Journal ArticleDOI
The Uses of Big Data in Cities.
Luís M. A. Bettencourt
- Vol. 2, Iss: 1, pp 12-22
TLDR
This work explores how big data can be useful in urban planning by formalizing the planning process as a general computational problem and shows that, under general conditions, new sources of data coordinated with urban policy can be applied following fundamental principles of engineering to achieve new solutions to important age-old urban problems.Abstract:
There is much enthusiasm currently about the possibilities created by new and more extensive sources of data to better understand and manage cities. Here, I explore how big data can be useful in urban planning by formalizing the planning process as a general computational problem. I show that, under general conditions, new sources of data coordinated with urban policy can be applied following fundamental principles of engineering to achieve new solutions to important age-old urban problems. I also show that comprehensive urban planning is computationally intractable (i.e., practically impossible) in large cities, regardless of the amounts of data available. This dilemma between the need for planning and coordination and its impossibility in detail is resolved by the recognition that cities are first and foremost self-organizing social networks embedded in space and enabled by urban infrastructure and services. As such, the primary role of big data in cities is to facilitate information flows and ...read more
Citations
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References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Dilemmas in a general theory of planning
TL;DR: The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail, becuase of the nature of these problems as discussed by the authors, whereas science has developed to deal with tame problems.
Book
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
TL;DR: The conditions for city diversity, the generators of diversity, and the need for mixed primary uses are discussed in this paper, with a focus on the use of small blocks for small blocks.
Book ChapterDOI
The use of knowledge in society
TL;DR: In this paper, it was pointed out that many of the current disputes with regard to both economic theory and economic policy have their common origin, it seems to me, in a misconception about the nature of the economic problem of society.
Book
Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity
TL;DR: The amount of data in the authors' world has been exploding, and analyzing large data sets will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus, according to research by MGI and McKinsey.
Book
The Economy of Cities
TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied the economy of cities and the main social problems that humanity has and the greatest source of creativity, innovation and development opportunities to solve those problems, which is relevant for a number of reasons: first of all, because most of the planet's population is grouped in them.