In the ongoing ‘data revolution’, the ubiquity of digital data in society underlines a transformative era. This is mirrored in the sciences, where ‘big data’ has emerged as a major research field. This article significantly extends previous scientometric analyses by tracing the field’s conceptual emergence and evolution across a 30-year period (1993–2022). Bibliometric analysis is based on 17 data categories that co-constitute the conceptual network of ‘big data’ research. Using Scopus, the search query resulted in 70,163 articles and 315,235 author keywords. These are analysed aggregately regarding co-occurrences of the 17 data categories and co-occurrences of data categories with author keywords, and regarding their disciplinary distributions and interdisciplinary reach. Temporal analysis reveals two major development phases: 1993–2012 and 2013–2022. The study demonstrates: (1) the rapid expansion of the research field concentrated on seven main data categories; (2) the consolidation of keyword (co-)occurrences on ‘machine learning’, ‘deep learning’, ‘artificial intelligence’ and ‘cloud computing’; and (3) significant interdisciplinarity across four main subject areas. Scholars can use the findings to combine data categories and author keywords in ways that align scholarly work with specific thematic and disciplinary interests. The findings could also inform research funding, especially concerning opportunities for cross-disciplinary research.

Globally, smart cities attract billions of dollars in investment annually, with related market opportunities forecast to grow year-on-year. The enormous resources poured into their development consist of financial capital, but also natural, human and social resources converted into infrastructure and real estate. The latter act as physical capital storage and sites for the creation of digital products and services expected to generate the highest value added. Smart cities serve as temporary spatial fixes until new and better investments opportunities emerge. Drawing from a comprehensive range of publications on capitalism, this article analyzes smart city developments as typifier of 21st century capital accumulation where the financialization of various capitals is the overarching driver and ecological overshoot and socio-economic undershoot are the main negative consequences. It closely examines six spatial manifestations of the smart city – science parks and smart campuses; innovation districts; smart neighborhoods; city-wide and city-regional smart initiatives; urban platforms; and alternative smart city spaces – as receptacles for the conversion of various capitals. It also considers the influence of different national regimes and institutional contexts on smart city developments. This is used, in the final part, to open a discussion about opportunities to temper the excesses of 21st century capitalism.

The 15-minute city has emerged as a key urban development theme in recent years, and especially since the Covid-19 pandemic. It has also become a focus point for tensions and debates over future urban trajectories, including over the role of automobility as the key technology that defines the experience of the urban. While the 15-minute city has become a widely-used concept by proponents and detractors alike, it remains vaguely defined and heavily contested. The paper makes two contributions: first, it reads plans for, and debates around, the 15-minute city as a form of post-political urbanism. Secondly, the paper introduces the concept of paranoid urbanism as a way of understanding urban tensions and conflicts linked to mistrust, fear and paranoia in the post-pandemic city. This novel concept goes to the heart of debates and tensions over the shape of the post-pandemic city, and over mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion that characterise it. The arguments presented in the paper aim to both chart areas for further research, and as provide critical pointers for policymakers and practitioners working in the area of urban development. To this end, the paper presents ten critical reflections aimed at both policy and practice, and at establishing new avenues of research on paranoid urbanism in the post-pandemic era.

Globally, smart cities attract billions of dollars in investment annually, with related market opportunities forecast to grow year-on-year. The enormous resources poured into their development consist of financial capital, but also natural, human and social resources converted into infrastructure and real estate. The latter act as physical capital storage and sites for the creation of digital products and services expected to generate the highest value added. Smart cities serve as temporary spatial fixes until new and better investments opportunities emerge. Drawing from a comprehensive range of publications on capitalism, this article analyzes smart city developments as typifier of 21st century capital accumulation where the financialization of various capitals is the overarching driver and ecological overshoot and socio-economic undershoot are the main negative consequences. It closely examines six spatial manifestations of the smart city - science parks and smart campuses; innovation districts; smart neighborhoods; city-wide and city-regional smart initiatives; urban platforms; and alternative smart city spaces - as receptacles for the conversion of various capitals. It also considers the influence of different national regimes and institutional contexts on smart city developments. This is used, in the final part, to open a discussion about opportunities to temper the excesses of 21st century capitalism.

Developing an appropriate governance model for smart city is complicated as it involves a variety of social and technical components. This article addresses the question of how a network model can provide a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic interactions among smart city components and their evolution over time by proposing a network-based approach to analyze smart city development. Starting with an Input–Output model, 14 key components of smart cities are identified. The model is then extended using a social network framework, revealing 91 potential interconnections among these components. A bibliometric analysis (1998–2023) of 214,211 articles measures the components' significance and tracks shifts over time. A qualitative review of the 25 most relevant articles further explores the interplay of three main components. Findings highlight the dynamic and multidimensional nature of smart city development, emphasizing the central role of ‘data assets’ and the evolving interconnections within the network. The findings are useful to researchers and practitioners by drawing attention to changes in the smart city concept over time and the connections between the various components involved in the process of smart city development. They also offer a new modeling tool to analyze the relative importance of nodes and edges in the scientific literature.

In the late 2010s, publics in the UK encountered new kinds of street furniture: Strawberry Energy Smart benches in London and InLinkUK kiosks in Glasgow, with smart features such as phone charging, free Wi-Fi, free phone calls, information screens and environmental data. This article analyses how smart street furniture is socially constructed by relevant social groups, each with different interests, forms of power and meanings. Smartness became associated not only with advanced technologies, but with a neoliberal agenda of private-public partnerships promising urban transformations, such as free devices for councils and citizens in exchange for access to advertising or sponsorship space in public places. The research examined the design, use and governance of new types of smart street furniture using mixed methods, including document analysis of promotional and regulatory texts, site observations of these devices, and interviews. We found that the uses and meanings of these devices were discovered at different moments by technology companies, local councils, and the public. Few members of the public knew about the devices, and showed little interest in them, even if they were the assumed users. An exception was gig workers and people experiencing homelessness who found uses for the smart features and a community activist who campaigned against these as surveillant and intrusive. Businesses and councils embraced smart city visions but took multiple approaches to agreements for the implementation and governance of smart street furniture. Notably, these more powerful groups discovered and negotiated the meanings of smart street furniture well before these were publicly encountered. This article reveals how a social construction of technology (SCOT) approach is strongest when it accounts for the relative power of social groups in struggles over meanings and resources. It provides empirical information on everyday sociotechnical encounters that provide nuanced evidence for wider critiques of smart city agendas.

This data article presents a tripartite dataset that formed the empirical basis for a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the use of city labels denoting sustainable urbanism in the scientific literature (Schraven, 2021). The tripartite dataset was generated using the abstract and citation database Scopus (Elsevier). Dataset A lists 148 city labels denoting different approaches to urban planning and development. It was used to select 35 city labels that specifically address sustainable urbanism (‘sustainable city’, ‘smart city’, ‘compact city’ etc.). Dataset B references 11,337 journal and review articles spanning the period 1990–2019. All retrieved articles contain at least one of the 35 city labels in the title, abstract, and author keywords. This database was used to calculate the frequency of the selected city labels across time, and to analyze the co-occurrences of city labels. It was further used to calculate the future trajectory of scientific outputs using the Logistic Growth Model (LGM). Dataset C entails 22,820 author keywords extracted from across the 11,337 articles. This was used to analyze the co-occurrences of keywords with city labels. The data article describes the methods of data collection and curation, the analysis performed, and the potential for reusing the data for further research. The comprehensiveness of the bibliometric corpus – spanning three decades and 35 city labels – lends itself to further investigation of how sustainable urban development has evolved as a topic in the scientific literature since the 1990s. Furthermore, the robust methodology developed could be adapted to other scientific repositories and, indeed, other research problems and questions.

Platform urbanism has emerged in recent years as an area of research into the ways in which digital platforms are increasingly central to the governance, economy, experience, and understanding of the city. In the paper, we argue that platform urbanism is an evolution of the smart city, constituted by novel, digitally-enabled socio-technical assemblages that enable new forms of social, economic and political intermediation. We offer a typological framework for a better conceptualization of platform urbanism and its complex socio-economic relationships. We further outline several directions for future research on platform urbanism, specifically: a.) the need to critically investigate new power geometries of corporate, legal and regulatory alignments; b.) how platform urbanism may be expressed in, and affect, cities in the Global South; c.) how it may need to be critically engaged with in regard to its development in response to emergent events such as the Covid-19 pandemic; and d.) how it may shape visions of the current and future city.

Equality in the City - Imaginaries of the Smart Future; Interdisciplinary collection exploring cities and urban spaces in the context of technological and digital innovation. An approachable discussion of the issues surrounding smart digital futures and the disruptive potential of smart technologies in our cities; issues of change, design, austerity, ownership, citizenship and equality. 29col and 3b&w.

In response to the need for ecological transition, a multitude of eco-city and eco-neighborhood initiatives have been instigated around the world. A major challenge has been the charge, captured by terms such as ‘eco enclaves’ and ‘environmental gentrification’, that these initiatives poorly attend to questions of social diversity and spatial equity. In France, too, where since 2008 a major national ÉcoQuartier initiative has been underway with close to 500 projects launched, some have warned against creating ‘écoquartiers bobo’ – urban development catering for a mainly ‘bourgeois-bohemian’ clientele. Consequently, this article investigates whether there may be selectivity at work in the placement of ÉcoQuartiers that favours advantageous locations. To this end, a detailed socio-spatial analysis was carried out with a sample of 214 implemented ÉcoQuartiers. Using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), eight factors were extracted from a comprehensive set of 53 socio-economic and geospatial variables. These were used to compare the sampled ÉcoQuartiers with the overall territory (mainland France and Corsica) as well as with a parallel national urban policy initiative, the ‘Quartiers Prioritaires de la Ville’ (‘urban priority neighborhoods’) which expressly focuses on areas of social disadvantage. As a result, this study reveals several dimensions of locational selectivity, which are discussed in terms of their policy and practice implications as well as their significance for conceptualizing eco-neighborhoods as socio-spatially inclusive places.

This article provides new evidence of the ways that smart cities materialize within specific sites and contexts through smart street furniture (SSF). Drawing on empirical data generated through mixed-method field research, the article examines the situated data relations that emerge in the context of the adoption of InLinkUK smart kiosks in Glasgow and Strawberry Energy smart benches in London. The concept of "silences" is proposed to analyze insufficiently articulated data relations resulting from gaps or absences in the use, design, and governance of this new type of urban furniture. The argument made is that data silences lead to failures to account for decisions and the deferral of responsibilities regarding the data aspects of these objects. It is suggested that an approach that focuses on "listening" to and "speaking" about data relations can enable dialogical forms of accountability, and realize the potential of SSF for citizens in local contexts.

The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has, from the outset, been characterized by a strong focus on real-time data intelligence and the use of data-driven technologies. Against this backdrop, this article investigates the impacts of the pandemic on Scottish local government's data practices and, in turn, whether the crisis acted as a driver for digital transformation. Mobilizing the literatures on digital government transformation, and on the impacts of crises on public administrations, the article provides insights into the dynamics of digital transformation during a heightened period of acute demands on the public sector. The research evidences an intensification of public sector data use and sharing in Scottish local authorities, with focus on health-related data and the integration of existing datasets to gather local intelligence. The research reveals significant changes related to the technical and social systems of local government organizations. These include the repurposing and adoption of information systems, the acceleration of inter and intraorganizational data sharing processes, as well as changes in ways of working and in attitudes toward data sharing and collaborations. Drawing on these findings, the article highlights the importance of identifying and articulating specific data needs in relation to concrete policy questions in order to render digital transformation relevant and effective. The article also points to the need of addressing the persistent systemic challenges underlying public sector data engagement through, on one hand, sustained investment in data capabilities and infrastructures and, on the other, support for cross-organizational collaborative spaces and networks.

SDG 11 – ‘making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’ – draws attention to the criticality of urban governance in the quest for sustainable development. Reflecting this, diverse city labels, such as ‘sustainable city’ and ‘smart city’, have been mobilized by urban actors and scholars to consider cities’ responses to various challenges of urban transformation. Consequently, this study interrogates: (1) the growing use of city labels in the scientific literature over three decades; (2) the conceptual dimensions of individual city labels and their mutual interdependencies; and (3) likely future trajectories. This is accomplished through a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 35 city labels: we examine their (co-)occurrences during 1990–2019 based on 11337 articles harvested in Scopus; analyse their conceptual associations drawing on a corpus of 22820 author keywords; and make a future forecast based on logistic growth modelling (the underlying datasets are available through open access). The findings significantly take forward recent bibliometric research by demonstrating: the rapid growth in scientific outputs; the diversification of city labels beyond ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’; and the evolution of an intricate conceptual field made up of different constellations of city labels. The findings have implications for urban policy and practice: regarding ongoing concerns about how to achieve synergies, rather than trade-offs, between SDGs, the conceptual field points to possible ways for relating SDG 11 to other dimensions of sustainable development. More broadly, the clarification of individual city labels’ conceptual underpinnings should help policymakers and practitioners make considered choices when mobilizing city labels in support of urban transformation efforts.

The dataset is part of an ESRC funded project led by Dr Justine Gangneux and Prof Simon Joss at the Urban Big Data Centre (Grant no. ES/S007105/1). The project examined Scottish local government’s data engagement during COVID-19 (Full report available ISBN: 978-0-85261-975-9). As part of the project, the researchers conducted an online survey of the 32 Scottish local authorities to collect quantitative systematic information about their data practices in response to the pandemic, identify arising data needs and gaps in data capabilities, as well as explore practices of data sharing and collaborations. The survey was conducted via the JISC Online Survey between 21 October and 14 December 2020. It achieved a completion rate of 70.3%, with 31 out of 32 local authorities (96.8%) participating. The full results of the survey are made available here.

Cities have the potential to lead the way to a cleaner, greener, more inclusive future, but this cannot be achieved without effective leadership and governance. Here, we ask experts to reflect upon the governance challenges on the way to a sustainable urban world.

Around the world, local innovations in the management and development of urban space are often significantly shaped by national government competitions. This article argues that the competition is a characteristic but underdiscussed feature of contemporary national policymaking on urban innovation, and considers how such competitions might be more constructively implemented in the future. It does so by closely tracing the outcomes of one paradigmatic example: the UK's Future City Demonstrator competition, launched in 2012, which awarded funding to four cities (Glasgow, Bristol, Peterborough, and London) to implement their proposals. The analysis offers lessons for similar competitions by highlighting six factors which co-determined the implementation and outcome of this initiative: asserting the need for speed; conflating export opportunities with local benefits; focusing on the need for institutional reform; reliance on cross-sectoral collaboration; positioning the city as a platform for digital solutions; and a lack of integration at the national level. Relatedly, we urge commentators to adopt a critical distance from justificatory assertions of urgent urban crisis and local governments being straightforwardly in need of reform.

Despite its growing ubiquitous presence, the smart city continues to struggle for definitional clarity and practical import. In response, this study interrogates the smart city as global discourse network by examining a collection of key texts associated with cities worldwide. Using a list of 5,553 cities, a systematic webometric exercise was conducted to measure hit counts produced by searching for "smart city." Consequently, 27 cities with the highest validated hit counts were selected. Next, 346 online texts were collected from among the top 20 hits across each of the selected cities, and analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively using AntConc software. The findings confirm, first, the presence of a strong globalizing narrative which emphasizes world cities as "best practice" models. Second, they reveal the smart city's association-beyond the quest for incremental, technical improvements of current urban systems and processes-with a pronounced transformative governance agenda. The article identifies five critical junctures at the heart of the evolving smart city discourse regime; these shed light on the ongoing boundary work in which the smart city is engaged and which contain significant unresolved tensions. The paper concludes with a discussion of resulting implications for research, policy, and practice.

As global cities, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing operate in international economic networks; however, they are also each firmly embedded within a regional context and are surrounded by less populous and less internationally recognized neighbors. Together they form so-called mega-city regions referred to as the Greater Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Bohai Rim, each encompassing a dozen or so cities. In the wake of staggering economic growth and threatening pollution, these cities are compelled to respond to the challenge of ecological modernization (EM): aim for higher economic value added at lower environmental cost. Cities have particular industrial and regional profiles; consequently they follow different developmental pathways. In order to attract coveted investors, green and high-tech corporations, well-endowed residents and talented workforce, these cities engage in city branding practices. In this contribution, a typology of EM developmental pathways is presented and the 41 cities in the three Chinese mega-city regions are analyzed in terms of their respective pathways and city branding practices. We argue that different industrial and regional profiles allow for different developmental pathways making different city branding strategies likely. Most cities brand themselves in comformity with what their pathway would lead us to predict, except cities with a strongly manufacturing oriented profile; the brands of the latter type deviate markedly from their current reality. Cities adopting branding strategies that contrast sharply with their historical legacy and current profile risk promoting themselves in ways that the outside world is likely to perceive as lacking in credibility.

Over the last few decades, China has seen a steep r is in diverse eco city and low carbon city policies. Recently, attention has begun to focus on the perceived shortcomings in the practical delivery of related initiatives, with several publi cations suggesting a gap between ambitious policy goals and the emerging realities of the newl y built environment. To probe this further,