Examining the Role of Data in Smart City Management

Ignacio Perez

June 2018

 DPhil School of Geography and the Environment (University of Oxford)

Over the last years, the concept of smart cities has been positioned widely on the global urban agenda through both discourses and practices. An important part of this agenda has been related to the introduction of data-intensive technologies such as big data, algorithms, artificial intelligence and machine learning into urban space. Yet, it is still unclear how data-intensive smart city projects are redefining the future of cities, as the pure fact of accumulating more detailed, granular and real-time data does not reveal if and how the resulting data is shaping urban decision-making processes. In this context, the paper analyses how data circulates in Santiago de Chile; observing how data circulation influences urban decisions while creating new ways to understand cities.