Cities as Complex socio-technical Systems

So, cities are a place where people live and work together. And different people look at this living
and working together from different perspectives. So there are people who look at cities as an 
economic system. 
The generation of wealth, the generation of jobs, the economic interactions, the economic conditions
for the workings of a city as an economic system. Typically economists look at cities as an economic
system. 
Sociologists rather look at cities as a social system, it's a way of life of cultural life, of social life, of
activities, of inequities and all these kind of things. 
Then there are people who look at cities as a political system, how the different actors interact with
each other, who decides about what, who has power over what. So it is also possible to 
look at cities as such political systems. 
Our approach is to look in particular at cities as a technological system. Typically the infrastructures 
constitute the technological system of a city. 
And of course all these things are interrelated which exactly makes the city a socio-technical
system. 
The way the technology works effects the economy, the way the economy works effects whether you
have money to invest in technology the same for the social and political dimensions. 
So this is the very systemic view of a city.

Now more precisely, as we said, the city is a place where people live and work together. 
The infrastructures, the urban infrastructures enable such collective living and working. And this is
typically done in a systemic fashion. 
The infrastructures enable the way that people work, the way that people live, the way that people
decide.
You can easily imagine how the infrastructures are built that effects social life. Is it easy to reach the
city center or not? Is the traffic flowing, is it not flowing? Is water available? All this effects the quality
of life, of social life and of economic life of a city. 

But also the other way around the economic and social and political life determines how the
infrastructures are maintained, built, invested in, developed. So it is easily understandable that
depending on the political decision making processes, investments are done in certain parts of the
cities and not done in other parts of the cities.

Business parks are created here, not there. So typically the city is such a complex socio-technical
system that decides upon the infrastructure which in turn decide upon the social life of a city. 

Now, at the same time, one can look a little bit more in detail. To look at the infrastructures
themselves as a socio-technical system.

And so we have infrastructures, such typical infrastructures, such as transport, housing, buildings,
energy, water and other things you can add. Waste water, waste. And the way these infrastructures
are laid out effect the way that the social and political and economic life of a city is
happening. Inversely, the decisions made at these levels will effect where housing is going to be,
whether transport is developed here or there whether energy is renewable or not renewable 
whether water is cleaned or not cleaned. So one can really look at urban infrastructure systems 
as a socio-technical system in itself as part of a larger urban system.
Now this systemic view of cities clearly has implications on the management and the governance of
cities. The most important concept here is the concept of feedback loops. 

So all these elements of the system, of course, interact with each other and create feedback. 
The social dimensions interact with the technical dimensions. The technical dimensions interact with
the economic dimensions and all this creates feedback loops. This makes cities very, very complex
and the outcomes of what happens in the city is never attributable to one single cause. All these
elements are related to each other. And of course, all these things are also path dependent. 
So decisions that have been made at some point in the past deploy their effects later in the future.
What happens today, may be caused by an array of complex interactions and feedback loops that
come from the past. 

Let us illustrate that in the context of cities. So the city is in its environment. And as we said, the city
and especially its infrastructure are a complex socio-technical system interacting with each other. 
So there are feedback loops on both sides. There are technical feedback loops. The way housing
works effects transport. Transport effects energy. All these technical feedback loops are going on
inside a city. 

Similarly there are social feedback loops. The different actors interact with each other. What is done
economically has an impact on the social life. What happens socially has an impact on finances, on
the economic life. And then, of course, even more so there are interactions, as I said before,
between the social dimensions and the technical dimensions themselves. So how the technology is
laid out effects the social life, effects the way people work, whether they get to work or not, whether 
they have water or not and the other way around, of course, also. Now all this, and this is our
particular approach to the city, all this leads to certain types of performance of a city. 

We have classified performance in terms of efficiency, resilience and sustainability of cities but it is

easily understandable that all these feedback loops, the complexity, the path dependency makes the
management and the governance of these cities extremely complex, unpredictable and we need to
take that fact into account when we manage and govern cities. 

What is new is this digitalization, the data layer which comes of top of all these cities as a socio
technological system. And what we are going to do in this MOOC, is to try to understand what 
digitalization as a new layer coming on top of the systemic view does to the management and the
governance of urban infrastructure systems.

Session 2: What is Digitalization?

What is it exactly? We have structured this session into 4 segments. 
Data generation and storage,
Communications and Networks, 
Internet of Things 
Analytics, data analytics
. 
Data generation
As I am sure you have observed, data is generated from a growing amount of sources. Cameras,
sensors, RFIDs, GPS, including what we call self-generation, that is the smart phones that you are
using are constantly generating and transmitting data and all this data is generated at an ever lower
cost and by ever smaller devices and also the storage capacity where this data can be stored   is
increasing exponentially.
 
Basically all this leads to the fact that there is an unprecedented ever growing amount of data that is
being generated. So that's the first element of digitization.

Communication and networks 

And that has 3 different dimensions that all relate to each other.
On the most basic level we have the telecommunications infrastructures. Traditionally these are the
wired infrastructures, the cables, the fibre but increasingly we have wireless infrastructures
also where the capacity is increasing 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G, WiMax, WiFi, satellites. All this makes up for
the telecommunications infrastructures through which data is transmitted. 

The 2nd dimension is the networks, that is the different devices that are being used need to be
connected to each other through the telecommunications infrastructure and this is done by so called
protocols, physically connecting the different data storing devices to each other 

And the 3rd dimension of this is the identification and exchange of this data. What is typically being
called the World Wide Web, that is the location of this data by way of unique record locators inside
the different devices, inside the different computers. 

Internet of things (IOT)

So adding to the data generation, this second dimension, the communication dimension, connects
all the data to each other. 

So we have basically 4 things, we have a telecommunications infrastructure, we have the network,

that is the devices connected to each other through the internet, and then we have the identification
and exchange of the different data of the devices connected to each other thanks to the World Wide
Web and, as we have seen in the very beginning, we have the data generation and storage.

Now all this has a growing capacity, there are more and more things that can be stored, generated,
transmitted, it has increasing speed, data is transmitted ever more rapidly, there are reduced power
needs, even to the point that some of the devices do not need power anymore such as RFID's, all
this at an every lower cost and in an ever smaller format, miniaturized. Today you can have, for
example, RFID's directly in each letter in a cost-effective manner.

Now all this together leads to what is currently being called the Internet of Things. That is the
different devices connected to each other, thanks to the Internet and the World Wide Web 
and this has 3 main dimensions. 

So we have exponentially connected devices, people say that in about 5 years, the amount of
devices that will be connected to each other through the internet will double 

then we have exponentially generated and transmitted data. Again, for example, people say that in a
house in 5 years, the bandwidth that will be used by these devices connected to each other through
the internet will take up 50% of all the bandwidth 

and then we have increasingly real time exchange of data. Already today, you can supervise your
house remotely though your smart phone in real time, all this together is leading to this phenomenon
we call the Internet of Things today.

Analytics
Now there is an additional element that we need to talk about and this is analytics. 

All this data needs to be analysed and also here, there is a rapid  development in the ability and the
capacity to analyse and also to visualise these. The visualisation is necessary because analytics
often cannot really show what the outcome is so the things here that are important are what we all
artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning tools that basically allow for the intelligent
analysis of all these huge amounts of data.
This has also been called today Big Data. 
Now.
In our MOOC here, the combination of all these things, the storage, the transmission, the networks
and the analytics is what we call digitization. 
It is important to stress that it is the combination of these things that makes up for the digitization,

Session 3: General Implications of digitalization

First, in general on industries, and then on urban infrastructures.

So let's first start with the industries. Now traditionally, in any industry, you have a production chain,
a physical value chain. Take a car, whereby it is assembled at different stages, and ultimately sold to
a customer. The customer is connected to the final element of the value chain, which is the retailer in
this case. Now, what changes with digitalization is the fact that you are able to mirror this physical
value chain in a data layer. All the information that is contained in the physical value chain is now, so
to speak, duplicated, replicated at the digital layer. The physical layer, the physical value chain still
exists, continues to produce cars until the end consumer, customer, but the information about the
whole process is now, so to speak, in a digital value chain. And the customer can now connect
directly. 
He can order the car on the Internet. 
He can assemble the car himself. 
He can follow how the things have been produced along the stages, what materials have been used,
all this.

The interface with the customer now becomes a digital interface. Think, for example, on Dell
computers, which you buy on the Internet and you assemble yourself on the Internet. So that is the
first stage. The second stage is the fact that the informations that are contained in that data layer
can be used to produce new services, new business models and have new customers or the same
customers. 

Think about the Amazon example. The first layer would be that you order your book digitally. 
It's still produced. 
It still arrives physically. 
And the second layer would be that you, as a customer, are being offered advice as to other people
who bought similar books. What other offers can be made to you, and how you could actually profit
from the data that are contained in that digital layer. So there are new services and there are new
business models. So this is a value added on top of the traditional physical value chain.

Now, there are many industries that are affected by, potentially all the industries can be affected by
this evolution.I have put a list here of potential industries that can be affected by this mirroring and
by this digitalization. What are these?
Those are the ones that are particularly information intensive. For example, education or health care,
where a lot of information is contained, is known by the doctors or the teachers, and mirroring these
information on a digital layer and repackaging them to sell to the customers has a huge disruptive
effect on these industries. 

Other examples are non-scalable industries. A typical example here is the taxi industry, which has
been disrupted by Uber to take just an example. The industry is really not scalable. It's at a urban
level or it's even at the taxi level, but aggregating this information and creating new services out of it
really disrupts the traditional industry.

Other industries that are particularly vulnerable to digitalization are highly fragmented industries. 
Typically the logistics industries with a lot of players in it, will be particularly affected by this
digitalization, whereby the information can be aggregated and sort of condensed and repackaged to
the customer. Finally, they are also the information as a metric industries. 

Again, health care where the doctor knows a lot more than you do or government services. 
And the duplication, the mirroring of this information empowers the customer who now also can
become some sort of prosumer delivering information himself into that digital layer which again can
be used for new services. So this is the overall effect of digitalization on, let's say, the traditional
industry. Potentially any activity that has a value chain can be disrupted by digitalization. But some
are more vulnerable than others. 

Now let's look at what that does to cities and urban infrastructures. So the distinction we made in our
previous MOOC, which is the classical distinction between the infrastructures and the services that
are provided on the infrastructure. 

A road and a transportation service on the basis of the road. The customer, the citizen is connected
to the service, not directly to the infrastructure. Now what happens with digitalization is the fact that
we introduce a data, a digital layer in between the infrastructure and the services in exactly the same
way as I have shown in the previous slide. Now this does two things, similar to what I said before. 
First, it sort of helps to manage the infrastructures more efficiently. It leads to an optimized physical
value chain by the very fact that you know that you have information about this value chain. So you
have smarter energy management thanks to this digital layer, smarter transport management,
smarter waste management. And this is typically what is happening in smart cities. 

The second element is the new types of services that can be provided thanks to that digital layer,
thanks to that data layer. Smart new services, new business models that can emerge. The city can
advise you, or the energy company can advise you about your behavior, about saving energy,
offering you new types of services combining even infrastructures. Your behavior, let's say you have
an electric car, and your mobility behavior combined with your energy behavior. Now let's look at that
again, in terms of, what that means for smart city. 

The first dimension, the smart infrastructure management leads to what we call City 1 plus
something. It is basically a process of optimization, of incremental innovation, of improving the
existing systems thanks to the digital layer. 

The second dimension, which we then call City 2.0, is really the disruptive changes, the qualitative
changes, no longer the incremental changes, by offering new types of services thanks to the digital
layer. Energy service, transport service, let's say waste services, green services, all these kind of
things. So, the smart city has to be looked at really in terms of these two things. 

One, the incremental innovation on optimizing the infrastructure, thanks to the digital layer. And two,
the qualitative change in the services, in even the business models for the services. 

Session 4: Implications on digitalization on cities

 
In this session, we will talk about the implications of digitalization on cities, their performance, their
infrastructures, and especially about the management and governance challenges that this raises.

Now, let's come back to our original framework 

So, we have the urban infrastructures that have particular performances which we divided into
questions of efficiency, sustainability, and resilience. These infrastructures are governed and
managed and we saw in the beginning of this block how this has to be seen as a sociotechnical
system mutually influencing each other. 

The performance of these infrastructures has an implication on the quality of life that citizens

experience and of the competitiveness of a city that is particularly relevant for the businesses. And
both together, citizens and businesses, again determine the type of governance and management of
urban infrastructures. Now, there are a series of challenges that cities have to face.

Typically, those are economic challenges, financial challenges, social challenges, metropolitan

challenges resulting from the fact that the metropolitan area is much bigger, generally, than the
political entity and there are a lot of political challenges. And finally, there are technological
challenges as all the technologies in the infrastructures are currently evolving. 

What we are concerned with in this MOOC is the particular effect of digitalization, and as we said,
the effect is pervasive. That is, it effects the infrastructure, as well as the management and their
governance.

Now, different people use the word "Smart City" for different things. And this slide is here to clarify
what we actually mean by "Smart City". So, there are people who focus mainly on the economic
dimension of "smart cities", and they are talking about a digital economy. That is, they are basically
concerned about how a city can create jobs, revitalize its economy, stimulate its economy, thanks to
the information and communication technologies. Typically, these people talk about innovation
parks, about partnerships between universities and industry and see the city, the "smart city", as
they say, as a place where the digital economy can be stimulated.

Then, there are people who look in particular at the social dimensions of digitalization, and they see
in digitalization the potential to stimulate community life by way of online communities, by way of
social interactions, by sort of stimulating, revitalizing the social and the cultural life in a city. For
them, that's what the "smart city" is about. 

There are also people who talk about this sharing economy and this sharing economy, I think, has to
be linked, between the digital economy and the online community. So it's a combination of both. And
again, it is clear that digitalization stimulates such sharing economy.

Finally, there are people who talk about the whole political dimension. They see in digitalization the
potential civil society or stakeholder involvement thanks to concepts like e-government, e-
governance, e-participation, and for them, this is what the "smart city" is.

For us, the "smart city" pertains mainly to the technological dimension, that is to the
infrastructures, and this is also, I think, one of the more generally accepted definitions of "smart
city".So, to summarize, for us, "smart city" is mainly focused on the technological dimension, on the
infrastructures, and we are not really concerned with, in this MOOC, about the digital economy, the
online communities, and the e-participation. So we have a more narrow definition of what the "smart
city" is. Let us illustrate that by a few showcases. 

Again, those are things that people typically invoke when they talk about "smart city" from an
infrastructure, from a technological dimension. So things that we will see later on, for example, on
transport, smart cards, online information mobility as a service, on the energy level, we talk about
smart metering, smart lighting, things like this. On the water level, we talk about digital metering
and all kinds of things like this. 
Then there is a typical group of people who talk about smart housing, intelligent buildings, energy
savings, thanks to that, and the list is more or less endless. One can look at other things, smart
waste, smart green infrastructures, There are many other things that can be added. Those are all
examples on the digital city infrastructure dimension.

So all these showcases, or examples of "smart city", have to be put in to the broader picture. 
And the broader picture is the implications that digitalization has on urban systems. 

There are four main implications. 

The first implication is on the management and governance of the infrastructures themselves. The

combination, for example, between the legacy infrastructures and the opportunities that the
digitalization offers and this is a clear management and governance challenge. The infrastructures
lead to services on the basis of these infrastructures. You have services, and thanks to
digitalization, there are plenty of new types of services, new opportunities of services, and that leads
to other implications on managing and governing this services layer. What is really new for the city
will be the implications on the management and the governance of this digital or data layer? This
traditionally has not been the case, and the cities will have to think hard about the implications of
managing this data layer. And, of course, all together, we have an urban sociotechnical system as
we have seen and the fact that digitalization somehow disrupts the way this urban system works
leads to big implications in terms of governing this system, especially the institutions the rules about
how this system works.