Transdisciplinary approaches to urban computing

Welcome to this special issue on transdisciplinary approaches to urban computing. Let us begin by discussing the two titular terms, transdisciplinarity and urban computing, and the reasons these two topics are so closely entwined. Transdisciplinarity as a term is, of course, built from the Latin word trāns, meaning “on the other side of,” and discipline, referring to scientific disciplines. In this sense, the term can be understood to refer to going beyond disciplines, crossing disciplinary boundaries, and examining topics in a holistic fashion through several overlapping lenses – epistemologically, theoretically, and methodologically. The term differs from the related concepts of multidisciplinarity, where a topic is studied by several disciplines that are in service of a “home” discipline, and interdisciplinarity, where methods from one discipline are transferred to another. In compiling this special issue, we called for a multi-themed discussion on urban computing, asking authors from several interrelated fields of study to discuss a more transdisciplinary approach to the field. The starting point that we hoped authors would launch their investigations from, is that urban computing systems are always necessarily an amalgamation of three interrelated components – people, place, and technology (Foth et al., 2011; Kukka et al., 2014a,b). It is clear that with a field as complex and heterogeneous as urban computing, computer scientists cannot expect to stand alone and create systems that can ignore the complex and messy sociocultural context in which these technologies operate. It is only through a deeper understanding of the existing social, cultural, and political contexts that we can hope to design interventions, create prototypes, and build deployments that respect and enhance the experience of a technologically mediated urban lifestyle (Bull, 2013).