Smart cities, big data and urban policy: Towards urban analytics for the long run

TLDR

Big data is heralded as a new era for urban research, planning, and policy, enabling large‑scale real‑time mining and pattern detection, yet its practical contribution to long‑term policy remains underexplored and fraught with potential pitfalls. This paper examines the value and limits of big data for long‑term urban policy and planning. The authors develop a theoretical framework for urban analytics within smart urbanism, identify the tension between high‑frequency data and long‑duration structural challenges, and draw on empirical studies to highlight epistemological and practical obstacles. They find that high‑frequency data analysis poses epistemological and practical challenges for strategic policy, and propose ways in which urban analytics can inform long‑term planning.

Abstract

The analysis of big data is deemed to define a new era in urban research, planning and policy. Real-time data mining and pattern detection in high-frequency data can now be carried out at a large scale. Novel analytical practices promise smoother decision-making as part of a more evidence-based and smarter urbanism, while critical voices highlight the dangers and pitfalls of instrumental, data-driven city making to urban governance. Less attention has been devoted to identifying the practical conditions under which big data can realistically contribute to addressing urban policy problems. In this paper, we discuss the value and limitations of big data for long-term urban policy and planning. We first develop a theoretical perspective on urban analytics as a practice that is part of a new smart urbanism. We identify the particular tension of opposed temporalities of high-frequency data and the long durée of structural challenges facing cities. Drawing on empirical studies using big urban data, we highlight epistemological and practical challenges that arise from the analysis of high-frequency data for strategic purposesand formulate propositions on the ways in which urban analytics can inform long-term urban policy.