Abstract
The rapidly growing use of digital technologies in urban contexts is generating a huge and increasing amount of data, providing real-time information about the urban environment and its inhabitants. The unprecedented availability of data allows us to not only improve advanced knowledge and gain a deeper understanding of urban dynamics, but also enact data evidence-based transformative processes and actions in the direction of smarter, more sustainable, resilient, and socially equitable cities. In this context, the literature on smart cities has recently expressed the need to more deeply involve urban visions and communities in the process of regeneration. This paper aims to analyze how big data can be useful in understanding the effectiveness of small pilot actions of regeneration and reactivation in valuable cultural heritage (CH) urban environments. Pilot actions were developed in the context of the European Union funded project “ROCK—Regeneration and Optimization of cultural heritage in Creative and Knowledge cities” (GA730280). The paper analyses data collected by the ROCK City People Flow tool, in different use and time conditions, in two central squares of Bologna (Italy), in order to rate event successes, spatial transformation effects, and regeneration tactics responses. Data confirm the complexity of interpreting phenomena in such contexts but also provide useful indications for future planning.
Highlights
The rapidly growing use of digital technologies in urban contexts is generating a huge and increasing amount of data, providing real-time information about the urban environment and its inhabitants
This paper aims to analyze how big data can be useful in understanding the effectiveness of small pilot actions of regeneration and reactivation in valuable cultural heritage (CH) urban environments
As the research question deals with the comprehension of technologies and big datasets related to people which can be useful for understanding how to address urban transformations in existing urban areas, the case study of Via Zamboni seemed very interesting for several reasons: at first, within the ROCK project, we developed a methodology of research-action-research for the area that led to the creation of pilot interventions in the form of physical transformations in combination with events and other initiatives; those physical transformations were co-designed with the community; they were an example of adaptive reuse of space framed by the presence of CH
Summary
The rapidly growing use of digital technologies in urban contexts is generating a huge and increasing amount of data, providing real-time information about the urban environment and its inhabitants. The collected datasets about urban systems and their inhabitants, if adequately harnessed and processed, can reflect the way citizens use and experience urban spaces, services, and infrastructures, and the way cities react to climate change. This kind of data application is important to comprehend the real-time situation under investigation, and to generate useful knowledge to predict future dynamics and to enhance decision making. It can be transformed in a tool able to enhance the comprehension of the impacts of implemented transformative actions and strategies in order to verify their effectiveness and support their design Such feedback is valuable for all levels of city planning and governance. We are living an era when urban contexts often need to understand ways to improve their resilience, mitigation, and adaptation to climate change, in a way that is in line with citizens’ needs [5] (p. 16)
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