Feature:Data-Driven City

Feature:Data-Driven City

The title Data Driven City is , of course , a provocation. Most of our contributors' reactions point out the dangerous fallacy of blindly mining into the deluge of data generated by our digitally enhanced lives, as though optimal solutions to the complex and acute challenges posed by global urbanization can be quantifiabley extracted with the right algorithm. Post-Snowden, there's now understandable skepticism when governments attempt to tap into all-pervasive information technology. As science fiction has forewarned countless times, techno-utopias can all too easily unravel into sinister dystopias.

Most contributors stress that human agency - whether a designers' or user's own - must be the driving force behind technologies conceived to meet urbanities' rapidly revolving needs. As we spoke to leading innovators and commentators, a series of themes emerged around the spatial ramifications of big data:

Mapping-digital cartography is the platform for visualizing urban data and layering new services across cities;

Media Facades-the blurring distinction between light for illumination and light as data may soon revolutionize architectural design;

Mobility-disruptive business models based around mobile devices are altering established modes of transport ,which have underpinned most urban development;

Computational Tools-more intelligent tools will streamline, but also increasingly disrupt  the architecture profession;

Open-source Urbanism-in reaction to the Smart City movement, there's a growing debate around whether technology should improve cities top-down, through IT-driven public private ventures, or from the bottom-up, by cities' end-user themselves.

A city driven by data may be a contentious proposition, but a timely and important idea for discussion all the same.

Alastair Townsend , Guest Editor