Urban data and the mirage of control

Rachel Franklin (@rsfrankl)

Center for Geographic Analysis | Harvard University

2026-09-25

What is the urban,
and what data and methods do we use to understand it in 2035?

Where does control come into it?

More data >> more understanding

Different data >> more understanding

More understanding >> better cities

Alternative perspective:
what does the future hold for cities and what information and understanding are we going to require?

By 2035 or sometime thereafter…

1. Reality of (global) low fertility sets in and we confront what this means for “urban”

  • depopulation, yes, but also…
  • fewer potential in-migrants (from anywhere)
  • new geographies and hierarchies of winners and losers (mostly losers)


What is this going to mean for both winners and losers?

2. Reality of global climate change sets in for urban areas

  • habitability of cities, course
  • but also climate migration, within and across countries


What happens over there matters for over here.

3. Bad data chickens come home to roost

  • data drift
    • we’ve been relying on dodgy data for so long we can’t even validate to something “true”
  • conceptual drift, too
    • society continues to evolve but we keep measuring the same stuff as always
  • over-reliance on fancy data that lives behind paywalls


Maybe we realize the problem isn’t lack of data.

A hot take I might be committed to:



We have control but the mechanism isn’t via data and methods.

The End.