ABSTRACT
This chapter examines six key issues with respect to how people come to know and manage cities through urban data and city dashboards. It seeks to provide an agenda for critically reflecting on urban dashboards by examining six related questions: how are insight and value derived from city dashboards, how comprehensive and open are city dashboards, to what extent can people trust city dashboards, how comprehensible and useable are city dashboards, what are the uses and utility of city dashboards and how can people ensure that dashboards are used ethically. The chapter considers the epistemology, scope and access, veracity and validity, use and utility, usability and literacy, and ethics of city dashboards. It draws on an engagement with the wider literature and our own experiences of building the Dublin Dashboard, an analytical dashboard for the city. In the context of city dashboards, this epistemology is framed within the emerging field of urban informatics and urban science.
