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Short abstract:

In this paper, we zoom in on the development and role of specific Digital Urban Twins – virtual re-creations of a city – in the context of urban governance and investigate how they take shape in locally situated ways.

Long abstract:

One of the latest iterations of urban governance innovation is the development and use of a ‘Digital Urban Twin’ (DUT) – often described as a dynamic virtual re-creation of a city. DUTs promise to create a close entanglement between what is framed as the tangible, material reality and its digital representations, in a way that allows for new forms of knowledge, control, and testing.

The purpose of this paper is to zoom in on the development and role of specific DUTs in the context of urban governance and investigate how they take shape in locally situated ways. Based on a comparative analysis of DUT projects in three contexts of urban governance (Munich, Germany; Boston, USA; Namur, Belgium), we specifically unpack the process of twinning as shaped by and in turn shaping existing governance conceptions and practices.

We explore questions such as: What is being represented and what becomes invisible through processes of twinning? Why do the elements chosen to be represented matter and to whom? Doing so, we analyze how ideas for governing desirable urban futures (including notions of democracy, expertise, participation and public good) influence the making of digital twins, and how DUTs in turn participate in reconfiguring visions of desirable urban futures. We therefore show that the multiple entanglements between the real-world and digital entities are firmly rooted and manifested in visions, materialities, institutions and ideas of decision-making in urban contexts, resulting in different ways of building DUTs locally beyond the current global circulation of standardized models.