Advances in the Leading Paradigms of Urbanism and their Amalgamation

This chapter opens the subject of sustainable urbanism with a broad view, displaying the multifaceted knowledge of the subject matter that will inform the reading of it. It provides a platform to establish the tone of this book and to set the scene. As such, it covers research topic, background, as well as the aim, structure, content, organization, and design of the book. The main topics, concepts, research issues, knowledge gaps, opportunities, and prospects pointing to a need for elaboration or investigation in relevance to the scope of this book are introduced in this chapter and then developed further or addressed in more details in the subsequent chapters.

Sustainable cities have, since the early 1990s, been the leading global paradigm of urbanism thanks to the different models of sustainable urban form proposed as new frameworks for the redesigning and restructuring of urban places to make urban living more sustainable. The compact city is the most preferred model of sustainable urbanism for responding to the challenges of sustainable development. However, despite the benefits claimed by the advocates of this model, its critics highlight a number of conflicts and contentions. This is coupled with several problems, issues, and challenges considering the very fragmented picture that arises of change on the ground in the face of urbanization. In this context, it has been suggested that the compact city needs to embrace and leverage what advanced ICT has to offer so as to improve, advance, and maintain its contribution to sustainability. With the above in regard, this chapter provides a comprehensive state–of–the–art review of compact urbanism as a set of planning and development practices and strategies, focusing on the three dimensions of sustainability and the significant, yet untapped, potential of big data technology for enhancing such practices and strategies under what is labelled “data–driven smart sustainable urbanism.” This chapter identifies compactness, density, diversity, mixed land use, sustainable transportation, and green space as the prevalent design strategies of the compact city. At the heart of this model is the clear synergy between the underlying strategies in terms of their cooperation to produce combined effects greater than the sum of their separate effects as regards the tripartite value of sustainability. Indeed, this chapter corroborates that the compact city is justified by its ability to contribute to the environmental, economic, and social goals of sustainable development. Nevertheless, the economic goals seem to dominate over the environmental and social goals, notwithstanding the general claim about the three sustainability dimensions being equally important and mutually dependent. Further, this chapter reveals that big data technology holds great potential for enhancing compact urbanism with respect to sustainability. This thorough review of and critique on the existing work on the compact city provides a reference for researchers and practitioners in related communities and the necessary material to inform these communities of the latest developments in the area of compact urbanism and its relation to data–driven smart urbanism. This work serves to inform various city stakeholders about the benefits of data-driven smart solutions for advancing sustainability.

Compact city planning and development has, over the last 30 years or so, emerged as the preferred response to the challenges of sustainable development. Global and local urban policies promote the compact city model due to the positive outcomes of its underlying design principles and strategics as to achieving more sustainable cities in terms of their environmental, economic, and social goals. The aim of this study is to examine how the compact city model is practiced and justified in urban planning and development in relevance to sustainability, and whether any kind of practical progress has been made in this regard. To illuminate the phenomenon of the compact city accordingly, a descriptive case study is adopted as a qualitative research methodology where the empirical basis is mainly formed by urban plans in two Swedish cities: Gothenburg and Helsingborg, in combination with qualitative interview data, secondary data, and scientific literature. This study shows that compactness, density, diversity, mixed land use, sustainable transportation, and green space are the prevalent design principles and strategies of compact city planning and development, with the latter being contextually linked to the concept of “green structure,” an institutional setup under which the two Swedish cities operate. Moreover, at the core of the compact city model is the clear synergy between the underlying principles and strategies in terms of their cooperation to produce combined effects greater than the sum of their separate effects with respect to the benefits of sustainability as regards its tripartite value. Further, this study demonstrates that the compact city model as practiced by the two cities is justified by its ability to contribute to the environmental, economic, and social goals of sustainable development. However, the economic goals dominate over the environmental and social goals, notwithstanding the claim about the three dimensions of sustainability being equally important at the discursive level. Nevertheless, new planning measures are being implemented to address the relevant environmental and social issues toward balancing the three goals of sustainability and thus strengthening their influence over urban development practices.

Ecological urbanism has, over the last 30 years or so, emerged as one of the preferred responses to the challenges of sustainable development. The eco-city is advocated as the most environmentally sound model of sustainable cities. However, yet knowing to what extent we are making any progress towards sustainable cities is problematic While significant advances in some areas of knowledge have been achieved and some impressive practical initiatives have been realized, a very conflicting, or at least fragmented, picture arises of change on the ground in the light of the escalating urbanization trend. In this context, it has been suggested that sustainable cities need to embrace and leverage what advanced ICT has to offer, so as to improve, advance, and maintain their contribution to the goals of sustainable development. This chapter provides a comprehensive state–of–the–art review of the field of ecological urbanism in relation to sustainable urbanism and data-driven smart urbanism. In doing so, it addresses the conceptual, theoretical, discursive, and practical dimensions of these approaches to urbanism; the multiple and diverse models, design principles and strategies, and ideals and benefits of ecological urbanism; the key deficiencies, challenges, uncertainties, and opportunities pertaining to sustainable urbanism; as well as new frameworks for data-driven smart sustainable/ecological urbanism. This is further supported by a critical discussion with respect to Science, Technology, and Society linkages and concerns. The added value of this interdisciplinary review lies in its thoroughness, comprehensiveness, topicality, and original contribution in the form of novel insights as a result of analyzing and synthesizing a large body of multidisciplinary work. This review of and critique on the existing work on ecological urbanism provides a valuable reference for researchers and practitioners in related communities and the necessary material to inform these communities of the latest developments in the area and its relation to sustainable urbanism and data-driven smart urbanism as the leading global paradigms of urbanism.

Sustainable urbanism is seen today as one of the keys toward unlocking the quest for a sustainable society. As a central paradigm of sustainable urbanism, the eco-city is promoted by global and local policies as one of the preferred responses to the challenges of sustainable development. It is argued that the eco-city strategies are expected to deliver positive outcomes in terms of providing healthy and livable human environments in conjunction with minimal demand on resources and thus minimal environmental impacts. As such, it is pertinent to examine how the eco-city model and especially its three sustainability dimensions are practiced and justified in urban planning and development at the local level which is motivated by the increased interest in developing sustainable urban districts. In this light, this chapter seeks to answer these two questions: What are the key strategies of the eco-city district model, and in what ways do they mutually complement one another in terms of producing the expected benefits of sustainability? To what extent does the eco-city district model support and contribute to the environmental, economic, and social goals of sustainability? To illuminate the phenomenon of the eco-city district accordingly, a descriptive case study is adopted as a qualitative research methodology where the empirical basis is mainly formed by urban planning and development documents in two Swedish eco-city districts: Royal Seaport, Stockholm, and Western Harbor, Malmö, in combination with qualitative interview data, secondary data, and scientific literature. This study shows that the eco-city district models of Royal Seaport and Western Harbor involve mainly design and technology, supported by behavioral change, as key strategies and solutions for achieving urban sustainability. Design encompasses greening, passive solar houses, sustainable transportation, mixed land use, and diversity. And technology comprises green technologies, energy-efficiency technologies, and waste management systems. Design contributes to the three goals of sustainability, and technology contributes mostly to the environmental and economic goals of sustainability. Behavioral change is associated with sustainable travel, waste separation, and energy consumption. Further, this study demonstrates that while the environmental, economic, and social goals of sustainability are represented in eco-city district strategies on a discursive level, institutionalized planning practices show that the environmental goals remain at the core of planning and the economic and social goals still play second fiddle. Nevertheless, new measures have recently been implemented in Western Harbor that are expected to strengthen their influence over urban development practices. Whereas, the Royal Seaport program mainly focuses on the environmental and some economic aspects, which is a shortcoming that should be recognized and dealt with.

Cities epitomize complex systems par excellence, more than the sum of their parts and developed through a multitude of individual and collective decisions from the bottom up to the top down. Data-driven smart sustainable cities are becoming even more complex with the very technologies being used to understand and deal with them in terms of their operational functioning, management, planning, and design. Therefore, there is a need for more innovative solutions and sophisticated approaches as to the way such cities can be monitored, understood, and analyzed so as to be more efficiently planned and designed and more effectively operated and managed in line with the long-term vision of sustainability. This chapter examines data-driven smart sustainable urbanism, focusing on new urban intelligence functions and related processes, systems, and sciences. Further, it proposes and illustrates a conceptual framework for data-driven smart sustainable cities on the basis of advanced technologies and data-intensive approaches to science. To achieve these aims, a thematic analysis method is adopted to cope with the vast body of the multidisciplinary literature. We conclude that urban intelligence functions as new conceptions of how data-driven smart sustainable cities function play a pivotal role in facilitating the synergy between urban planning, design, management, and operational functioning in terms of producing the expected benefits of sustainability. The proposed framework represents a conceptual structure intended to serve as a guide for building a model of data-driven smart sustainable cities that can expand the structure into something useful on the basis of further qualitative analyses, empirical investigations, and practical implementations. This work contributes to bringing data-analytic thinking and intelligence to the domain of smart sustainable urbanism, and draws special attention to the clear prospect of big data science and analytics to transform the future form of such urbanism and tackle the kind of complexities it embodies.

There is much enthusiasm currently about the opportunities created by the data deluge and its new and more extensive sources in the domain of sustainable urbanism. This involves mainly its ability to respond to the challenges of sustainability and urbanization thanks to thinking in a data-analytic and data-intensive scientific fashion and thus using powerful computational processes to generate useful knowledge for enhanced decision-making and deep insights. Indeed, smart sustainable cities as complex systems are characterized by wicked problems and hence need more innovative solutions and sophisticated approaches. This chapter sheds light on the kind of wicked problems that are associated with smart sustainable urbanism, and explores the usefulness of big data uses within this domain. Further, it analyzes the role of urban science and data-intensive science, as informed and enabled by big data science and analytics, in transforming what has been termed as urban sustainability science as an integrated scientific field. In doing so, it offers a conceptual framework integrating all these components. We argue that the upcoming advancements in big data science and analytics, coupled with the ever-increasing deluge of urban data, hold great potential for enhancing smart sustainable urbanism and revolutionizing urban sustainability science.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has become a key component of the ICT infrastructure of smart sustainable cities due to its great potential to advance the different areas of sustainability. The IoT is associated with big data analytics, which is clearly on a penetrative path across urban systems and domains for optimizing and enhancing operations, functions, services, designs, and strategies. As such, the IoT-based big data applications can play a key role in enabling sustainable cities to improve their contribution to sustainability under what has been termed as smart sustainable cities. However, topical studies tend to deal largely with the IoT and big data analytics in the realm of smart cities, leaving important questions involving the role and potential of these advanced technologies in the realm of sustainable cities barely explored to date. Specifically, the integration of the IoT and big data analytics is an unexplored research area as regards the new opportunities it offers in terms of responding to the goals of sustainable development. With that in regard, this chapter provides a state-of-the-art review of the IoT and big data analytics in terms of their core enabling technologies and practical applications within smart cities and smart sustainable cities. Further, it proposes an integrated framework for smart sustainable cities, which is intended to illustrate how the informational landscape of smart cities based on the IoT and big data analytics could enhance the physical landscape of sustainable cities as regards their strategies in ways that can enhance their performance on the basis of the IoT-enabled big data applications. The proposed framework represents a conceptual structure intended to serve as a guide for building a model of smart sustainable cities that can expand the structure into something useful. This should be grounded in further qualitative analyses, empirical investigations, and practical implementations. This work serves to inform various city stakeholders about the benefits that can be realized from developing and implementing smart sustainable cities on the basis of the IoT and big data analytics.

The big data revolution is heralding an era where instrumentation, datafication, and computation are increasingly pervading the very fabric of cities. Big data technologies have become essential to the functioning of cities. Consequently, urban processes and practices are becoming highly responsive to a form of data-driven urbanism that is the key mode of production for smart cities. Such form is increasingly being directed towards tackling the challenges of sustainability in the light of the escalating urbanization trend. This chapter investigates how the emerging data-driven smart city is being practiced and justified in terms of the development and implementation of its innovative applied solutions for sustainability. To illuminate this urban phenomenon, a descriptive case study is adopted as a qualitative research methodology to investigate London and Barcelona as the leading data-driven smart cities in Europe. This study shows that these cities have a high level of the development of applied data-driven technologies, but they slightly differ in the level of the implementation of such technologies in different city systems and domains with respect to the different areas of sustainability. They also moderately differ in the degree of their readiness as to the availability and development level of the competences and infrastructure needed to generate, transmit. process, and analyze large masses of data to extract useful knowledge for enhanced decision making and deep insights pertaining to a wide variety of practical uses and applications in relation to sustainability. London takes the lead as regards the ICT infrastructure and data sources, and Barcelona has the best practices in the data-oriented competences, notably horizontal information platform, operations center, dashboards, training programs and educational institutes, innovation lab, research center, and strategic planning office. This research enhances the scholarly community’s current understanding of the new phenomenon of the data-driven city as to the untapped synergic potential of the integration of smart urbanism and sustainable urbanism as a set of practices and strategies for advancing sustainability in the light of the emerging paradigm of big data computing. No previous work has, to the best of our knowledge, explored and highlighted the link between the data-driven smart solutions and the sustainable development strategies in the context of data-driven sustainable smart cities as a new paradigm of urbanism.

Sustainable urban development is today seen as one of the keys toward unlocking the quest for a sustainable world. And the big data revolution is set to erupt in cities throughout the world, heralding an era where instrumentation, datafication, and computation are increasingly pervading the very fabric of cities and the spaces we live in thanks to the IoT. Big data and the IoT as emerging technologies are seen as powerful forces that have significant potential for advancing urban sustainability. Indeed, they are instigating a massive change in the way sustainable cities can tackle the kind of special conundrums, wicked problems, and complex challenges they inherently embody. They are offering a multitudinous array of alternative applied solutions and sophisticated approaches informed by data-driven science and groundbreaking research. As such, they are becoming essential to the functioning of sustainable cities. In the meantime, yet knowing to what extent we are making progress toward sustainable cities is problematic, adding to the fragmented picture that arises of change on the ground in the face of the escalating rate and scale of urbanization. In a nutshell, new circumstances require new responses. One of these responses that has recently gained increasing prevalence is the idea of the “data-driven smart sustainable city.” This chapter sets out to identify and integrate the underlying components of a novel model for data-driven smart sustainable cities of the future. This entails amalgamating the leading paradigms of urbanism in terms of their strategies and solutions, namely compact cities, eco-cities, and data-driven smart cities. This amalgamation is grounded in the results obtained from six case studies conducted on these cities. We argue that the proposed model has great potential to advance sustainability and harness its synergistic effects on multiple scales. This model is believed to be the first of its kind and thus has not been, to the best of our knowledge, produced, nor is it currently under investigation, elsewhere.