Introduction: Open data and the generation of urban value

The world has made two significant transitions in the new millennium. The first involves the transition to a knowledge economy where the most lucrative industry is now the production and management of information or “data”. “Data” is the new “oil” of our age (The Economist, 2017). The second significant transformation is the transition from a rural to an urban world, a process known as urbanisation. Today most people live in cities (United Nations, 2014). As the world has crossed these thresholds, there are new opportunities to address wicked policy problems such as environmental degradation, migration and climate change, through data-assisted solutions. This book endeavours to provide sound evidence and case studies to support renegotiating the terms for information exchange, ownership and data use in cities for the benefit of urban citizens. In other words, this book is about the best use of the world’s most valuable economic commodity-data-and how it can be used to assist the planetary transition to sustainable, productive, resilient and liveable urban futures.