ABSTRACT
A thesis written by the author on “Virtual Cities” in 1999 at The University of Manchester discovered representations of cities in digital media have a high propensity to affect socioeconomic change at the scale of the global and local, and bypassing the national. The critical research method and context is described in some detail to support future researchers. Smart cities have high potential to transform the city within the global network context of sustainability. Many cities are converging on a common set of challenges. To enable collaboration, and sustainability insights, a data governance framework is needed to align a common information model and ontology. Best practices, promoting asset reuse as well as agility and flexibility in digital service provisioning, are needed to address the identified challenges. The telecommunications industry is well positioned to fulfil required national and local data sovereignty regulatory compliance along with distributed edge platforms and data mesh to help provision, monitor and realise sustainable outcomes at local and global scales. Management cybernetics offers a rich body of prior research that can be leveraged.
