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This paper provides an overview of the use of arts-based methods for undertaking research on the relationship between digital technologies and society. It first details the approach of research-creation in which research is conducted using of arts-based methods. This is followed by a discussion of specific arts-based methods used in research-creation: creative writing, artistic methods, and creative data stories. Next, it sets out ways in which research undertaken using traditional social science methods can be disseminated in creative ways using creative non-fiction and fiction, film and exhibitions. It closes by noting some critiques of arts-based approaches.

The central premise of Soe et al’s paper, ‘Institutionalising Smart City Research and Innovation’, is that the notion of a smart city remains unclear, with several definitions existing within the literature, and that one way to determine the parameters of smart cities is to examine the foci and approach of research groups globally who study and contribute to the smart city agenda. However, in charting the work of 50 or so institutes and centres, the authors conclude that there is ‘a mismatch between conceptualisation of smart city and actual smart city research’ (p. 128). In other words, the framing of smart cities within the literature does not align with how centres and institutes approach and contribute to smart cities. Having reached such a conclusion, the solution to this mismatch is not clear. Presumably, the definition of smart cities needs to change to match that held by research centres and institutes, or they need to alter their focus to align more closely with the predominant delineation of smart cities. Regardless, examining how research centres and institutes frame and approach smart cities does not appear to be a good means of defining them. The key questions then, which are not examined or answered in the paper, is why does this mismatch exist, and what would be a better way of determining what constitutes a smart city? The latter assumes that the conceptualisation requires a non-fuzzy definition, which is also a question worth considering.

City dashboard websites are a common modality for bringing open-government philosophies into the public domain. Yet, there has been little research concerning the optimum design for city dashboards that takes account of users’ expectations and skills. Indeed, there has been minimal exploration of user-centered design (UCD) to improve the usability and utility of smart city technologies in general. This study sought to conduct a user evaluation analysis to inform a UCD approach to city dashboards. Interviews with different types of users were conducted that applied a protocol analysis to gain insight into user perspectives and experiences of city dashboards. Along with critical incident technique procedures, interaction data of critical significance to the user was collected and a content analysis was conducted. These qualitative data were used to determine representations of users, as identified through observed behaviors, attitudes, needs, and goals. Targeted-scope user experience personas for the design process were then constructed to represent and build empathy towards three potential users of city dashboard systems: novices, end-users, and advanced users. The collected user requirements and the personas formulated are underpinning the re-design of an existing city dashboard.

This short response does two things. First, it argues that urban benchmarks have specific and structural limits not identified in the principal essay in this intervention, which curtail the kinds of constructive and critical work such benchmarks might be expected to perform. ISO 37120 is discussed as an example. Second, it proposes a pluralistic approach to engagement and offers six suggestions for how academics might take urban benchmarks and their makers seriously without becoming fully embedded in their business. These are: ethnography, discourse analysis, self-reflexive critique, critical urban benchmarking, alternative publication channels and scholarly debate.

Previous scholarship on the smart city has expressed concern at the top-down, technocratic nature of smart technologies and the lack of meaningful citizen participation in their development. In this paper, we utilize instrumentalization theory to trace the initiation, design and deployment of a specific smart city initiative: bikeshare in Hamilton, Ontario. Smart bikeshare is increasingly seen as complicit in processes of social stratification, serving a predominately white, middle-class demographic and particular locales. Our case study reveals the potential of reflexive design praxes to reconfigure bikeshare as a platform for both instrumental and social value. In particular, we highlight how collaborative, open and inclusive forms of urban governance can enroll a broad range of civic actors to create a scheme that embodies diverse but complimentary goals and ideologies. We conclude that instrumentalization theory provides a conceptual means to open up the “black box” of urban design to critical interrogation, and to identify how to enact participatory design and citizen-centric smart urbanism.

For three decades the case has been made for the development and adoption of digital tools that better support spatial decision-making in planning using 3D information. Here we report on a study that interviewed planners from local authorities in Ireland concerning their knowledge and experience of 3D spatial media. We consider the potential uses of these tools in planning, and the prospects for their adoption within local government planning departments. The interviews reveal that the planning system, as currently resourced and operated in Ireland, provides significant challenges and few incentives for the adoption of 3D spatial media.

In this article we evaluate the viability of using big data produced by smart city systems for creating new official statistics. We assess sixteen sources of urban transportation and environmental big data that are published as open data or were made available to the project for Dublin, Ireland. These data were systematically explored through a process of data checking and wrangling, building tools to display and analyse the data, and evaluating them with respect to 16 measures of their suitability: access, sustainability and reliability, transparency and interpretability, privacy, fidelity, cleanliness, completeness, spatial granularity, temporal granularity, spatial coverage, coherence, metadata availability, changes over time, standardisation, methodological transparency, and relevance. We assessed how the data could be used to produce key performance indicators and potential new official statistics. Our analysis reveals that, at present, a limited set of smart city data is suitable for creating new official statistics, though others could potentially be made suitable with changes to data management. If these new official statistics are to be realised then National Statistical Institutions need to work closely with those organisations generating the data to try and implement a robust set of procedures and standards that will produce consistent, long-term data sets.

Internationally, there is a drive to make coordinated management and emergency response (CMER) more data-driven and centralized through shared data infrastructures and control centres. While there are a few well-known case examples of data-driven CMER, in general it has been partially implemented. In this paper, we highlight the importance of historical institutional and spatial context and path dependencies in shaping the development of CMERs within and across jurisdictions. We examine the progress and prospects of data-driven CMER in Ireland, with respect to the general landscape of inter-agency cooperation and with reference to a single key agency: An Garda Síochána (AGS), the Irish police force. To do so, we draw on 36 in-depth interviews with key stakeholders and a critical discourse analysis of 15 key policy/guideline documents. Our analysis reveals the ways in which embedded institutional cultures, structures and working practices, which are relatively resistant to change, have thwarted data-sharing and data-driven analysis and decision-making. These factors act as barriers to the adoption of smart-city approaches more generally, not just in Ireland but globally

To help tackle the spread of COVID-19 a range of surveillance technologies – smartphone apps, facial recognition and thermal cameras, biometric wearables, smart helmets, drones, and predictive analytics – have been rapidly developed and deployed. Used for contact tracing, quarantine enforcement, travel permission, social distancing/movement monitoring, and symptom tracking, their rushed rollout has been justified by the argument that they are vital to suppressing the virus, and civil liberties have to be sacrificed for public health. I challenge these contentions, questioning the technical and practical efficacy of surveillance technologies, and examining their implications for civil liberties, governmentality, surveillance capitalism, and public health.

The spread of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has resulted in the most devastating global public health crisis in over a century. At present, over 10 million people from around the world have contracted the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), leading to more than 500,000 deaths globally. The global health crisis unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic has been compounded by political, economic, and social crises that have exacerbated existing inequalities and disproportionately affected the most vulnerable segments of society. The global pandemic has had profoundly geographical consequences, and as the current crisis continues to unfold, there is a pressing need for geographers and other scholars to critically examine its fallout. This introductory article provides an overview of the current special issue on the geographies of the COVID-19 pandemic, which includes 42 commentaries written by contributors from across the globe. Collectively, the contributions in this special issue highlight the diverse theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, and thematic foci that geographical scholarship can offer to better understand the uneven geographies of the Coronavirus/COVID-19.

City dashboards are increasingly becoming a tool of urban management and governance, used by administrations to monitor key urban metrics and the performance of services and policy. To date, however, there has been little research done from a users perspective of what constitutes a good or bad city dashboard and to establish essential user-centered design principles. In this foundational study, we examine four city dashboards with respect to their design, content, usability, and utility as experienced by existing dashboard users. The study presented was undertaken using a protocol analysis that elicited verbal reports through concurrent think-aloud sessions. In addition, critical incident technique procedures were followed to collect interaction data of critical significance to the users. A content analysis was then conducted on transcripts from these sessions. The research identified specific areas of concern to current dashboard users and led to the creation of new and informed guidelines for producing a dashboard system for Dublin, Ireland.

Over the past decade, a new set of interactive, open, participatory and networked spatial media have become widespread. These include mapping platforms, virtual globes, user-generated spatial databases, geodesign and architectural and planning tools, urban dashboards and citizen reporting geo-systems, augmented reality media, and locative media. Collectively these produce and mediate spatial big data and are re-shaping spatial knowledge, spatial behaviour, and spatial politics. Understanding Spatial Media brings together leading scholars from around the globe to examine these new spatial media, their attendant technologies, spatial data, and their social, economic and political effects. The 22 chapters are divided into the following sections: Spatial media technologies Spatial data and spatial media The consequences of spatial media Understanding Spatial Media is the perfect introduction to this fast emerging phenomena for students and practitioners of geography, urban studies, data science, and media and communications.

Through an empirical focus on Metropolitan Boston, this paper examines the effects of territorial politics and fragmented metropolitan governance on an urban data ecosystem and endeavours to enact a smart city-region. The fragmented governance of Metro Boston reduces scales of economy and produces interjurisdictional data incompatibilities that limit spatial intelligence, foster back-to-back planning and stifle the benefits of open data. Highlighted is the irony that in order to address fragmented governance, there is a need for greater information-sharing, but that very activity is stymied because of a deeply rooted localist agenda that resists more collaborative, metro-regional governance arrangements.

This paper examines the neoliberal ideals that underpin participation and citizenship in the smart city and their replication mechanisms at the European level, particularly focusing on the work of the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities. The research consisted of three levels of data generation and analysis: a discourse analysis of policy documents and project descriptions of the 61 Commitments in the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities ‘citizen-focus’ cluster; interviews with a dozen stakeholders working on citizen engagement in a small sample of European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities flagship projects; and twenty interviews with city officers and corporate exhibitors at the 2017 Smart City Expo and World Congress. We contend that smart cities as currently conceived enact a blueprint of neoliberal urbanism and promote a form of neoliberal citizenship. Supra-national institutions like the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities act at a multi-scalar level, connecting diverse forms of neoliberal urbanism whilst promoting policy agendas and projects that perform neoliberal citizenship in the spaces of the everyday. Despite attempts to recast the smart city as ‘citizen-focused’, smart urbanism remains rooted in pragmatic, instrumental and paternalistic discourses and practices rather than those of social rights, political citizenship, and the common good. In our view, if smart cities are to become truly ‘citizen-focused’, an alternative conception of smart citizenship needs to be deployed, one that enables an effective shift of power and is rooted in the right to the city, entitlements, community, participation, commons, and ideals beyond the market.