Seeing like an urban service operator: making urban circulations of matter and energy legible in the digital age

This chapter aims at exploring the interplay between streams of data on the one hand, and streams of matter and energy on the other. As urban services (e.g., energy, water, and waste management) are increasingly being integrated with digital technologies (i.e., hardware such as sensors, but also software such as algorithms) under the auspices of the ‘smart city’, the chapter focuses on how data are generated to better identify, localise, quantify and/or visualise urban metabolism. These data are framed by promoters of the ‘digitalisation’ of urban services as a key opportunity to gain real-time control of urban metabolism and increase its efficiency, but their broader social and political implications remain under-theorised. This chapter argues that digitalisation brings more legibility over urban metabolism, which increases its governability. Overall, rather than major infrastructural overhauls, digital technologies transform circulations of matter and energy through an ordering of urban metabolism.