiatives in cities around the world.
... There is a clear gap: without a suitable, publicly available spatiotemporal body of knowledge, the planning process is effectively limited to planning controls. This paper aims to fill this gap, starting with an analysis of the broader insights that can be extracted from currently available data in the CoS local government area between 2004 and 2022 [10]. ...
When proposing and reviewing new developments, urban planners, architects and the broader public must make well-informed planning decisions that fit within the broader urban context to foster a sustainable future and avoid costly and unnecessary redevelopment later on. There is often no comprehensive, publicly available and data-based spatiotemporal body of knowledge to help support these decisions. This paper uses the City of Sydney (CoS) as a case study to show how open data about individual development applications (DAs) can be used to build a critical spatiotemporal information framework to fill this gap and guide important city-shaping design and planning decisions. This research proposes a novel and broadly applicable methodology based on Python data analysis and mapping to extract and visualise spatiotemporal insights from DA data in terms of DA lodgement numbers and locations, DA estimated costs, DA proposed land use and application processing times. The results show a consistent decrease in DA lodgement numbers since 2008, likely accentuated by the COVID pandemic since 2020. This is contrasted by a steady increase in the median cost of DAs since 2005. Development hot spots are identified in the Sydney CBD and the suburb of Zetland, whereas the western and central parts of the local government area (LGA) were found to be lodgement cold spots consistent with higher concentration of heritage conservation areas. DAs proposing new uses fall primarily in the retail category, followed by commercial land uses between 2005–2011 and residential uses since 2012. Analysis of DA assessment time showed that 76% of DAs were approved or refused within 3 months, with a positive but limited correlation between estimated cost and assessment time. All charts and maps are made available in an online dashboard.
... This sensitivity to the urban can assist with measuring and understanding local performance and urban equity, whilst also facilitating the creation of appropriate benchmarks and appropriate targets for urban-sustainability indicators [133]. High-resolution datasets gathered from both remote sensing and IoT have the potential to help overcome such data-collection challenges [134,135]. ...
Ecosystem services provide essential services for cities and are key factors in achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Such services are best delivered through green infrastructure, which works in resourceful, multifunctional, synergistic, and environmentally sensitive ways to deliver ecosystem services and provide alternative cleaner pathways for the delivery of multiple urban services. It is unclear if current research supports the necessary linkages between ecosystem services, cities, and green infrastructure in order to achieve the SDGs. To answer this question, we conducted a systematic review analysing 3392 studies on the SDGs from the WoS database. The contents of 66 of those with relevance to ecosystem services and urban research were reviewed in depth. We applied network-analytic methods to map the relationships of different knowledge clusters of SDGs research (1) across time, (2) across disciplines, and (3) in relation to ecosystem services and cities. The results of our analysis show that research on the SDGs have developed stronger networks from 2010–2018, but this research has not been sustained. Further, whilst research on cities now occupies a central place in the SDGs literature, research on ecosystem services only shows tentative links to both green-infrastructure research and SDGs research. Such literature on urban green infrastructure remains peripheral to the central challenge of sustainable urban transitions. We conclude that when it comes to the SDGs, research articles typically consider urban services independently of green infrastructure. Further, it suggests that green infrastructure is not generally considered as a sustainable alternative to conventional urban infrastructures. To address this serious shortcoming, we recommend transdisciplinary approaches to link urban ecosystem and urban green infrastructure research to the 2030 global sustainability agenda.
... Regional and global databases on urban megaprojects operating beyond the levels of the investor and the state can be developed to engage with a broader range of human rights and environmentally focused stakeholders (Temper et al., 2018a). The burgeoning open data movement could support such transnational infrastructure for licensing and approval (Hawken et al., 2020a(Hawken et al., , 2020b. Open data can be used to foster greater accountability and to promote projects to potential investors, assuring them of due process and economic safeguards and sources of marketing potential. ...
Within the Southeast Asian context, urban megaprojects are often delivered in aquatic or semi-aquatic contexts, transforming local hydrological systems used for sanitation, agriculture, sustenance, resource use and cultural purposes by the local populations. This paper addresses a key knowledge gap on the impacts of urban megaprojects on water security and water-related human rights in Southeast Asia through a literature review, field observations and digital earth observation. Three case studies in Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar were used to develop a picture of urban megaproject impacts on urban water landscapes and the human rights of local communities. The paper adapts recent human rights frameworks developed specifically for megaproject life cycles and applies them to the selected urban megaproject case studies. The seven stages in the megaproject life cycle are linked with specific accountability measures for duty bearers. Current challenges and opportunities for the global urban development community are developed in relation to water justice and megaprojects. Further the question of a just urban transition is developed to mediate between megaproject proponents and local communities in the Global South.
... These insights can then be shared with other emergency agencies or can be published publicly. GIS have the ability to aggregate and visualise multiple datasets, and therefore have a great potential for responding to disasters and extreme weather events, in- cluding bushfires, while dashboards are platforms that provide key insights for at-a-glance decision-making [41]. ...
The 2019–2020 bushfire season is estimated to be one of the worst fire seasons on record in Australia, especially in New South Wales (NSW). The devastating fire season ignited a heated public debate on whether prescribed burning is an effective tool for preventing bushfires, and how the extent of bushfires has been changing over time. The objective of this study is to answer these questions, and more specifically to identify how bushfire patterns have changed in the last 100 years in NSW. To do so, we conducted a spatio-temporal analysis on prescribed burns and bushfires using a 100-year dataset of bushfires. More specifically, three research questions were developed, with each one of them addressed differently. First, generalised linear modelling was applied to assess the changes in fire patterns. Second, a correlation analysis was conducted to examine whether prescribed burns are an effective tool for reducing bushfire risk. Third, a spatio-temporal analysis was applied to the bushfire location data to explore spatio-temporal clusters of high and low values for bushfires, known as hotspots and coldspots, respectively. The study found that the frequency of bushfires has increased over time; however, it did not identify a significant trend of change in their size. Based on the results of this study for the relationship between prescribed burns and bushfires, it seems impossible to determine whether prescribed burns effectively reduce bushfire risk. Thus, further analysis with a larger amount of data is required in the future. The results of the spatio-temporal analysis showed that cold spots are propagated around metropolitan areas such as Sydney, while hotspots are concentrated in rural areas such as the North Coast and South Coast regions of NSW. The analysis found four statistical areas that have become new bushfire frequency hotspots in the 2019–2020 bushfire season. These areas combined have about 40,000 residents and at least 13,000 built dwellings. We suggest that further analysis is needed in the field to determine if there is a pattern of movement of bushfire towards metropolitan areas. To make the results of this research accessible to the public, an online interactive GIS-based dashboard was developed. The insight gained from the spatial and temporal analyses in this research is crucial to making smarter decisions on allocating resources and developing preventive or mitigating strategies.
... These new data hold great promise and will play an increasing role at the bott om of the CIM eco-system. But they are only valuable for planning if they have open access (Domingo et al., 2013), and after they are processed, linked and integrated in meaningful models and applications, with recent examples found in Hawken et al. (2020). Several disciplines already make use of, or contribute to, Big Data (e.g. ...
The digitalization of the urban development process is driven by the need for informed, evidence-based, collaborative and participative urban planning and decision-making, epitomized in the concept of Smart Cities. This digital transformation is enabled by information technology developments in fields such as 3D city models, Digital Twins, Urban Analytics and Informatics, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Planning Support Systems (PSS). In this context, City Information Modelling (CIM) has recently emerged as a concept related to these various technological driving forces. In this article, we review the state of the art of CIM (definitions and applications) in the academic literature and propose a definition and a general conceptual framework. By highlighting how the different disciplines are related to each other within this conceptual framework, we offer a context for transdisciplinary work, and focus on integration challenges, for research and development, both in academia and industry. This will contribute to moving forward the debate on digitalization of the built environment development process in the field of Smart Cities.
... Owing to the participatory nature of this research, it is vital to engage different community members and project stakeholders in the collaborative knowledge building process alongside considering their views and preferences. Thus, our research design draws on the double diamond framework (Fig. 2), a well-established model for delivering participatory research [43]. The backbone of the double diamond framework lies in its emphasis on "divergent" and "convergent" thinking. ...
The area of Eco-Feedback has received significant attention in recent years. Whilst there have been increasing calls to move ‘beyond feedback’ and consider the wider social, organisational and cultural context that feedback sits within, the involvement of community members in the design process of eco-feedback applications, known as co-design, has been limited. This study addresses that research gap through working collaboratively with community members to develop an accessible eco-feedback interface. First, we conducted an online survey questionnaire with 151 respondents with distinct socio-economic characteristics and environmental knowledge to get insights into their preferences about different aspects of the eco-feedback interface. Secondly, based on the survey findings, 20 community members living in Nottingham, UK, worked collaboratively to develop interface design proposals. Finally, the design of the eco-feedback interface was finalised based on the community interface prototypes and suggestions. The developed interface contains multiple information panels with options for expanding to gain deeper levels of information and a community space allowing for community interactions and sharing of information and actions. This research sheds new light on the challenges of utilising co-design principles to build eco-feedback interfaces. Specifically, we highlight the potential for interactions between community members during the design stages to allow for the generation of innovative ideas (e.g. Integration of third-party applications) moving the interface beyond feedback leading to greater adoption and energy savings.
Purpose. The objective of this study is to analyze the level of transparency and accessibility of information regarding the activities of local self-government bodies in the regional centers of Ukraine, as well as to identify economic-organizational problems associated with ensuring openness in Ukrainian cities. Methodology. The following research methods were employed to achieve the stated objective: analysis, synthesis, deduction, comparison, and scientific inquiry. Results. An analysis of the transparency of economic-organizational support in Ukrainian regional centers was conducted before and after the full-scale invasion by Russian forces. The degree of transparency, which characterizes the level of openness of local self-government bodies in the regional centers of Ukraine from 2017 to 2022, was identified. Economic-organizational problems related to ensuring transparency in Ukrainian cities were also identified. Scientific novelty. The research has revealed economic-organizational problems associated with ensuring transparency in Ukrainian cities, highlighting the need for further examination and resolution of complex economic, organizational, and managerial aspects that influence the level of transparency and accessibility of information about the activities of local self-government bodies. Practical significance. This research helps identify specific economic-organizational problems that affect the transparency of local self-government. It contributes to raising awareness and understanding of these issues, as well as directing attention towards their resolution.
Within the last decade, online sustainability knowledge-action platforms have proliferated. We surveyed 198 sustainability-oriented sites and conducted a review of 41 knowledge-action platforms, which we define as digital tools that advance sustainability through organized activities and knowledge dissemination. We analyzed platform structure and functionality through a systematic coding process based on key issues identified in three bodies of literature: (a) the emergence of digital platforms, (b) the localization of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), and (c) the importance of multi-level governance to sustainability action. While online collaborative tools offer an array of resources, our analysis indicates that they struggle to provide context-sensitivity and higher-level analysis of the trade-offs and synergies between sustainability actions. SDG localization adds another layer of complexity where multi-level governance, actor, and institutional priorities may generate tensions as well as opportunities for intra- and cross-sectoral alignment. On the basis of our analysis, we advocate for the development of integrative open-source and dynamic global online data management tools that would enable the monitoring of progress and facilitate peer-to-peer exchange of ideas and experience among local government, community, and business stakeholders. We argue that by showcasing and exemplifying local actions, an integrative platform that leverages existing content from multiple extant platforms through effective data interoperability can provide additional functionality and significantly empower local actors to accelerate local to global actions, while also complex system change.
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