It is my pleasure to announce the publication of the new book, Digital-Era Urban Transformations: Advancements in Data Science, Analytics, and Technology. This edited volume was published in conjunction with the 2025 Computational Urban Planning and Urban Management (CUPUM) conference, held in July in London. Much more than simply a conference proceedings, a rigorous double-blind peer review process and thorough editing means the book contains many excellent examples of cutting-edge research.
Reflecting on the books contents, the editors made the following observation in our introduction:
The chapters show that although we may be living in a digital era, it is also an era beset with many acute urban challenges, both new and old. […] Furthermore, we are heartened to see how the broadest concept of PSSs—as new tools for intelligence and collective design—remains broadly relevant as a unifying concept across so many cultural and national contexts. Although conceptually diverse, in sum the chapters illustrate a vibrant CUPUM community of researchers, who are eagerly exploring the possibilities created by the digital era to realize improvements to urban life.”
Here is a listing of the book’s 17 chapters. The book is available in print and eBook formats worldwide via SpringerLink, or available through your local library.
Introduction (Robert Goodspeed, Joana Barros, Huanfa Chen, Christopher Pettit, and Esra Suel)
Planning Support Systems in Evolution
Planning Support Systems in Evolution: A 20-Year Review of the What if? Planning Support System (Yi Lu, Mohammad Qadeer Hussnain, Richard Klosterman, and Christopher Pettit)
Bridging the Gap Between Tsunami Risk Awareness and Physical Vulnerabilities: A Data-Driven Approach for Disaster-Resilient Urban Planning (Yuki Akiyama, Takuma Yamada, Kento Kokubo, Jin Horiuchi, and Chiaki M. Akiyama)
Virtual Reality as a Collaborative Tool in Road Planning: Insights from a Case Study in Perth, Western Australia (Jonathan Pillai, Parisa Izadpanahi, and Shohreh Nematollahi)
Rapid Development of a Cloud-Based Chatbot for Housing Policy Enquiries (Wayne Williamson)
Urban Streets and Mobility Systems
A City’s Response to Platformized Mobility: Emerging Interactions of Ride Hailing Beyond Automobile Travel (Si Qiao, Fang Bian, and Anthony Gar-On Yeh)
Towards Net Zero: Converting Car Commutes to Bicycling in Australia (Parisa Izadpanahi, Scott N. Lieske, and Simone Z. Leao)
Inferring On-Street Parking Occupancy with Smart Meter Data (Daniel Jordon, Robert C. Hampshire, and Tayo Fabusuyi)
Urban Design Analytics in the Age of Data Science and AI: Discovery, Measurement, Design, and Prediction (Stephen Law, Demin Hu, Xuhui Lin, Xiaowei Gao, Zicheng Fan, Yao Shen, and Tao Yang)
Fingerprinting NYC’s Scaffolding Problem with Longitudinal Dashcam Data (Dorin Ruinsky Shapira, Matt Franchi, and Wendy Ju)
Development of a Method for Identifying the Presence of Front Roads Based on Building Coverage Ratio (Takahito Shimizu, Kotaro Mizutani, Yuki Akiyama, Hiroki Baba, and Chiaki M. Akiyama)
Neighborhoods and Communities
Gentrification from the Sky: Using Remote Sensing and Machine Learning for Urban Change Detection (Javier Alfaro, Sanja Scepanovic, Stephen Law, and Daniele Quercia)
Increasing Urban Greenery Through Reconfiguring Street Spaces to Mitigate Urban Heat Island Effects in Metropolitan Adelaide, Australia (Jinhui Yu, Raziyeh Teimouri, and Andrew Allan)
Sensing and Analysing Urban Heat Islands Using Internet of Things: A Real Time Microclimate Network for London (Dongyi Ma, Andrew Hudson-Smith, Martin De Jode, and Leah Lovett)
Daytime to Nighttime Street View Image Generation for 24-h Safety Perception Mapping (Jiajing Dai, Zhiyi Liu, Tingting Li, Tianyi Ren, Waishan Qiu, Da Chen, and Wenjing Li)
Spatial Variation Analysis of the Local Population Distribution During Urban Expansion and Contraction Processes (Kiichiro Kumagai, Kohei Uda, and Ayano Shiraishi)
Do Good Schools Influence Property Prices? Disentangling School and Neighbourhood Effects with Empirical Evidence from Brighton (Josiah Tan and Adam Dennett)
Interested in submitting your work to a future CUPUM book, or participating in the next conference? The next CUPUM will be held in Sydney, Australia in 2027, so watch the website for updates. We expect to announce a formal call for submissions in August 2026.