The contemporary discourse of “smart cities” argues new urban information systems are needed that “exploit operational data … to optimize the operation of city services” through closed-loop control (Harrison et al. 2010). Drawing on the literature of urban modeling and using the city of Boston as an example, the longstanding challenges to urban optimization are described at each stage of the cybernetic control loop: goals, actuator, system, disturbances, and information feedback (Savas 1970; Wiener 1948). This approach is not well suited to “wicked” problems, which I defined as those that are poorly defined, involve many stakeholders, require complex solutions, involve trade-offs among values, and occur over long time horizons (Rittel and Webber 1973). Tackling these problems will require information systems that fall into three functional classes: public knowledge creation, deliberative analysis, and process support. Works Cited Harrison, C., B. Eckman, R. Hamilton, P. Hartswick, J. Kalagnanam, J. Paraszczak, and P. Williams. 2010. Foundations for Smarter Cities. IBM Journal of Research and Development 54 (4):1-16. Rittel, HWJ, and MM Webber. 1973. Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy sciences 4 (2):155-169. Savas, ES. 1970. Cybernetics in City Hall. Science 168 (3935):1066. Wiener, Norbert. 1948. Cybernetics; or, Control and communication in the animal and the machine, M I T Technology Press publications. Cambridge, Mass.: Technology press.

1. Information Systems for Solving
Wicked Urban Problems
Robert
Goodspeed
MIT
Department
of
Urban
Studies
and
Planning
October
7,
2011
Urban
Systems
CollaboraDve
Seminar
Audio
online
at:
urbansystemscollaboraDve.org

2. Outline
1. Can
the
city
system
be
opDmized?
The
case
of
metropolitan
Boston
2. What
informaDon
systems
should
we
build
to
solve
wicked
urban
problems?

3. Can the city system be optimized?
IBM Rio Operations Center Conceptual Drawing of “City Planning Center”
“Smarter Cities are urban areas that exploit From Melvin Branch’s 1981 book “Continuous City
operational data, such as that arising from traffic Planning: Integrating municipal management and city
congestion, power consumption statistics, and planning”
public safety events, to optimize the operation of
city services.” (Harrison et al 2010)
Image Source:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ibm_media/5299500003/

4. Source: Savas, ES. 1970. “Cybernetics in City Hall.” Science 168 (3935):1066.

5. Dynamics of city government
Source: City of Boston

6. Goal setting
Who has the legitimacy to set goals? What if they disagree?
Goal Stakeholders Source of Legitimacy Dilemmas
Multiple levels of
Elected Officials Democracy (elections) government
Should there be limits?
Experts Professional Which professions?
Residents Personal Which residents?
Committees, commissions, Member identities How should they be
boards, etc. Group activities involved?

7. Structure of government and service delivery
Power fragmented across the metropolis Source: Map by author using MAPC MetroBoston
• 101 municipalities Datacommon (metrobostondatacommon.org)
• Myriad of public and private agencies
– Transit: MBTA, private, city
– Sewer: MWRA, munis, private
– Electrical: Nstar, National Grid, munis
– Rail: Amtrak, freight companies
– Roads: MassDOT, DCR, municipalities
Powers restricted by state law
– E.g., cannot create new taxes
Power fragmented within city hall
• Multiple departments, agencies, advisory committees
• Separation of powers – city council

8. Administration ORGANIZATION OF CITY GOVERNMENT
Non- Mayoral
City Clerk
Office of the Mayor CITIZENS OF BOSTON
(appointed by City Council)
Chief of Staff (1) Intergovernmental
Corporation Counsel (1) Relations City Council
Office of Emergency Neighborhood Services (elected position)
Preparedness (1) Office of New Bostonians
Chief of Policy and Mayor Office of Public Information Finance Commission
Planning (1) (appointed by Governor)
Licensing Board
(appointed by Governor)
Office of the Chief Operating Officer Chief Operating Officer Boston Public Library
Labor Relations Graphic Arts
Human Resources Management & Information Services
Registry Division
Housing &
Public Health Public Works & Economic Environment and
Education Finance Public Safety Public Property Human Services Neighborhood
Commission (2) Transportation Development Energy
Development
Boston Property &
Boston Public Assessing Fire Public Works Redevelopment Neighborhood
Boston Housing Construction Environment Civil Rights
Schools Authority* Authority/Economic Development
Management
Development
Industrial
Auditing Police Transportation Commission * Open Space Planning Boston Centers for
Parks & Recreation
(3) Youth & Families
Boston Residents
Budget Management Job Policy Office Consumer Affairs & Elderly Commission
Inspectional Services
Licensing
Small & Local
Purchasing Business E nterprise Arts, Tourism & Veterans' Services
Office Special Events
Emergency Shelter
Treasury
Elections
Women's
Commission
Retirement Board *
Where is the
control center?
* Not In Operating Budget Youth Fund
(1) Has cabinet rank.
(2) The Boston Public Health Commission is an indepe ndent authority created in June 1996.
Do all departments
(3) Programmatically within this cabinet; financially in Parks & Recreation
share the same
goals?

9. Source: NASA GSF GOES Project/NASA Earth Observatory (Irene)
Disturbances http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=51899
Unpredictable,
unprecedented
Exogenous
forces:
economic
shiRs,
climate
change,
gas
prices

10. Source: Flickr/Evan Leeson
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecstaticist/3423689554/
Can the city be modeled as
a complex system?
• Natural and physical systems
• Human behavior
• Poorly described by any theory
• Complex interactions
• Subject to exogenous forces
• Highly stochastic

11. Simulation Useful
Critique of urban models:
• Not practical for real-life
• Not rigorous enough for research
Lee’s Seven Sins:
(still a major problem = ✔)
– Hypercomprehensiveness ✔
– Grossness
– Hungriness
– Wrongheadedness ✔
– Complicatedness ✔
– Mechanicalness ✔ Allocation modeling makes many assumptions to find useful
– Expensiveness ✔
results. Image: Lulu Xue for MIT Class 11.951, M. Flaxman,
Simulating Sustainable Futures, Fall 2008.
“Build only simply models”
Source: Lee (1974, 1993)

12. Information Feedback
Practical
• Dumb systems, lack of data
Institutional
• Systems in silos within and between
governments (Ferreira and Evans
1995)
Theoretical
• Data we have like trace measures
The City of Boston crime tracking system is
may not measure what we want to not easily available to other departments, or
the public. Image source: City of Boston
know (Webb 2000)

13. OK,
opDmizaDon
and
real-­‐Dme
control
is
hard
but
important
for
some
things
such
as
crisis
response
and
urban
service
delivery.
What
it
can
achieve
is
fundamentally
limited
by
legal,
poliDcal,
and
pracDcal
consideraDons.
What
informaDon
systems
do
we
need
to
tackle
the
really
big
problems?

14. What is a ‘Wicked’ Problem?
Rittel and Webber (1973)
Poorly Defined Complex context Many stakeholders involved
Solutions require design Decisions require weighing Long time horizons
and analysis value trade-offs
Examples:
How should our city grow? How can we improve equity? How do we create jobs?

15. Can they be tackled?
Yes! Analytic-Deliberative-Design Processes
Source: Faga 2006

16. What information systems do we need?
• Public
informaDon
collecDon
and
access
• Public
and
private
data
infrastructures
• Public
measurement
systems
• DeliberaDve
analysis
and
modeling
• Enhanced
access
to
analysis
skills,
improved
modeling
methods
• Federated
modeling
systems
• Process
support
• ParDcipaDon
technology
• Knowledge
and
process
management

17. Public information collection and access systems
(designed with humanist values)
• Public
and
private
data
infrastructures
• SpaDal
data
infrastructure
• Data
portals
and
APIs
• Public
measurement
systems
• Crowdsourced
datasets
• Volunteered
geographic
informaDon
• Humanist
values
• Security
(Supply
and
Demand)
• Privacy
(Fair
InformaDon
PracDces)
Functional view of SDI
• Democracy
• Others?

19. Examples
Short-term Public Value
• Useful apps
• Access to government services
• Crisis mapping/emergency
response
Long-term Public Value
• Open innovation
• Operational improvements
• Research uses
• Policy and planning monitoring
and analysis

20. Deliberative Analysis
• All stakeholders should be
able to create, critique, and
understand models (NOT
everyone – sociotechnical
perspective)
• Goal is improved ability to
use them to test alternatives,
evaluate policies
• Most tools still expensive
“black boxes” even for
appropriate users
• E.g., GIS-based tools,
Transportation models
• Developments:
• XML for planning analytics
(Singh 2003)
• Envision Tomorrow going
open source?
• Lincoln Institute open
source tools book
Source: Fregonese Associates

21. Process Support
• Analytic
• Spreadsheets, GIS,
models
• Deliberative
Management Planning
Systems Tools • Forums, polling,
surveys, websites
• Design
• GIS, Sketchup,
Design software
System Inside Outside Example
Government Government
GIS Operational needs, Various ESRI ArcSDE
mapping &
analysis
Project Tracking Project Transparency Paladin Data
Management Systems
Permitting Business process Monitoring and
management indicators
Plan creation Document Commenting and Limehouse
management feedback Software

22. Public Citizen/
employee Stakeholder
knowledge Access
management
Information System (web-based)
Paladin Data Systems – Mukilteo, Washington

23. How to move forward?
• Design science research methodology
• “If the tool is all there is, the level of knowledge is that of a craft-based
discipline” (Gregor and Jones 2007)
• “scientific” approach to technology development
• Kernel social science theories applied to guide problem solving technology
• Information system development methods
• Zachman framework

24. Information Systems for Solving Wicked Problems
Public Information Deliberative Analysis
Process Support
Collection and Access and Modeling
• City data portals • Improved methods and models • Participation technology
• Crowdsourcing systems for • Focus on transparency and • Improved understanding of
needed information accessibility of assumptions integration of existing tools
• Spatial data infrastructure • Multiple models • Process evaluation

25. Works Cited
Branch, Melville Campbell. 1981. Continuous city planning : integrating municipal management and city planning.
New York: Wiley.
Box, George E.P. "Robustness in the Strategy of Scientific Model Building" (May 1979) in Robustness in Statistics:
Proceedings of a Workshop (1979) edited by RL Launer and GN Wilkinson
Evans, John, and Joseph Ferreira. 1995. Sharing Spatial Information in an Imperfect World: Interactions Between
Technical and Organizaitonal Issues. In Sharing Geographic Information, edited by H. Onsrud and G. Rushton.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Center for Urban Policy Research.
Faga, Barbara. 2006. Designing public consensus : the civic theater of community participation for architects,
landscape architects, planners, and urban designers. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley.
Goodspeed, Robert. 2010. Open Government Strategy for the City of Boston.
Harrison, C., B. Eckman, R. Hamilton, P. Hartswick, J. Kalagnanam, J. Paraszczak, and P. Williams. 2010.
Foundations for Smarter Cities. IBM Journal of Research and Development 54 (4):1-16.
Lee, Douglass B. 1973. Requiem for Large-Scale Models. Journal of the American Planning Association 39 (3):163.
Lee, Douglass B. 1994. Retrospective on Large-Scale Urban Models. Journal of the American Planning Association
60 (1):35.
Rittel, HWJ, and MM Webber. 1973. Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy sciences 4 (2):155-169.
Savas, ES. 1970. Cybernetics in City Hall. Science 168 (3935):1066.
Singh, Raj. 2003. Speaking the Same Language: Using XML for Distributed and Collaborative Planning Analysis and
Modeling. In ACSP/AESOP.
Webb, Eugene J. 2000. Unobtrusive measures. Rev. ed, Sage classics series. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage
Publications.
Wiener, Norbert. 1965. Cybernetics : or, Control and communication in the animal and the machine. 2d ed, The M I T
paperback series,. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press.

26. Discussion
Robert Goodspeed
MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning
web.mit.edu/rgoodspe/www/
rob.goodspeed@gmail.com
Twitter: @rgoodspeed