Data-driven smart sustainable urbanism: the intertwined societal factors underlying its materialization, success, expansion, and evolution

Abstract

Visions of future advances in science and technology (S&T) inevitably bring with them wide-ranging common visions on how societies, and thus cities as social organizations, will evolve in the future and the immense opportunities this future will bring. This relates to the role of science-based technology in modern society. The focus here is on big data science and analytics and the underpinning technologies as an instance of S&T and its role in advancing sustainability in modern cities. This relates to what has been dubbed data-driven smart sustainable urbanism. However, there is a little understanding about how it has emerged and why it has become institutionalized and interwoven with politics and policy-urban dissemination. Therefore, this paper examines the intertwined societal factors underlying its materialization, success, expansion, and evolution, as well as critically discusses urban science and big data technology as social constructions in terms of their inherent flaws, limits, and biases. This paper argues that data-driven smart sustainable urbanism is shaped by socio-cultural and politico-institutional structures. And it will prevail for many years to come given the underlying transformational power of big data science and analytics, coupled with its legitimation capacity associated with the scientific discourse as the ultimate form of rational thought and the basis for legitimacy in knowledge-making and policy-making. This paper also argues that there is a need for re-casting urban science in ways that reconfigure the underlying epistemology to recognize the complex and dynamic nature of smart sustainable cities, as well as for re-casting them in ways that re-orientate in how they are conceived.

Smart Eco-City Strategies and Solutions for Sustainability: The Cases of Royal Seaport, Stockholm, and Western Harbor, Malmö, Sweden

“…It is worth pointing that cities are complex systems par excellence and hence dynamically changing and adaptive; self-organizing social networks embedded in space and enabled by urban infrastructure, activities, and services; and developed by multitudinous collective and individual decisions from top-down and bottom-up [61,131]. In view of that, while computational and scientific approaches are very relevant and important for understanding and dealing with the different aspects of urban complexity through big data analytics and the underpinning technologies, they remain inadequate to solve all urban problems ( [132,133]). These are often best solved through political/social solutions, citizen participation, and deliberative democracy, rather than technocratic forms of governance [134,135].…”

Environmentally data-driven smart sustainable cities: applied innovative solutions for energy efficiency, pollution reduction, and urban metabolism

“…They moreover enable the further optimization of energy efficiency through automated decisions. In a nutshell, as concluded by Bibri (2019f), smart sustainable urbanism will prevail for many years yet to come given the underlying transformational power of big data science and analytics, coupled with its legitimation capacity associated with the scientific discourse as the ultimate form of rational thought and the basis for legitimacy in knowledge production.…”

“…Policy is a salient factor for any societal transition or transformation, in particular sustainability. Bibri (2019f) argues that political action is of critical importance to, if not determining in, the emergence, materialization, expansion, functioning, and evolution of data-driven smart sustainable cities as an academic discourse. In fact, this emerging paradigm of urbanismis not an element closed in the "ivory tower" of the research community, but it is influenced by the macro-political practices in connection with sustainable development.…”

“…Policy has a primary role in aligning and mobilizing different stakeholders in the same direction. As stated by Bibri (2019f), political processes represent the set-up under which dynamic networks of urban actors can interact within diverse urban sectors in the development, diffusion, and utilization of knowledge and technology pertaining to data-driven solutions in the context of smart sustainable urbanism.…”

The eco-city and its core environmental dimension of sustainability: green energy technologies and their integration with data-driven smart solutions

“…In general, as argued by Rapoport (2014), while the ability of eco-cities to achieve their utopian ambitions may be limited by the realities of being of a profit-driven, entrepreneurial nature, they can still help drive broader sociotechnical transitions, and also play a valuable role in regard to providing a place to test innovative ideas and an ideal to aspire to. Besides, Bibri (2019f) concludes that data-driven smart sustainable urbanism is shaped by socio-cultural and politico-institutional structures, and will prevail for many years yet to come given the underlying transformational power of big data science and analytics, coupled with its legitimation capacity associated with the scientific discourse as the ultimate form of rational thought and the basis for legitimacy in knowledge-making and policy-making.…”