Global trends such as digitalization and the Internet of Things have influenced cities and the lives of residents deeply in recent years. In this digital age, cities turn toward SMART solutions, where they ultimately hope to find new innovative ways of accommodating their citizen’s fundamental needs such as clean drinking water, efficient sewage systems, road traffic and logistical systems or fire and flood control. On the one hand digitalization offers so far unexplored opportunities. On the other hand new issues, such as cyber security and privacy need to be addressed. Apart from these new developments, there are long-standing challenges and the question of who the city belongs to, which are furthering the prevailing inequality in cities and metropolitan areas. These issues are reflected in socio-economic segregation, meaning the widening gap between rich and poor, and the development of ‘concentration areas’, which are the result of economic disadvantage and social inequality.
This research aims at unravelling the benefits of the digital age with regard to managing and enhancing urban dynamics on a very local scale. Here, big data offers the opportunity of retrieving real-time data with regard to the city and its residents, on a detailed scale, which enables the study of intrinsic social structures of neighbourhoods. Information on the complexity of social urban dynamics is essential in decision making processes of urban developments and construction projects. Especially since redevelopment projects have become the answer to the long-standing challenges cities are faced with.
The scope of the following study has been framed within the context of redevelopment projects in Amsterdam, observing the outcome of so-called ‘state-led gentrification projects’ and exploring the opportunities big data holds to function as a decision making support in managing and enhancing urban development and construction processes of the built environment.