Urban planning and data: opportunities, risks and limitations

Authors

  • María Buhigas Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
  • Pau Sola-Morales Universitat Rovira i Virgili

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_zarch/zarch.2022197406

Keywords:

Urban planning, Data analysis, Digital technologies, Complexity

Abstract

The growing complexity of global urban processes is challenging the capacity of urban planning instruments and historically accumulated knowledge about the city. The need to increase traditional tools in order to review concepts and propose new approaches is ever-growing. This article reflects on how the ability to generate and analyse data on cities and on the processes that shape and modify them using digital technologies opens up a field of endless possibilities and opportunities, not without risks and limitations.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

María Buhigas, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Architect and urban planner, provides technical assistance services for local urban development, support for municipal decision-making in urban planning, both nationally and internationally. Also provides consultancy services for bilateral cooperation agencies (United Nations agencies and the World Bank) and for private sector companies. She is currently Director of Strategic Projects at Mataró City Council and co-leader of the Barcelona City Council working group for the revision of the General Metropolitan Plan (2018-19 to present). She combines these activities with her professional studio (Urban Facts) and her position as associate lecturer at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She has a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from ETSAB (UPC) and a Master of Science in Urban Planning from Columbia University (UC-New York). Previously, she was part of Barcelona Regional (1999-2013), where she led the Urban Strategy Department (2006-13). She has been a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the European agency ESPON (2017-19). She has been councillor of Barcelona City Council (2019-20).

Pau Sola-Morales, Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Doctor in Design. Born in Barcelona in 1968, he holds a degree in architecture and urban planning from the ETSAB (1993), and a master's in design and a doctorate in design from Harvard University (2000). His interests have always revolved around design and creativity, and around the use and application of information technologies in architecture and design, especially the relationship between “architecture, information and complexity”. Between 2001 and 2008 he was a visiting professor at Harvard Design School, and a professor at the Academia di Architettura at the Università della Svizzera Italiana. Between 2006 and 2019 he was Professor of Representation Techniques and Theory of Architecture at the School of Architecture at Reus, URV, where he also served as head of studies and director.He is currently the director of EINA, Center for Design and Art in Barcelona, ​​attached to the UAB. He has also been between 2019 and 2022 the director of the EINA School of Design and Art in Barcelona.

References

Secchi, Bernardo. 2000. Primera Lección de Urbanismo. Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo. Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.

Mumford, Eric. 2002. The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960. MIT Press.

Tafuri, M. 1972. Per una crítica de ll’ideologia architettonica. Contropiano 1.

UNHabitat. 2018. The Quito Papers and the New Urban Agenda. Rutledge.

Dyson, G. 2012. Turing’s Cathedral. Vintage Books.

Gödel, K. 1931. Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I. Monatsh. f. Mathematik und Physik 38, 173–198. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01700692.

Edgar Morin. 1998. El paradigma de la complejidad. En Morin, Introducción al Pensamiento Complejo. Gedisa editorial.

Murray Gell-Mann. 1995. El quark y el jaguar. Tusquets Editores.

Manuel de Landa. 2002. Intensive Science & Virtual Philosophy. Bloomsbury academic.

Hubert Dreyfu. 1992. What computers still can’t do. MIT Press.

Downloads

Published

2023-02-11

How to Cite

Buhigas, M., & Sola-Morales, P. (2023). Urban planning and data: opportunities, risks and limitations. ZARCH. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Architecture and Urbanism, (19), 14–27. https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_zarch/zarch.2022197406

Issue

No. 19 (2022): Form and behaviour: modelling urbanity

Section

Featured texts