Abstract
This editorial introduces a Special Issue on Big Data in the City. Collectively, six research articles and two commentaries explore the roles that Big Data can and might play in enhancing our understanding of urban processes and the qualities of urban outcomes. Big Data may be intrinsically considered a neutral technology but – refracted through existing power structures and resource distributions – its application within cities is by no means guaranteed always to help in the amelioration of social injustices or in the promotion of urban well-being. In application, Big Data becomes a performative technology that can be, is and will be further used in the creation and regulation of the cities of this century, a process that will be messy and of mixed consequence. The task for urban studies research is to shape that performativity, and to challenge any tendency that emerges to the further entrenchment of social inequities. In pursuit of these aims, and sensitively deployed, Big Data can be cast as part of the route map to better urban futures.
Highlights
This editorial introduces a Special Issue on Big Data in the City
Recent years have seen the launch of new journals such as Big Data, Big Data Research and Big Data and Society, as well as stimulating multiple social science-relevant Big Data-themed special issues in other journals, such as: ‘Critiquing Big Data: Politics, Ethics, Epistemology’; ‘Big Data Methods and Applications’; ‘Big Data and Firm Performance’; ‘Advances in Big Data Analytics and Intelligence’; and ‘Big Data and the Human and Social Sciences’
The articles collated in this issue seek to illuminate some of the theoretical, empirical and methodological advantages and challenges for the city that rest in Big Data
Summary
Big Data, characterised by its volume, variety and velocity (Gandomi and Haider, 2015), is the new raw material of the 21st century. Whilst the explosion of interest in Big Data is entirely understandable (Burrows and Savage, 2014), to date Urban Studies Journal has gained (with notable exceptions) limited purchase in these debates. This Special Issue, we hope, will begin to rectify this shortfall. Its purpose is to draw together leading scholarship that explores and illustrates the potential of Big Data to illuminate the functioning of cities and the lived realities of their citizenry, and by doing so to enrich urban studies. We introduce the novel contributions contained within this Special Issue
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