Urban Futures in the Mirror of Technology? The Politics of Urban Digital Twins

Urban Digital Twins (UDTs) represent a growing trend in urban governance, offering promises of enhanced prediction, decision-making, and public participation. Adopting a constructivist perspective on UDTs, this paper contributes to the emerging literature on "twinning": the creation of UDTs that produce an interrelation between tangible reality and its digital representation, enabling new forms of knowledge and urban governance. Through a comparative analysis of UDT projects in Boston, Namur, and Munich, we explore how digital representations of cities are co-produced with ideas about their desirable governance. Our locally situated perspective highlights the interrelations of twinning in three dimensions: representation, epistemic promises, and ideas of desirable urban governance. The analysis offers critical insights into the role of digital technologies in shaping urban futures, highlighting the importance of context-specific approaches and the broader implications for urban governance.