Open Cities | Open Data

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xlii

   PDF

2. Introduction: Open Data and the Generation of Urban Value

   • Scott Hawken, Hoon Han, Christopher Pettit

   Pages 1-25

3. Urban Inclusion and Social Entrepreneurship

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 27-27

      PDF

   2. Homelessness and Open City Data: Addressing a Global Challenge

      • Sonia Hugh, Mark S. Fox

      Pages 29-55

   3. Open Data and Racial Segregation: Mapping the Historic Imprint of Racial Covenants and Redlining on American Cities

      • Ashley Bakelmun, Sarah Jane Shoenfeld

      Pages 57-83

   4. Safer Cities for Women: Global and Local Innovations with Open Data and Civic Technology

      • Scott Hawken, Simone Z. Leao, Ori Gudes, Parisa Izadpanahi, Kalpana Viswanath, Christopher Pettit

      Pages 85-105

   5. Open Online Platforms and the Collaborative Production of Micro Urban Spaces: Towards an Architecture of Civic Engagement

      • Homa Rahmat

      Pages 107-128

   6. Slum Digitisation, Its Opponents and Allies in Developing Smart Cities: The Case of Kibera, Nairobi

      • Bitange Ndemo

      Pages 129-148

4. Knowledge Ecosystems and Resilience

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 149-149

      PDF

   2. Mapping Climate Vulnerability with Open Data: A Dashboard for Place-Based Action

      • Scott Hawken, Komali Yenneti, Carole Bodilis

      Pages 151-175

   3. Urban Metabolism and Open Data: Opportunities and Challenges for Urban Resource Efficiency

      • Aristide Athanassiadis

      Pages 177-196

   4. Tackling the Challenge of Growing Cities: An Informed Urbanisation Approach

      • Christopher Pettit, Elizabeth Wentz, Bill Randolph, David Sanderson, Frank Kelly, Sean Beevers et al.

      Pages 197-219

   5. Linking Complex Urban Systems: Insights from Cross-Domain Urban Data Analysis

      • Lelin Zhang, Bang Zhang, Ting Guo, Fang Chen, Peter Runcie, Bronwyn Cameron et al.

      Pages 221-239

   6. Interfacing the City: Mixed Reality as a Form of Open Data

      • Jeremy Harkins, Christopher Heard

      Pages 241-263

   7. A Dashboard for the Unexpected: Open Data for Real-Time Disaster Response

      • Ian Tilley, Christopher Pettit

      Pages 265-286

5. Civic Innovation and Transparency

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 287-287

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   2. An Information Management Strategy for City Data Hubs: Open Data Strategies for Large Organisations

      • Pascal Perez, Christopher Pettit, Sarah Barns, Jonathan Doig, Carmela Ticzon

      Pages 289-309

   3. Tell Me How My Open Data Is Re-used: Increasing Transparency Through the Open City Toolkit

      • Auriol Degbelo, Carlos Granell, Sergio Trilles, Devanjan Bhattacharya, Jonas Wissing

      Pages 311-330

   4. From Repositories to Switchboards: Local Governments as Open Data Facilitators

      • Irina Anastasiu, Marcus Foth, Ronald Schroeter, Markus Rittenbruch

      Pages 331-358

   5. Understanding the Open Data Challenge for Building Smart Cities in India

      • Sarbeswar Praharaj, Saswat Bandyopadhyay

      Pages 359-382

Today the world’s largest economies and corporations trade in data and its products to generate value in new disruptive markets. Within these markets vast streams of data are often inaccessible or untapped and controlled by powerful monopolies. Counter to this exclusive use of data is a promising world-wide “open-data” movement, promoting freely accessible information to share, reuse and redistribute. The provision and application of open data has enormous potential to transform exclusive, technocratic “smart cities” into inclusive and responsive “open-cities”.


This book argues that those who contribute urban data should benefit from its production. Like the city itself, the information landscape is a public asset produced through collective effort, attention, and resources. People produce data through their engagement with the city, creating digital footprints through social medial, mobility applications, and city sensors. By opening up data there is potential to generate greater value by supporting unforeseen collaborations, spontaneous urban innovations and solutions, and improved decision-making insights. Yet achieving more open cities is made challenging by conflicting desires for urban anonymity, sociability, privacy and transparency. This book engages with these issues through a variety of critical perspectives, and presents strategies, tools and case studies that enable this transformation.

• Open Data
• Open cities
• Just cities
• Resilient cities
• Ethical cities
• Smart cities
• Urban design
• Architecture
• collaborative cities
• transparent cities
• adaptive cities
• sustainable cities
• Sustainability
• urban planning
• International Open Data Charter
• Open Data Institute
• urban geography and urbanism
• remote sensing/photogrammetry

• Urban Development and Design Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

  Scott Hawken

• City Planning, Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

  Hoon Han

• Urban Science, Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

  Christopher Pettit

Dr Scott Hawken is an Urban Designer with a passion for new technologies and their potential to improve cities. His work combines advanced geospatial methods and new large scale geospatial datasets to investigate ecosystem services, knowledge economies and other more experiential aspects of cities. He co-convenes the UNSW Smart Cities Research Cluster (SCRC) which seeks to promote and advance the efficient design, planning and delivery of urban environments and services through the use of spatially integrated information and communication technology.

Dr Hoon Han is an Associate Professor and Co-convenor of Smart Cities Research Cluster in the Faculty of Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia. His research interests are on geographic and temporal changes in urban form as well as urban technologies, in particular the dynamic changes occurring in response to technology implementation and adaptation in smart cities. This research involvesthe impact of new digital technologies (e.g., the Internet of Things (IoTs) and Big Data) on human well-being, perceptions and adaptive behaviours.


Professor Chris Pettit is closely involved with a number of professional organisations and international initiatives. He is a past Director and Chair of the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute (SSSI) and is a member the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA). He is a board member of the International advisory board for the “Geo for All” initiative. He is Chair of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) Technical Commission II Working Group on Geographical Visualization and Virtual Reality and Co-Chair of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) International Interest Group on Urban Quality of Life Indicators. More recently, working with NASA he has established the OSGeo OpenCitySmart initiative which is looking at fostering an international community in the development of CitySmart applications. 

Policies and ethics