Urban_informatics

Urban informatics

Urban informatics

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Urban informatics refers to the study of people creating, applying and using information and communication technology and data in the context of cities and urban environments.[1] It sits at the conjunction of urban science, geomatics, and informatics, with an ultimate goal of creating more smart and sustainable cities.[2] Various definitions are available, some provided in the Definitions section.

Although first mentions of the term date back as early as 1987, urban informatics did not emerge as a notable field of research and practice until 2006 (see History section). Since then, the emergence and growing popularity of ubiquitous computing, open data and big data analytics, as well as smart cities, contributed to a surge in interest in urban informatics, not just from academics but also from industry and city governments seeking to explore and apply the possibilities and opportunities of urban informatics.[1][2]

Definitions

Many definitions of urban informatics have been published and can be found online. The descriptions provided by Townsend in his foreword and by Foth in his preface to the Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics[3] emphasize two key aspects: (1) the new possibilities (including real-time data) for both citizens and city administrations afforded by ubiquitous computing, and (2) the convergence of physical and digital aspects of the city.

"Urban informatics is the study, design, and practice of urban experiences across different urban contexts that are created by new opportunities of real-time, ubiquitous technology and the augmentation that mediates the physical and digital layers of people networks and urban infrastructures."

— Foth, Choi, Satchell, 2011, Urban Informatics[1]

In this definition, urban informatics is a trans-disciplinary field of research and practice that draws on three broad domains: people, place and technology.

In addition to geographic data/spatial data, most common sources of data relevant to urban informatics can be divided into three broad categories: government data (census data, open data, etc.); personal data (social media, quantified self data, etc.); and sensor data (transport, surveillance, CCTV, Internet of Things devices, etc.).[4][5]

Although closely related, Foth differentiates urban informatics from the field of urban computing by suggesting that the former focusses more on the social and human implications of technology in cities (similar to the community and social emphases of how community informatics and social informatics are defined), and the latter focusses more on technology and computing.[3] Urban informatics emphasises the relationship between urbanity, as expressed through the many dimensions of urban life, and technology.

Later, with the increasing popularity of commercial opportunities under the label of smart city and big data, subsequent definitions became narrow and limited in defining urban informatics mainly as big data analytics for efficiency and productivity gains in city contexts – unless the arts and social sciences are added to the interdisciplinary mix.[6] This specialisation within urban informatics is sometimes referred to as 'data-driven, networked urbanism'[7] or urban science.[8]

In the book Urban Informatics[2] published in 2021, the term Urban Informatics has been defined in a systematical and principled way.

"Urban informatics is an interdisciplinary approach to understanding, managing, and designing the city using systematic theories and methods based on new information technologies, and grounded in contemporary developments of computers and communications. It integrates urban science, geomatics, and informatics: urban science provides studies of activities, places, and flows in the urban area; geomatics provides the science and technologies for measuring spatiotemporal and dynamic urban objects in the real world and managing the data obtained from the measurements; informatics provides the science and technologies of information processing, information systems, computer science, and statistics which support the quest to develop applications to cities."

— Shi, Goodchild, Batty, Kwan, Zhang (Eds), 2021, Urban Informatics[2]

History

One of the first occurrences of the term can be found in Mark E. Hepworth's 1987 article "The Information City",[9] which mentions the term "urban informatics" on page 261. However, Hepworth's overall discussion is more concerned with the broader notion of "informatics planning". Considering the article pre-dates the advent of ubiquitous computing and urban computing, it does contain some visionary thoughts about major changes on the horizon brought about by information and communications technology and the impact on cities.

The Urban Informatics Research Lab was founded at Queensland University of Technology in 2006, the first research group explicitly named to reflect its dedication to the study of urban informatics.[citation needed] The first edited book on the topic, the Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics, published in 2009,[citation needed] brought together researchers and scholars from three broad domains: people, place, and technology; or, the social, the spatial, and the technical.

There were many precursors to this transdisciplinarity of "people, place, and technology."[1] From an architecture, planning and design background, there is the work of the late William J. Mitchell, Dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, and author of the 1995 book City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn.[10] Mitchell was influential in suggesting a profound relationship between place and technology at a time when mainstream interest was focused on the promise of the Information Superhighway and what Frances Cairncross called the "Death of Distance".[11] Rather than a decline in the significance of place through remote work, distance education, and e-commerce, the physical / tangible layers of the city started to mix with the digital layers of the internet and online communications. Aspects of this trend have been studied under the terms community informatics[12] and community networks.[13]

One of the first texts that systematically examined the impact of information technologies on the spatial and social evolution of cities is Telecommunications and the City: Electronic Spaces, Urban Places,[14] by Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin. The relationship between cities and the internet was further expanded upon in a volume edited by Stephen Graham entitled Cybercities Reader[15] and by various authors in the 2006 book Networked Neighbourhoods: The Connected Community in Context[16] edited by Patrick Purcell. Additionally, contributions from architecture, design and planning scholars are contained in the 2007 journal special issue on "Space, Sociality, and Pervasive Computing"[17] published in the journal Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 34(3), guest edited by the late Bharat Dave, as well as in the 2008 book Augmented Urban Spaces: Articulating the Physical and Electronic City,[18] edited by Alessandro Aurigi and Fiorella De Cindio, based on contributions to the Digital Cities 4 workshop held in conjunction with the Communities and Technologies (C&T) conference 2005 in Milan, Italy.

The first prominent and explicit use of the term "urban informatics" in the sociology and media studies literature appears in the 2007 special issue "Urban Informatics: Software, Cities and the New Cartographies of Knowing Capitalism"[19] published in the journal Information, Communication & Society, 10(6), guest edited by Ellison, Burrows, & Parker. Later on, in 2013, Burrows and Beer argued that the socio-technical transformations described by research studies conducted in the field of urban informatics give reason for sociologists more broadly to not only question epistemological and methodological norms and practices but also to rethink spatial assumptions.[20]

In computer science, the sub-domains of human–computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, and urban computing provided early contributions that influenced the emerging field of urban informatics. Examples include the Digital Cities workshop series (see below), Greenfield's 2006 book Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing,[21] and the 2006 special issue "Urban Computing: Navigating Space and Context"[22] published in the IEEE journal Computer, 39(9), guest edited by Shklovski & Chang, and the 2007 special issue "Urban Computing"[23] published in the IEEE journal Pervasive Computing, 6(3), guest edited by Kindberg, Chalmers, & Paulos.

Digital Cities Workshop Series

The Digital Cities Workshop Series started in 1999[24] and is the longest running academic workshop series that has focused on, and profoundly influenced, the field of urban informatics.[25] The first two workshops in 1999 and 2001 were both held in Kyoto, Japan, with subsequent workshops since 2003 held in conjunction with the biennial International Conference on Communities and Technologies (C&T).

Each Digital Cities workshop proceedings have become the basis for key anthologies listed below, which in turn have also been formative to a diverse set of emerging fields, including urban informatics, urban computing, smart cities, pervasive computing, internet of things, media architecture, urban interaction design, and urban science.

More information Workshop, Location ...

Research centres

More information Year, Research centres ...

Methods

The diverse range of people, groups and organisations involved in urban informatics is reflective of the diversity of methods being used in its pursuit and practice. As a result, urban informatics borrows from a wide range of methodologies across the social sciences, humanities, arts, design, architecture, planning (including geographic information systems), and technology (in particular computer science, pervasive computing, and ubiquitous computing), and applies those to the urban domain. Examples include:

See also

References

  1. [1]
    Foth, Marcus; Choi, Jaz Hee-jeong; Satchell, Christine (2011). Urban Informatics. Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). Hangzhou, China. pp. 1–8. doi:10.1145/1958824.1958826.
  2. [2]
    Shi, Wenzhong; Goodchild, Michael; Batty, Michael; Kwan, Mei-Po; Zhang, Anshu (2021). Urban Informatics. Singapore: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-981-15-8983-6. ISBN 978-981-15-8982-9.
  3. [3]
    Foth, Marcus (2009). Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. ISBN 978-1-60566-152-0.
  4. [4]
    Kitchin, Rob; Dodge, Martin (2011). Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262042482.
  5. [5]
    Robinson, Ricky; Rittenbruch, Markus; Foth, Marcus; Filonik, Daniel; Viller, Stephen (April 2012). "Street Computing: Towards an Integrated Open Data Application Programming Interface (API) for Cities" (PDF). Journal of Urban Technology. 19 (2): 1–23. doi:10.1080/10630732.2012.698064. S2CID 61012545.
  6. [6]
    Thrift, Nigel (2014). "The Promise of Urban Informatics: Some Speculations". Environment and Planning A. 46 (6): 1263–1266. Bibcode:2014EnPlA..46.1263T. doi:10.1068/a472c.
  7. [7]
    Kitchin, Rob (2015). "Data-Driven, Networked Urbanism". doi:10.2139/ssrn.2641802. S2CID 106611415. SSRN 2641802. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  8. [8]
    Batty, Michael (2013). The New Science of Cities. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262019521.
  9. [9]
    Hepworth, Mark E. (August 1987). "The Information City". Cities. 4 (3): 253–262. doi:10.1016/0264-2751(87)90033-3.
  10. [10]
    Mitchell, William J. (1995). City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-13309-8.
  11. [11]
    Cairncross, Frances (1997). The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution will Change our Lives. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press. ISBN 978-0-87584-806-8.
  12. [12]
    Gurstein, Michael (2000). Community Informatics: Enabling Communities with Information and Communications Technologies. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing. ISBN 978-1-878289-69-8.
  13. [13]
    Schuler, Douglas (1996). Community Networks: New Community Networks: Wired for Change. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0-201-59553-6.
  14. [14]
    Graham, Stephen; Marvin, Simon (1995). Telecommunications and the City: Electronic Spaces, Urban Places. London: Routledge.
  15. [15]
    Graham, Stephen (2004). The Cybercities Reader. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-27956-7.
  16. [16]
    Purcell, Patrick (2006). Networked Neighbourhoods: The Connected Community in Context. London: Springer. ISBN 978-1-84628-267-6.
  17. [17]
    Dave, Bharat (2007). "Space, Sociality, and Pervasive Computing". Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design. 34 (3): 381–382. Bibcode:2007EnPlB..34..381D. doi:10.1068/b3403ed.
  18. [18]
    Aurigi, Alessandro; De Cindio, Fiorella (2008). Augmented Urban Spaces: Articulating the Physical and Electronic City. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-7149-7.
  19. [19]
    Ellison, Nick; Burrows, Roger; Parker, Simon (December 2007). "Urban Informatics: Software, Cities and the New Cartographies of Knowing Capitalism". Information, Communication & Society. 10 (6): 785–788. doi:10.1080/13691180701750975. S2CID 214651892.
  20. [20]
    Burrows, Roger; Beer, David (2013). "Rethinking Space: Urban Informatics and the Sociological Imagination". In Orton-Johnson, Kate; Prior, Nick (eds.). Digital Sociology: Critical Perspectives. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 61–78. doi:10.1057/9781137297792_5. ISBN 978-0-230-22283-0.
  21. [21]
    Greenfield, Adam (2006). Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. San Francisco, US: New Riders. ISBN 978-0321384010.
  22. [22]
    Shklovski, Irina; Chang, M. F. (September 2006). "Urban Computing: Navigating Space and Context". Computer. 39 (9): 36–37. doi:10.1109/MC.2006.308. S2CID 38345112.
  23. [23]
    Kindberg, Tim; Chalmers, Matthew; Paulos, Eric (July 2007). "Urban Computing". IEEE Pervasive Computing. 6 (3): 18–20. doi:10.1109/MPRV.2007.57. S2CID 10161542.
  24. [24]
    Ishida, Toru; Isbister, Katherine (2000). Digital Cities Technologies, Experiences, and Future Perspectives. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 1765. Berlin: Springer. doi:10.1007/3-540-46422-0. ISBN 978-3-540-67265-4. S2CID 28232736.
  25. [25]
    Foth, Marcus; Brynskov, Martin; Ojala, Timo (2015). Citizen's Right to the Digital City: Urban Interfaces, Activism, and Placemaking. Singapore: Springer. ISBN 9789812879172.
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    Tanabe, Makoto; van den Besselaar, Peter; Ishida, Toru (2002). Digital Cities II: Computational and Sociological Approaches Second Kyoto Workshop on Digital Cities Kyoto, Japan, October 18–20, 2001 Revised Papers. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 2362. New York: Springer. doi:10.1007/3-540-45636-8. ISBN 978-3-540-43963-9. S2CID 40777874.
  27. [27]
    van den Besselaar, Peter; Koizumi, Satoshi (2005). Digital Cities III. Information Technologies for Social Capital: Cross-cultural Perspectives: Third International Digital Cities Workshop, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, September 18-19, 2003, Revised Selected Papers. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 3081. Berlin: Springer. doi:10.1007/b107136. ISBN 978-3-540-25971-8.
  28. [28]
    Foth, Marcus; Forlano, Laura; Satchell, Christine; Gibbs, Martin (2011). From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen: Urban Informatics, Social Media, Ubiquitous Computing, and Mobile Technology to Support Citizen Engagement. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01651-3.
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    de Lange, Michiel, and Martijn de Waal, eds. 2019. The Hackable City: Digital Media and Collaborative City-making in the Network Society. London: Springer. ISBN 978-981-13-2694-3. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2694-3
  30. [30]
    Hearn, Greg; Tacchi, Jo; Foth, Marcus; Lennie, June (2009). Action Research and New Media: Concepts, Methods, and Cases. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. ISBN 978-1-57273-866-9.
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    Foth, Marcus; Brynskov, Martin (2016). "Participatory Action Research for Civic Engagement". In Gordon, Eric; Mihailidis, Paul (eds.). Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 563–580. ISBN 978-0-262-03427-2.
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    Ito, K.; Biljecki, F. (2021). "Assessing bikeability with street view imagery and computer vision". Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies. 132: 103371. arXiv:2105.08499. doi:10.1016/j.trc.2021.103371. S2CID 234763005.
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    Satchell, Christine (1 November 2008). "Cultural Theory and Design: Identifying Trends by Looking at the Action in the Periphery". ACM Interactions. 15 (6): 23. doi:10.1145/1409040.1409046. S2CID 18080706.

Further reading

Since Foth's 2009 Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics,[1] a number of books and special issues of academic journals have been published on the topic, which further demonstrate the increasing significance and notability of the field of urban informatics. Key works include:

More information Year, Publication ...
  1. [1]
    Foth, Marcus (2009). Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. ISBN 978-1-60566-152-0.
  2. [2]
    Shepard, Mark (2011). Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-51586-3.
  3. [3]
    Foth, Marcus; Forlano, Laura; Satchell, Christine; Gibbs, Martin (2011). From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen: Urban Informatics, Social Media, Ubiquitous Computing, and Mobile Technology to Support Citizen Engagement. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01651-3.
  4. [4]
    Kitchin, Rob; Dodge, Martin (2011). Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262042482.
  5. [5]
    Gordon, Eric; Silva, Adriana de Souza e (2011). Net Locality: Why Location Matters in a Networked World. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-8060-3.
  6. [6]
    Hearn, Greg; Foth, Marcus; Stevenson, Tony (May 2011). "Community Engagement for Sustainable Urban Futures". Futures. 43 (4): 357–360. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.659.3467. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2011.01.002.
  7. [7]
    Robinson, Ricky; Rittenbruch, Markus; Foth, Marcus; Filonik, Daniel; Viller, Stephen (April 2012). "Street Computing: Towards an Integrated Open Data Application Programming Interface (API) for Cities" (PDF). Journal of Urban Technology. 19 (2): 1–23. doi:10.1080/10630732.2012.698064. S2CID 61012545.
  8. [8]
    Townsend, Anthony M. (2013). Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. ISBN 978-0-393-08287-6.
  9. [9]
    McCullough, Malcolm (2013). Ambient Commons: Attention in the Age of Embodied Information. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01880-7.
  10. [10]
    Greenfield, Adam (2013). Against the Smart City. New York, NY: Do Projects. ISBN 978-0-9824383-1-2.
  11. [11]
    Foth, Marcus; Rittenbruch, Markus; Robinson, Ricky; Viller, Stephen (2013). Street Computing: Urban Informatics and City Interfaces. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-84336-2.
  12. [12]
    de Waal, Martijn (2014). The City as Interface: How New Media Are Changing the City. Rotterdam, NL: NAi010 Publisher. ISBN 9789462080508.
  13. [13]
    Unsworth, Kristene; Forte, Andrea; Dilworth, Richardson (22 December 2014). "Urban Informatics: The Role of Citizen Participation in Policy Making". Journal of Urban Technology. 21 (4): 1–5. doi:10.1080/10630732.2014.971527. S2CID 110769964.
  14. [14]
    Houghton, Kirralie; Choi, Jaz Hee-jeong; Lugmayr, Artur (2 October 2015). "Urban Acupuncture" (PDF). Journal of Urban Technology. 22 (3): 1–2. doi:10.1080/10630732.2015.1087684. S2CID 78666569.
  15. [15]
    Kukka, Hannu; Foth, Marcus; Dey, Anind K. (September 2015). "Transdisciplinary Approaches to Urban Computing" (PDF). International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. 81: 1–3. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2015.05.003. S2CID 44920638.
  16. [16]
    Foth, Marcus; Brynskov, Martin; Ojala, Timo (2015). Citizen's Right to the Digital City: Urban Interfaces, Activism, and Placemaking. Singapore: Springer. ISBN 9789812879172.
  17. [17]
    Willis, Katharine S. (2015). Netspaces: Space and Place in a Networked World. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781472438621.
  18. [18]
    Salim, Salim; Haque, Usman (2015). "Urban computing in the wild: A survey on large scale participation and citizen engagement with ubiquitous computing, cyber physical Systems, and internet of Things". International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. 81 (81(Transdisciplinary Approaches to Urban Computing)): 31–48. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2015.03.003.
  19. [19]
    Katz, Vikki S.; Hampton, Keith N. (January 2016). "Communication in City and Community: From the Chicago School to Digital Technology". American Behavioral Scientist. 60 (1): 3–7. doi:10.1177/0002764215601708. S2CID 148661247.
  20. [20]
    Ratti, Carlo; Claudel, Matthew (2016). The City of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, Hackers, and the Future of Urban Life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-20480-3.
  21. [21]
    Thakuriah, Piyushimita; Tilahun, Nebiyou; Zellner, Moira (2017). Seeing Cities Through Big Data: Research, Methods and Applications in Urban Informatics. Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-40900-9.
  22. [22]
    Shi, Wenzhong; Goodchild, Michael; Batty, Michael; Kwan, Mei-Po; Zhang, Anshu (2021). Urban Informatics. Singapore: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-981-15-8983-6. ISBN 978-981-15-8982-9.
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