Digitalization

This chapter is about how digitalization affects urban infrastructures and cities and how cities can use digitalization as a resource, mainly in order to improve their efficiency and the services to their inhabitants. To begin with, digitalization is placed within the IGLUS conceptual framework, explaining that digitalization is not identical to the telecommunications infrastructure, but rather builds on it so as to penetrate every aspect of urban systems. I then present the building blocks of digitalization in general and the rise of digital platforms in particular; in the urban context, these platforms mediate between the infrastructures and their services providers, on one hand, and their users or customers, on the other. I then identify the opportunities and the challenges of digitalization, captured in the concept of the "digitalization dilemma". After examining the European Union's approach to dealing with this dilemma, I conclude this chapter by outlining three available options for cities when it comes to simultaneously dealing with and benefitting from digitalization.