The urban geographical imagination in the age of Big Data

This paper explores the variety of ways that emerging sources of (big) data are being used to re-conceptualize the city, and how these understandings of what the urban is shapes the design of interventions into it. Drawing on work on the performativity of economics, this paper uses two vignettes of the ‘new urban science’ and municipal vacant property mapping in order to argue that the mobilization of Big Data in the urban context doesn’t necessarily produce a single, greater understanding of the city as it actually is, but rather a highly variegated series of essentialized understandings of the city that render it knowable, governable and intervene-able. Through the construction of new, data-driven urban geographical imaginaries, these projects have opened up the space for urban interventions that work to depoliticize urban injustices and valorize new kinds of technical expertise as the means of going about solving these problems, opening up new possibilities for a remaking of urban space in the image of these sociotechnical paradigms. Ultimately, this paper argues that despite the importance of Big Data, as both a discourse and practice, to emerging forms of urban research and management, there is no singular or universal understanding of the urban that is promoted or developed through the application of these new sources of data, which in turn opens up meaningful possibilities for developing alternative uses of Big Data for understanding and intervening in the city in more emancipatory ways.

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The Instagram Image of the City. Insights from Lodz, Poland

Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series ◽

10.2478/bog-2018-0040 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 42 (42) ◽

pp. 213-225 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jakub Zasina

Keyword(s):

Big Data ◽

Social Networking ◽

Urban Space ◽

Social Networking Sites ◽

Visual Representations ◽

Local Context ◽

Careful Examination ◽

Urban Research ◽

The City

Abstract The age of big data opens new opportunities for urban research. As millions of users have been creating and transmitting visual representations of cityscapes (e.g., photos taken with smartphones), it is crucial to understand features of the online crowd-sourced images of cities and their relations with their offine archetypes. However, it seems that photos posted by users of social networking sites remain understudied and their informative potential has not been fully exploited yet. The aim of the conducted research was to examine and comprehend the nature of the Instagram image of the city. The paper presents the results of investigating 1867 Instagram photos featuring outdoor city views taken in Lodz, Poland in September 2015. The posted photos were classified by their components and attributes. The study revealed that Instagram content does not reflect the urban space in general. It rather selects geographies and subjects presenting aestheticized and picturesque places and objects. Nevertheless, the new components of cityscapes seem to be noteworthy for Instagram users. Finally, the paper argues that mapping Instagram content without prior and careful examination of the local context may lead to biased conclusions.

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Visualizing Conflict: Possibilities for Urban Research

Urban Planning ◽

10.17645/up.v2i1.880 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 100-107

Author(s):

Juan Francisco Saldarriaga ◽

Laura Kurgan ◽

Dare Brawley

Keyword(s):

Big Data ◽

Everyday Life ◽

Data Visualization ◽

Urban Space ◽

Data Literacy ◽

Urban Research ◽

The World ◽

Differences Of Opinion ◽

The City ◽

Urban Data

The Center for Spatial Research (CSR) is undertaking a multiyear project investigating what we have termed Conflict Urbanism. The term designates not simply the conflicts that take place in cities, but also conflict as a structuring principle of cities intrinsically, as a way of inhabiting and creating urban space. The increasing urbanization of warfare and the policing and surveillance of everyday life are examples of the term (Graham, 2010; Misselwitz & Rieniets, 2006; Weizman, 2014), but conflict is not limited to war and violence. Cities are not only destroyed but also built through conflict. They have long been arenas of friction, difference, and dissidence, and their irreducibly conflictual character manifests itself in everything from neighborhood borders, to differences of opinion and status, to ordinary encounters on the street. One major way in which CSR undertakes research is through interrogating the world of ‘big data.’ This includes analyzing newly accessible troves of ‘urban data,’ working to open up new areas of research and inquiry, as well as focusing on data literacy as an essential part of communicating with these new forms of urban information. In what follows we discuss two projects currently under way at CSR that use mapping and data visualization to explore and analyze Conflict Urbanism in two different contexts: the city of Aleppo, and the nation of Colombia.

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Out of the loop? On the radical and the routine in urban big data

Urban Studies ◽

10.1177/00420980211014026 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 004209802110140

Author(s):

Sarah Barns

Keyword(s):

Artificial Intelligence ◽

Big Data ◽

Computational Models ◽

Data Driven ◽

Urban Systems ◽

Out Of The Loop ◽

Urban Futures ◽

Urban Behaviour ◽

The City

This commentary interrogates what it means for routine urban behaviours to now be replicating themselves computationally. The emergence of autonomous or artificial intelligence points to the powerful role of big data in the city, as increasingly powerful computational models are now capable of replicating and reproducing existing spatial patterns and activities. I discuss these emergent urban systems of learned or trained intelligence as being at once radical and routine. Just as the material and behavioural conditions that give rise to urban big data demand attention, so do the generative design principles of data-driven models of urban behaviour, as they are increasingly put to use in the production of replicable, autonomous urban futures.

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From Crisis to Compensation: Reinventing Identity and Place in the Sideshow and the Laboratory

Humanities ◽

10.3390/h11010010 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 10

Author(s):

Elisavet Ioannidou

Keyword(s):

Urban Space ◽

Social Order ◽

Laboratory Experiments ◽

Individual Identity ◽

Victorian Culture ◽

Peripheral Location ◽

The City ◽

The Church ◽

Opening Up ◽

Physical Resemblance

Examining the ambivalent place of the sideshow and the laboratory within Victorian culture and its reimaginings, this essay explores the contradiction between the narratively orchestrating role and peripheral location of the sideshow in Leslie Parry’s Church of Marvels (2015) and the laboratory in NBC’s Dracula (2013–2014), reading these neo-Victorian spaces as heterotopias, relational places simultaneously belonging to and excluded from the dominant social order. These spaces’ impacts on individual identity illustrate this uneasy relationship. Both the sideshow and the laboratory constitute sites of resignification, emerging as “crisis heterotopias” or sites of passage: in Parry’s novel, the sideshow allows the Church twins to embrace their unique identities, surpassing the limitations of their physical resemblance; in Dracula, laboratory experiments reverse Dracula’s undead condition. Effecting reinvention, these spaces reconfigure the characters’ senses of belonging, propelling them to places beyond their confines, and thus projecting the latter’s heterotopic qualities onto the city. Potentially harmful, yet opening up urban space to include identities which are considered aberrant, these relocations envision the city as a “heterotopia of compensation”: an alternative, possibly idealized, space that reifies the sideshow’s and the laboratory’s attempts to achieve greater extroversion and visibility for their liminal occupants, thus fostering neo-Victorianism’s outreach efforts to support the disempowered.

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Student Homelessness: Sheltering Our Future: An Adaptable Approach to Underutilised City Spaces

10.26686/wgtn.17131811 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

◽

Caryl Ramos

Keyword(s):

Urban Space ◽

Modular Design ◽

Well Being ◽

Test Site ◽

Urban Setting ◽

Homeless Population ◽

Future Application ◽

Design Development ◽

Urban Context ◽

The City

<p>The increasing housing demands from population growth creates a persistent housing shortage and unaffordability in our cities. Students are one demographic that is dramatically affected as they move closer to their education provider for study. The student influx at the start of the semester creates a large demand in the already inadequate housing market. Students with a limited budget have reduced accommodation options and this consequently drives many into a state of homelessness. A study from University of Otago measures that over a quarter of New Zealand’s homeless population are students (Amore, 2016). This considerable number of students are living in cars, tents, couch-surfing and sleeping rough for weeks during their studies. The desperate situation impinges on the student’s health and well-being and thus their academic performance. In this context, the scope of this research focuses on the requirements of homeless tertiary students in the urban setting. Their vulnerability, insecurity and distress are explored to provide direction to solutions that will alleviate the existing problems of their insufficient living environments. As proximity to the education providers and amenities are key factors, this thesis examines underutilised and leftover spaces within the city as opportunities for inhabitation, and to create efficient use of urban space. Currently, there are successful examples of activating overlooked laneways into vibrant spaces. However, these transformations rely on the activities in the lane and the interventions are largely landscaping and installations. By investigating the successful regeneration of previously undesirable and neglected spaces through architectural re-imagination, this thesis identify laneways to be a potential site to the urgent need for shelters. The architectural experiments and design development are informed by the combination of site challenges and programme to form an overall design-led research. The thesis tests how temporary modular design has a significant role in the design of economic and adaptable solutions for the increasing issue of homelessness. This establishes that through a critical design, we may shelter those in desperate need within the urban context. The architecture provides a safe environment that is empathetic to its users and the larger urban scale while also creating a statement and awareness to homelessness. The thesis concludes with the design framework for a single test site and assesses its suitability for future application to other leftover spaces in the city.</p>

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Emerging Biophilic Urbanism: The Value of the Human–Nature Relationship in the Urban Space

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12135487 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (13) ◽

pp. 5487 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Simona Totaforti

Keyword(s):

Human Nature ◽

Urban Space ◽

Urban Sociology ◽

Urban Context ◽

Natural Landscape ◽

Biophilic Design ◽

The Future ◽

And Behaviors ◽

The Relationship ◽

The City

The research presented in this article adopts an urban sociology perspective to explore the relationship between spaces designed with biophilic principles and people’s pro-environmental values and behaviors. The research hypothesized that biophilic design and planning promote connectedness with nature and are positively related to pro-environmental and more sustainable values and behaviors. The contemporary city asserts the need for new paradigms and conceptual frameworks for reconfiguring the relationship between the urban environment and the natural environment. In order to understand whether biophilic design, planning, and policies can meet the global challenges regarding the future existence on earth of humans, focus groups were conducted to investigate how people’s relationship with the built-up space and the natural landscape is perceived, and to what extent the inclusion of nature and its patterns at various levels of urban planning meets people’s expectations. The results suggest that biophilic design and planning can be considered a useful paradigm to deal with the challenges that are posed by the city of the future, also in terms of sustainability, by reinterpreting and enhancing the human–nature relation in the urban context.

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Research on the Simulation Application of Data Mining in Urban Spatial Structure

Journal of Advanced Transportation ◽

10.1155/2020/8863363 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 2020 ◽

pp. 1-9

Author(s):

Jun Zhang ◽

Xin Sui ◽

Xiong He

Keyword(s):

Data Mining ◽

Internet Of Things ◽

Spatial Structure ◽

Urban Space ◽

Simulation Analysis ◽

Sustainable Urban Development ◽

Urban Spatial Structure ◽

Urban Centers ◽

Urban Research ◽

The City

Data mining and simulation of the Internet of things (IOT) have been applied more and more widely in the rapidly developing urban research discipline. Urban spatial structure is an important field that needs to be explored in the sustainable urban development, while data mining is relatively rare in the research of urban spatial structure. In this study, 705,747 POI (Point of Interest) were used to conduct simulation analysis of western cities in China by mining the data of online maps. Through kernel density analysis and spatial correlation index, the distribution and aggregation characteristics of different types of POI data in urban space were analyzed and the spatial analysis and correlation characteristics among different functional centers of the city were obtained. The spatial structure of the city is characterized by “multicenters and multigroups”, and the distribution of multicenters is also shown in cities with different functional types. The development degree of different urban centers varies significantly, but most of them are still in their infancy. Data mining of Internet of things (IOT) has good adaptability in city simulation and will play an important role in urban research in the future.

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The Metonymic Urbanism of Twenty-first-century Mumbai

Urban Studies ◽

10.1177/0042098012452458 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 49 (13) ◽

pp. 2955-2973 ◽

Cited By ~ 29

Author(s):

Andrew Harris

Keyword(s):

Policy Formation ◽

First Century ◽

Urban Research ◽

European Cities ◽

The Past ◽

Urban Analysis ◽

The City ◽

Geographical Imaginations ◽

Opening Up ◽

Research And Policy

Over the past decade, Mumbai has increasingly been understood as representative of new forms, trajectories and processes of 21st-century urbanism. This has been a welcome rejoinder to a continued predominance of North American and European cities within international urban research and debate. Yet it is important to query what theory cultures and geographical imaginations have been mapped onto Mumbai in this recent emphasis on the city. This paper argues that, unless Mumbai’s specificities and grounded realities are used to disrupt and reframe existing urban analysis, there is a risk of replicating the comparative perspectives and visions of élite policy-making. This does not mean conferring paradigmatic status on Mumbai or isolating Mumbai as an exceptional form of contemporary urbanism, but instead generating new theoretical dialogue and opening up new channels of urban research and policy formation within a wider world of cities.

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The case for IT transformation and big data for safety risk management on the GB railways

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part O Journal of Risk and Reliability ◽

10.1177/1748006x17728210 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 232 (2) ◽

pp. 151-163 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Coen van Gulijk ◽

Peter Hughes ◽

Miguel Figueres-Esteban ◽

Rawia El-Rashidy ◽

George Bearfield

Keyword(s):

Risk Management ◽

Big Data ◽

Data Driven ◽

Management Systems ◽

Research Needs ◽

Safety Risk ◽

Digital Skills ◽

Analysis Programme ◽

Opening Up ◽

Very High

This article presents the case for IT transformation and big data for safety risk management on the GB railways. This article explains why the interest in data-driven safety solutions is very high in the railways by describing the drivers that shape risk management for the railways. A brief overview of research projects in the big data risk analysis programme supports the case and helps understand the research agenda for the transformation of safety and risk on the GB railways. The drivers and the projects provide insight in the current research needs for the transformation and explains why safety researchers have to broaden their skill set to include digital skills and potentially even programming. The case for IT transformation of risk management systems is compelling, and this article describes just the tip of the iceberg of opportunities opening up for safety analysis that, after all, depends on data.

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Sustainable targeted interventions to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic: A big data-driven modeling study in Hong Kong

10.1101/2021.01.29.21250786 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Hanchu Zhou ◽

Qingpeng Zhang ◽

Zhidong Cao ◽

Helai Huang ◽

Daniel Dajun Zeng

Keyword(s):

Big Data ◽

Hong Kong ◽

Control Measure ◽

Human Mobility ◽

Local Economy ◽

Data Driven ◽

Agent Based Model ◽

Agent Based ◽

Targeted Interventions ◽

The City

AbstractBackgroundThe nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) for contact suppression have been widely used worldwide, which impose harmful burdens on the population and the local economy. The evaluation of alternative NPIs is needed to confront the pandemic with less disruption. By harnessing human mobility data, we develop an agent-based model that can evaluate the efficacies of NPIs with individualized mobility simulations. Based on the model, we propose the data-driven targeted interventions to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong without city-wide NPIs.MethodsWe develop a data-driven agent-based model for 7.55 million Hong Kong residents to evaluate the efficacies of various NPIs in the first 80 days of the initial outbreak. The entire territory of Hong Kong is split into 4,905 500m×500m grids. The model can simulate detailed agent interactions based on the demographics data, public facilities and functional buildings, transportation systems, and travel patterns. The general daily human mobility patterns are adopted from Google’s Community Mobility Report. The scenario without any NPIs is set as the baseline. By simulating the epidemic progression and human movement at the individual level, we proposed model-driven targeted interventions, which focus on the surgical testing and quarantine of only a small portion of regions instead of enforcing NPIs in the whole city. The efficacious of common NPIs and the proposed targeted interventions are evaluated by extensive Monte Carlo simulations.FindingsWithout NPIs, we estimate that there are 128,711 total infections (IQR 23,511-70,310) by the end of the 80-day simulation. The proposed targeted intervention averts 95.85% and 94.13% of baseline infections with only 100 (2.04%) and 50 (1.02%) grids being quarantined, respectively. Mild social distancing without testing results in 16,503 total cases (87.18% infections averted), rapid implementation of full lockdown and testing measures (such as the control measure in Mainland China) performs the best, with only 805 infections (99.37% infections averted). Testing-and-quarantining 10%, 20%, 50% of all symptomatic cases with 24-hour/48-hour avert 89.92%/ 87.78%, 95.47%/ 92.42%, and 97.93%/ 95.61% infections, respectively.InterpretationBig data-driven mobility modeling can inform targeted interventions, which are able to effectively contain the COVID-19 outbreak with much lower disruption of the city. It represents a promising approach to sustainable NPIs to help us revive the economy of the city and the world.

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