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The ethics of smart cities and urban science

Bibliographic Data

ID23322295
AuthorsRob Kitchin (0000-0003-4458-7299, Google (United States), corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume374
Issue2083
Pages20160115
Publication date2016-12-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1364-503X • E-ISSN: 1471-2962
PublisherThe Royal Society (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1098/rsta.2016.0115
PMID28336794
OpenAlexW2552464140
LanguageEN
Citations received117
References cited34

Software-enabled technologies and urban big data have become essential to the functioning of cities. Consequently, urban operational governance and city services are becoming highly responsive to a form of data-driven urbanism that is the key mode of production for smart cities. At the heart of data-driven urbanism is a computational understanding of city systems that reduces urban life to logic and calculative rules and procedures, which is underpinned by an instrumental rationality and realist epistemology. This rationality and epistemology are informed by and sustains urban science and urban informatics, which seek to make cities more knowable and controllable. This paper examines the forms, practices and ethics of smart cities and urban science, paying particular attention to: instrumental rationality and realist epistemology; privacy, datafication, dataveillance and geosurveillance; and data uses, such as social sorting and anticipatory governance. It argues that smart city initiatives and urban science need to be re-cast in three ways: a re-orientation in how cities are conceived; a reconfiguring of the underlying epistemology to openly recognize the contingent and relational nature of urban systems, processes and science; and the adoption of ethical principles designed to realize benefits of smart cities and urban science while reducing pernicious effects. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The ethical impact of data science’.

Big data · Computer security · Corporate governance · Economics · Engineering ethics · Epistemology · Management · Philosophy of science · Political science · Politics · Rationality · Smart city · Sociology · Technocracy · Urban planning · Urbanism · Architecture · Computer Science · Engineering · Human Mobility and Location-Based Analysis · Law · Privacy, Security, and Data Protection · Smart Cities and Technologies · Urban Studies

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Unique citing works117
Citations per year13
Citation span2017 - 2026 (10)
Citation velocitycurrent
Highly citedYes
Citation typesNeutral: 93
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