Spatial Planning in the Big Data Revolution

Big data is being increasingly advocated as a fresh and promising approach to urban challenges, particularly through the notion of smart cities, able to contribute to the coping with climate change, citizen empowerment, disaster planning and resilience, health and quality of life, social equity, sustainability, equal access to ICT and urban competitiveness. This book aims to bring together different work methodologies oriented to understand how urban and regional planning is changing with respect to the dissemination of big data analyses and GIS applications. It tries to reply to the following open questions: How can we build effectively a spatial knowledge, strongly based on the contribution of the communities to planning policies and territorial projects, through online platforms, social media, participatory GIS, that need big and open data? It is certainly a very attractive field for researchers and technicians who can apply such theories in various disciplines. Nevertheless, this research issue requires significant awareness in using these data and tools with a real responsiveness of their applicability. Besides, it requires a deep consciousness by web users about the potential uses of community shared data. These issues are explored by representative experts of different research fields and recognizable in the international literature. In fact, this edited book discusses critical reflections and attempts to hybridize methods and disciplinary approaches to a new challenge.