The Challenge for Cities of Governing Spatial Data Privacy

This chapter examines the case of institutional design for urban data governance in the City of Seattle as a collective action problem, referencing three prominent theoretical frameworks for examining institutional change and institutional economics. This work centers on the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework, which is adapted from Elinor Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework for natural resource commons and developed to study institutional arrangements for overcoming various social dilemmas associated with sharing and producing information, innovation, and creative works. Furthermore, this chapter notes the foundational integration of the IAD framework with Oliver Williamson’s transaction cost economics (TCE), highlighting the role of transaction costs in understanding the externalities associated with the governance of data.