Knowing and governing cities through urban indicators, city benchmarking and real-time dashboards
Open accessAbstract
Since the mid-1990s a plethora of indicator projects have been developed and adopted by cities seeking to measure and monitor various aspects of urban systems. These have been accompanied by city benchmarking endeavours that seek to compare intra- and inter-urban performance. More recently, the data underpinning such projects have started to become more open to citizens, more real-time in nature generated through sensors and locative/social media, and displayed via interactive visualisations and dashboards that can be accessed via the internet. In this paper, we examine such initiatives arguing that they advance a narrowly conceived but powerful realist epistemology – the city as visualised facts – that is reshaping how managers and citizens come to know and govern cities. We set out how and to what ends indicator, benchmarking and dashboard initiatives are being employed by cities. We argue that whilst these initiatives often seek to make urban processes and performance more transparent and to improve decision making, they are also underpinned by a naive instrumental rationality, are open to manipulation by vested interests, and suffer from often unacknowledged methodological and technical issues. Drawing on our own experience of working on indicator and dashboard projects, we argue for a conceptual re-imaging of such projects as data assemblages – complex, politically-infused, socio-technical systems that, rather than reflecting cities, actively frame and produce them.
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“…enabling city-level data integration, agency-tailored interfaces and systems for management, and interactive digital twinning interventions ( Appio et al., 2019 ; Hawken et al., 2020 ; Kitchin et al., 2015 ; O’Reilly, 2011 ; Rabari & Storper, 2015 ; Schrotter & Hürzeler, 2020 ; Yang & Rong, 2024 ).”
- Authors
- Kitchin, R., Lauriault, T. P., & McArdle, G.
- Affiliations
- National University of Ireland, Maynooth (IE)
- Corresponding author
- Kitchin, Rob
- Venue
- Regional Studies, Regional Science
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2015-01
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 6-28
- ISSN
- 2168-1376 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2053272364
- Cited by
- 596
- References
- 71
- Citations by year
- 2026: 38 · 2025: 47 · 2024: 51 · 2023: 69 · 2022: 67 · 2021: 58 · 2020: 76 · 2019: 60 · 2018: 46 · 2017: 41 · 2016: 25 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 2
- FWCI
- 68.32
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Regional Studies Regional Science (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Maynooth University ePrints and eTheses Archive (Maynooth University) (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- European Research Council (ERC-2012-AdG-323636)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Media Technology › Smart Cities and Technologies
- Social Sciences › Urban Studies › Urban Planning and Governance
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Quality of Life Measurement
- Keywords
- urban indicators, real-time dashboard, urban governance, data assemblages, sensor data, social media data, open data, instrumental rationality, socio-technical systems
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