Big Data and Urban Analytics: City Science in Developing Economies

Abstract

The smart city construct as well as the new city science movement are currently being subject of an incredible amount of research from multiple disciplines in a transdisciplinary fashion at international research centers. This new discipline claims to pursue more efficient and egalitarian cities by using technology; nevertheless, hi-tech tools have been applied mostly in developed countries throughout the world. Yet… is this a science that can be used to solve the existing problems in emergent economies? Most developing economies are struggling to narrow the gap of inequity in a context of limited resources, such as digital breaches, low educational levels, insecurity, disinformation and in general a huge array of unsatisfied needs and we argue that coping with these should be part of the new disciplines’s paradigm. The paper conducts an analysis of “best practices” by worldwide known research centers, and then explores possibilities of implementing the city science tools in Latin American cities.