This book explores the emergence and development of data in cities. It exposes how Information Communication Technology (ICT) corporations seeking to capitalize on cities developing needs for urban technologies have contributed to many of the issues we are faced with today, including urbanization, centralization of wealth and climate change. Using several case studies, the book provides examples of the, in part, detrimental effects ICT driven 'Smart City' solutions have had and will have on the human characteristics that contribute to the identity and sense of belonging innate to many of our cities. The rise in Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and technologies like social media, has changed how people interact with and in cities, and Allam discusses of how these changes require planners, engineers and other urban professionals to adjust their approach. The main question the book seeks to address is 'how can we use emerging technologies to recalibrate our cities and ensure increased livability, whilst also effectively dealing with their associate challenges?' This is an ongoing conversation, but one that requires extensive thought as it has extensive consequences. This book will be of interest to students, academics, professionals and policy makers across a broad range of subjects including urban studies, architecture and STS, geography and social policy.
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Yes, you can access Cities and the Digital Revolution by Zaheer Allam in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Sociology. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Z. AllamCities and the Digital Revolutionhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29800-5_1
Begin Abstract
1. Data as the New Driving Gears of Urbanization
Zaheer Allam1
(1)
The Port Louis Development Initiative (PLDI), Port Louis, Mauritius
Zaheer Allam
Abstract
While there have been a slow rural–urban transition which highlighted the role that cities are the centre for sustaining economies of regions, and even countries, it was the advent of the Internet that has drastically changed the way they are planned, operate and seen. A resulting rise in data, fuelled by a heavy technological revolution, showed that there are new ways of increasing urban efficiency and productivity. This has even reflected in reforms at governance levels and has proved how the digital layer can provide stronger networks. However, while this reinforces economies, it brings substantial changes in urban lifestyle that has for centuries and decades remained unchanged. This disruption in lifestyle is happening at faster speed and impacting not only on the social strata, but also reflecting in its physical form, the urban morphology. While the primary notion of increasing efficiency of cities is understood, the question remains of how to allow change while still catering for the liveability of cities.
The world is experiencing two great phenomena: unprecedented rates of urbanization and rapid increase in global population. The latter is confirmed in a report by Population Reference Bureau (2018) which asserts that the number of people living in urban areas will increase from the current 54% to approximately 68% by 2050. Similarly, the global population will rise from 7.6 billion to 9.9 billion in the same period (United Nations, 2017). It has been argued that the high rate of urbanization is spurred by a number of factors which are not limited to population increase and infrastructure development. As population increases, Villa (2017) argues that small towns transform to larger (and more denser) towns and with time, as more people settle in, town boundaries expand (urban sprawl) through the development of businesses and residential buildings and infrastructures like transportation networks leading to the joining of more than one two towns to form megacities, which are commonly defined as urban areas housing over 10 million people. From the record, this trend has been live and active such that the number of megacities are said to have increased to 27 by 2010, and this number is projected to reach 43 or more by 2030 (Kennedy et al., 2015). On the same note, the number of large cities —those with between 1 million and 10 million—will increase from 512 in 2016 to 662 by 2030 (Data Booklet: United Nations, 2016).
The population increase and that of urbanization have been seen to result in the dissolving of some rural areas, with some becoming part of the urban areas and this is prompted by expanding urban boundaries leading to massive change in land use and also movement of people to urban areas to seek opportunities for improved incomes, education and urban life among other factors. As this happens, it has been observed that numerous sectors such as the agricultural sector, transport and communication, manufacturing and numerous service industries among others are impacted (Zhu, 2017). Similarly, service industries also improve as the number of those seeking their services increase, and as economic growth take shape, increase in their purchasing power allows them to demand more services to the benefits of the said sectors.
Tajrin and Hossain (2018) explain that the convergence of large number of people in one node has the opportunity to increase the number of opportunities on economical, social, environmental and political fronts. Menike (2018) showcases that population increase, more so in urban areas though it may first be perceived as an obstacle to development and supply of basic amenities, has numerous economic and social advantages. He argues that such population increase prompts stakeholders to increase efforts in improving urban services resulting in an improvement in liveability dimensions such as health care, economic well-being and security facilitated by high levels of literacy and education, improvement of infrastructures that promotes accessibility to these services and improvement in biomedical sector, financial institutions, businesses and markets and security agencies among other are pointed. UN-Habitat (2015) argues that population increase is also pegged on political and economic stability, which, to some extent, can be seen to have prevailed in many parts of the world in the recent decade, hence allowing a conducive environment and resources for stakeholders to research on better healthcare, better agricultural practices that promote food security and construction of infrastructures that are commensurate to a surging population (Guneralp, Lwasa, Masundire, Parnell, & Seto, 2018).
In the recent past, such opportunities have been accentuated by technological advancement and innovations, and their diffusion, in different spheres of the urban fabric. For instance, the inception of Internet around 20 years ago has brought drastic changes in all spheres, and as Dalglish (2006) argues, this has made the world a global village, especially in terms of communication, movement and information sharing via social and mainstream media.
With the advent of Internet came the era of digital revolution which has brought numerous possibilities, especially due to the availability of the massive amount of data being generated in all quarters. In urban areas, this has been facilitated first a foremost by the advent of electrification which was the first form of grid connection witnessed by cities . Till today, the extent of this connection can be seen from high altitudes, as seen in Figs. 1.1 and 1.2.
Fig. 1.1
Photograph of Manhattan New York showing electrification grids at night
(Source NASA)
Fig. 1.2
Space view on Earth showing the electrification of cities in the USA at night
(Source NASA)
This connected network has been later expanded in cities through the advent of the telephone and the Internet , laying the backdrop for data transfer. As technological advances made its way and the collection of data from various devices were made possible, the increasingly collected data were used to better understand different dimensions of the city, hence allowing city management and other stakeholders to device new and novel ways of increasing efficiency, productivity, liveability, resilience and environmental sustainability . Cheng et al. (2018) argue that availability of data, managed under the big data technologies, that is also integrated with other new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, Internet of things (IoT) and crowd computing among others is transforming urban cities to more sustainable dimensions. This includes the improvement of efficiency in traffic flow, environmental sustainability , climate predictability, improvement of security and optimizing on resource use among many other possibilities (M. Z. Allam, 2018; Z. Allam, 2018a; Allam & Dhunny, 2019). de Souza, de Francisco, Piekarski, and do Prado (2018) highlight that when data from different urban components are integrated and computed using other supportive technologies such as machine learning and others, it allows for the creation of Smart Cities , which, on their part have been widely associated with a potential to address social, economic and environmental developments. In particular, Bhadani (2016) supports that such technologies are lauded for allowing optimal planning and implementation of different policies that are oriented toward citizen welfare. As Alvalez (2017) explains, the availability of data is also seen to impact on cleaner energy generation and also promotes optimal usage of the said energy in residential, commercial and industrial installation, hence promoting reduction in emissions which have a significant impact on climate change . Data also allow for optimal use of other resources like water, food supplies, scarce minerals, forest products and available open spaces such that, though the population is increasing, it can provide for more intelligent resource exploitation while ensuring a sustainable outcome.
While this new data-driven movement is relatively new, its application has changed the lifestyle of many and there are concerns that the association of technology to living fabrics promote a mechanical thinking which can negate the human qualities in cities . One notable dimension that is greatly affected is that of social interaction, especially noting that people can easily access almost any form of services without the need for human information exchange, as most of these services are automated and readily available at finger’s reach. Another field is that of transport through autonomous vehicles and unmanned drones being employed in urban ce...
