Abstract
In an era of smart cities, artificial intelligence and machine learning, data is purported to be the ‘new oil’, fuelling increasingly complex analytics and assisting us to craft and invent future cities. This paper outlines the role of what we know today as big data in understanding the city and includes a summary of its evolution. Through a critical reflective case study approach, the research examines the application of urban transport big data for informing planning of the city of Sydney. Specifically, transport smart card data, with its diverse constraints, was used to understand mobility patterns through the lens of the 30 min city concept. The paper concludes by offering reflections on the opportunities and challenges of big data and the promise it holds in supporting data-driven approaches to planning future cities.
Highlights
Clive Humby (2008) [1]—of Tesco Clubcard fame once declared that ‘data is the new oil’, broadly connecting the digital collection and analysis of ‘big’ data—and behavioural data generated by human activity in particular—to a nascent Fourth Industrial Revolution [2]
Big data has been linked to the smart city, the Internet of Things (IoT), and, more recently, to the revival of the ‘Digital Twin” [3]
It may perhaps be fair to frame Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS) as a big data, smart city ‘solution’ that predates the existence of these terms
Summary
Clive Humby (2008) [1]—of Tesco Clubcard fame once declared that ‘data is the new oil’, broadly connecting the digital collection and analysis of ‘big’ data—and behavioural data generated by human activity in particular—to a nascent Fourth Industrial Revolution [2]. Big data has been linked to the smart city, the Internet of Things (IoT), and, more recently, to the revival of the ‘Digital Twin” [3]. This ‘new oil’ has fuelled increasingly complex and dynamic city analytics, as well as displacing survey data historically collected to understand demographic change and human behaviour. We trace a number of opportunities and challenges in the exploitation of big data within a land-use and transportation planning context. We provide a critical reflection on the promise of big data, and on the opportunity and challenges in its access and its use in planning our future cities
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