Creating vibrant communities, maintaining mobility, delivering essential services, and creating low-carbon development may depend on the critical role open data plays for many cities and their citizens. Achieving each of these goals means reconciling differing visions of what effective urban development looks like and means. The ongoing growth of the urban environment and of urban density brings with it both opportunities and challenges.
Published in the State of Open Data (2019), this chapter, written by OpenNorth’s Jean-Noé Landry, examines how the open data movement has shifted away from events such as hackathons to work on data standards, infrastructure, and in-house analytical capacity within city governments. It examines the implications of these shifts for urban development and the future of open data as an integral part of urban governance.
Chapter Key Points
- Open data in the context of urban development is increasingly linked with “smart cities” and “urban resilience” agendas.
- There has been a shift from an early emphasis on hackathons, seen as a potential mechanism for co-production of public services with external experts, toward working on data standards, infrastructure, and in-house analytical capacity within city governments.
- Intermediaries, including public-funded organisations such as libraries, have an important role to play helping citizens gain value from urban open data.
- Without further work crafting practitioner communities and clear agendas, open data is likely to be seen primarily as a tool to be selectively used in smart cities, rather than as the central element of a comprehensive approach to achieve more open urban development.
Funded by the International Development Research Centre