ABSTRACT
There have recently been intensive efforts aimed at addressing the challenges of environmental degradation and climate change through the applied innovative solutions of AI, IoT, and Big Data. Given the synergistic potential of these advanced technologies, their convergence is being embraced and leveraged by smart cities in an attempt to make progress toward reaching the environmental targets of sustainable development goals under what has been termed "environmentally sustainable smart cities." This new paradigm of urbanism represents a significant research gap in and of itself. To fill this gap, this study explores the key research trends and driving factors of environmentally sustainable smart cities and maps their thematic evolution. Further, it examines the fragmentation, amalgamation, and transition of their underlying models of urbanism as well as their converging AI, IoT, and Big Data technologies and solutions. It employs and combines bibliometric analysis and evidence synthesis methods. A total of 2,574 documents were collected from the Web of Science database and compartmentalized into three sub-periods: 1991-2015, 2016-2019, and 2020-2021. The results show that environmentally sustainable smart cities are a rapidly growing trend that markedly escalated during the second and third periods-due to the acceleration of the digitalization and decarbonization agendas-thanks to COVID-19 and the rapid advancement of data-driven technologies. The analysis also reveals that, while the overall priority research topics have been dynamic over time-some AI models and techniques and environmental sustainability areas have received more attention than others. The evidence synthesized indicates that the increasing criticism of the fragmentation of smart cities and sustainable cities, the widespread diffusion of the SDGs agenda, and the dominance of advanced ICT have significantly impacted the materialization of environmentally sustainable smart cities, thereby influencing the landscape and dynamics of smart cities. It also suggests that the convergence of AI, IoT, and Big Data technologies provides new approaches to tackling the challenges of environmental sustainability. However, these technologies involve environmental costs and pose ethical risks and regulatory conundrums. The findings can inform scholars and practitioners of the emerging data-driven technology solutions of smart cities, as well as assist policymakers in designing and implementing responsive environmental policies.
ABSTRACT
Recent advances in computing and immersive technologies have provided Meta (formerly Facebook) with the opportunity to leapfrog or expedite its way of thinking and devising a global computing platform called the "Metaverse". This hypothetical 3D network of virtual spaces is increasingly shaping alternatives to the imaginaries of data-driven smart cities, as it represents ways of living in virtually inhabitable cities. At the heart of the Metaverse is a computational understanding of human users' cognition, emotion, motivation, and behavior that reduces the experience of everyday life to logic and calculative rules and procedures. This implies that human users become more knowable and manageable and their behavior more predictable and controllable, thereby serving as passive data points feeding the AI and analytics system that they have no interchange with or influence on. This paper examines the forms, practices, and ethics of the Metaverse as a virtual form of data-driven smart cities, paying particular attention to: privacy, surveillance capitalism, dataveillance, geosurveillance, human health and wellness, and collective and cognitive echo-chambers. Achieving this aim will provide the answer to the main research question driving this study: What ethical implications will the Metaverse have on the experience of everyday life in post-pandemic urban society? In terms of methodology, this paper deploys a thorough review of the current status of the Metaverse, urban informatics, urban science, and data-driven smart cities literature, as well as trends, research, and developments. We argue that the Metaverse will do more harm than good to human users due to the massive misuse of the hyper-connectivity, datafication, algorithmization, and platformization underlying the associated global architecture of computer mediation. It follows that the Metaverse needs to be re-cast in ways that re-orientate in how users are conceived; recognize their human characteristics; and take into account the moral values and principles designed to realize the benefits of socially disruptive technologies while mitigating their pernicious effects. This paper contributes to the academic debates in the emerging field of data-driven smart urbanism by highlighting the ethical implications posed by the Metaverse as speculative fiction that illustrates the concerns raised by the pervasive and massive use of advanced technologies in data-driven smart cities. In doing so, it seeks to aid policy-makers in better understanding the pitfalls of the Metaverse and their repercussions upon the wellbeing of human users and the core values of urban society. It also stimulates prospective research and further critical perspectives on this timely topic.
ABSTRACT
The emerging phenomenon of platformization has given rise to what has been termed "platform society," a digitally connected world where platforms have penetrated the heart of urban societies-transforming social practices, disrupting social interactions and market relations, and affecting democratic processes. One of the recent manifestations of platformization is the Metaverse, a global platform whose data infrastructures, governance models, and economic processes are predicted to penetrate different urban sectors and spheres of urban life. The Metaverse is an idea of a hypothetical set of "parallel virtual worlds" that incarnate ways of living in believably virtual cities as an alternative to future data-driven smart cities. However, this idea has already raised concerns over what constitutes the global architecture of computer mediation underlying the Metaverse with regard to different forms of social life as well as social order. This study analyzes the core emerging trends enabling and driving data-driven smart cities and uses the outcome to devise a novel framework for the digital and computing processes underlying the Metaverse as a virtual form of data-driven smart cities. Further, it examines and discusses the risks and impacts of the Metaverse, paying particular attention to: platformization; the COVID-19 crisis and the ensuing non-spontaneous "normality" of social order; corporate-led technocratic governance; governmentality; privacy, security, and trust; and data governance. A thematic analysis approach is adopted to cope with the vast body of literature of various disciplinarities. The analysis identifies five digital and computing processes related to data-driven smart cities: digital instrumentation, digital hyper-connectivity, datafication, algorithmization, and platformization. The novelty of the framework derived based on thematic analysis lies in its essential processual digital and computing components and the way in which these are structured and integrated given their clear synergies as to enabling the functioning of the Metaverse towards potentially virtual cities. This study highlights how and why the identified digital and computing processes-as intricately interwoven with the entirety of urban ways of living-arouse contentions and controversies pertaining to society' public values. As such, it provides new insights into understanding the complex interplay between the Metaverse as a form of science and technology and the other dimensions of society. Accordingly, it contributes to the scholarly debates in the field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) by highlighting the societal and ethical implications of the platformization of urban societies through the Metaverse.
ABSTRACT
The emerging phenomenon of platformization has given rise to what has been termed "platform society,“ a digitally connected world where platforms have penetrated the heart of urban societies—transforming social practices, disrupting social interactions and market relations, and affecting democratic processes. One of the recent manifestations of platformization is the Metaverse, a global platform whose data infrastructures, governance models, and economic processes are predicted to penetrate different urban sectors and spheres of urban life. The Metaverse is an idea of a hypothetical set of “parallel virtual worlds” that incarnate ways of living in believably virtual cities as an alternative to future data-driven smart cities. However, this idea has already raised concerns over what constitutes the global architecture of computer mediation underlying the Metaverse with regard to different forms of social life as well as social order. This study analyzes the core emerging trends enabling and driving data-driven smart cities and uses the outcome to devise a novel framework for the digital and computing processes underlying the Metaverse as a virtual form of data-driven smart cities. Further, it examines and discusses the risks and impacts of the Metaverse, paying particular attention to: platformization;the COVID-19 crisis and the ensuing non-spontaneous "normality" of social order;corporate-led technocratic governance;governmentality;privacy, security, and trust;and data governance. A thematic analysis approach is adopted to cope with the vast body of literature of various disciplinarities. The analysis identifies five digital and computing processes related to data-driven smart cities: digital instrumentation, digital hyper-connectivity, datafication, algorithmization, and platformization. The novelty of the framework derived based on thematic analysis lies in its essential processual digital and computing components and the way in which these are structured and integrated given their clear synergies as to enabling the functioning of the Metaverse towards potentially virtual cities. This study highlights how and why the identified digital and computing processes—as intricately interwoven with the entirety of urban ways of living—arouse contentions and controversies pertaining to society’ public values. As such, it provides new insights into understanding the complex interplay between the Metaverse as a form of science and technology and the other dimensions of society. Accordingly, it contributes to the scholarly debates in the field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) by highlighting the societal and ethical implications of the platformization of urban societies through the Metaverse.
ABSTRACT
The Metaverse, as a gigantic ecosystem application enabled mainly by Artificial Intelligence (AI), the IoT, Big Data, and Extended Reality (XR) technologies, represents an idea of a hypothetical "parallel virtual environment" that incarnates ways of living in virtually inhabitable cities. It is increasingly seen as a transition from smart cities to virtual cities and a new target for city governments to attain 'new';goals. However, the Metaverse project was launched amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis purported to be a rare opportunity that should be seized to reset and reimagine the world-though mainly in regard to its digital incarnation, and what this entails in terms of both cementing and normalizing the corporate-led, top-down, technocratic, tech-mediated, algorithmic mode of governance, as well as new forms of controlling ways of living in urban society. The 'new normal';has already set the stage for undemocratically resetting and unilaterally reimagining the world, resulting in an abrupt large-scale digital transformation of urban society, a process of digitization and digitalization that is in turn paving the way for a new era of merging virtuality and urbanity. This has raised serious concerns over the risks and impacts of the surveillance technologies that have been rapidly and massively deployed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These concerns also relate to the global architecture of the computer mediation of the Metaverse upon which the logic of surveillance capitalism depends, and which is constituted by control and commodification mechanisms that seek to monitor, predict, control, and trade the behavior of human users, as well as to exile them from their own. This viewpoint paper explores and questions the Metaverse from the prism of the social and economic logic of surveillance capitalism, focusing on how and why the practices of the post-pandemic governance of urban society are bound to be undemocratic and unethical. The novelty of the viewpoint lies in providing new insights into understanding the dark side of the ostensible fancier successor of the Internet of today, thereby its value and contribution to the ongoing scholarly debates in the field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS). In addition, by shedding light on the emergence of the Metaverse as a computing platform, the viewpoint seeks to help policymakers understand and assess the ramifications of its wide adoption, as well as to help users make informed decisions about its usage in everyday activity-if it actualizes.
ABSTRACT
The '15-minute city' concept is emerging as a potent urban regeneration model in post-pandemic cities, offering new vantage points on liveability and urban health. While the concept is primarily geared towards rethinking urban morphologies, it can be furthered via the adoption of Smart Cities network technologies to provide tailored pathways to respond to contextualised challenges through the advent of data mining and processing to better inform urban decision-making processes. We argue that the '15-minute city' concept can value-add from Smart City network technologies in particular through Digital Twins, Internet of Things (IoT), and 6G. The data gathered by these technologies, and processed via Machine Learning techniques, can unveil new patterns to understand the characteristics of urban fabrics. Collectively, those dimensions, unpacked to support the '15-minute city' concept, can provide new opportunities to redefine agendas to better respond to economic and societal needs as well as align more closely with environmental commitments, including the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 11 and the New Urban Agenda. This perspective paper presents new sets of opportunities for cities arguing that these new connectivities should be explored now so that appropriate protocols can be devised and so that urban agendas can be recalibrated to prepare for upcoming technology advances, opening new pathways for urban regeneration and resilience crafting.