A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
Interpreting the Smart City Through Topic Modeling
The Canadian Smart CitiesSmart City Challenge grant program provided a unique opportunity to investigate what communities across Canada mean when they propose becoming a smart city. We investigated the utility of human-centered machine learning to analyze 137 grant proposals submitted to this program, containing approximately 1.5 million words. We explored whether results generated by topic modelingTopic modeling aligned with or differed from standard smart city definitions in the literature and current urban applications of topic modeling. The analysis resulted in three main findings. First, the prevalence of topics describing rural, regional and Indigenous communities challenged conventional definitions of “city” in the smart citySmart City. Second, context (e.g., local culture and language) inferred what constitutes smart, although smartness was not focused on technical innovations. Finally, our abductive approach generated new insights missing from conventional smart city research methods, including 40 percent of finalists and all four winning cities being identified as most representative users of topics.
Interpreting the Smart City Through Topic Modeling
The Canadian Smart CitiesSmart City Challenge grant program provided a unique opportunity to investigate what communities across Canada mean when they propose becoming a smart city. We investigated the utility of human-centered machine learning to analyze 137 grant proposals submitted to this program, containing approximately 1.5 million words. We explored whether results generated by topic modelingTopic modeling aligned with or differed from standard smart city definitions in the literature and current urban applications of topic modeling. The analysis resulted in three main findings. First, the prevalence of topics describing rural, regional and Indigenous communities challenged conventional definitions of “city” in the smart citySmart City. Second, context (e.g., local culture and language) inferred what constitutes smart, although smartness was not focused on technical innovations. Finally, our abductive approach generated new insights missing from conventional smart city research methods, including 40 percent of finalists and all four winning cities being identified as most representative users of topics.
Interpreting the Smart City Through Topic Modeling
The Urban Book Series
Goodspeed, Robert (editor) / Sengupta, Raja (editor) / Kyttä, Marketta (editor) / Pettit, Christopher (editor) / Zheng, Zhibin (author) / Sieber, Renée E. (author)
International Conference on Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management ; 2023 ; Montreal, QC, Canada
2023-06-02
18 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
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