The ethics of smart cities and urban science

By Rob Kitchin. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 2016

396 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Software-enabled technologies and urban big data have become essential to the functioning of cities. Consequently, urban operational governance and city services are becoming highly responsive to a form of data-driven urbanism that is the key mode of production for smart cities. At the heart of data-driven urbanism is a computational understanding of city systems that reduces urban life to logic and calculative rules and procedures, which is underpinned by an instrumental rationality and realist epistemology. This rationality and epistemology are informed by and sustains urban science and urban informatics, which seek to make cities more knowable and controllable. This paper examines the forms, practices and ethics of smart cities and urban science, paying particular attention to: instrumental rationality and realist epistemology; privacy, datafication, dataveillance and geosurveillance; and data uses, such as social sorting and anticipatory governance. It argues that smart city initiatives and urban science need to be re-cast in three ways: a re-orientation in how cities are conceived; a reconfiguring of the underlying epistemology to openly recognize the contingent and relational nature of urban systems, processes and science; and the adoption of ethical principles designed to realize benefits of smart cities and urban science while reducing pernicious effects. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The ethical impact of data science’.

Subfields: Media Technology, Sociology and Political Science, Transportation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/687e00a5fec7d747d18866f60b7a21973e80b04f

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Citations in the corpus

Smarter eco-cities and their leading-edge artificial intelligence of things solutions for environmental sustainability: A comprehensive systematic review (2023, background): “This was manifested in the processes and practices of smart cities becoming “ highly responsive to a form of data-driven urbanism ” [146].”
The governance of smart cities: A systematic literature review (2018, background): “…Highlights participatory character of SCG. Shows two idealtype models (technologies for concentrated and for distributed intelligence) 47 Kitchin (2016) Theoretical – Components 1) Examines forms, practices and ethics of SCs. Argues SC initiatives need to be recast (re-orientation how…”
What is data justice? The case for connecting digital rights and freedoms globally (2017, background): “…data reﬂecting economic and human development, and in particular of ‘data fumes’ (Thatcher, 2014) – data produced as a by-product of people’s use of technological devices and services – is driving a shift in policymaking worldwide from being data informed to being data driven (Kitchin, 2016).”