Local governments, and here especially large cities, are the epicentres of the twin transition of sustainability and digitalization, as these challenges particularly manifest in the urban context. Emphasizing their interdependent character, the nascent scholarly theme of ‘digital sustainability’ suggests that innovative digital technologies help governments address sustainability issues. Digitalization and sustainability can reinforce each other but also clash, as unintended rebound effects resulting from digital technologies are often overlooked. Therefore, this commentary aims to stimulate critical reflection and advance a conceptual agenda on the possibility of ‘sustainable digitalization’ in cities. We suggest further developing the concept of ‘digital humanism’ as a heuristic device for the development and analysis of ‘smart’ solutions. This can help also to consider the unsustainable effects of digitalization that take shape in distant locations (e.g. affecting the far end of supply chains) and/or with a delay (e.g. affecting future generations). We thus offer a perspective that accounts for the global sustainability effects of local digital technologies and that avoids the pitfalls of presentism and solutionism by local decision-makers. Points to Practitioners 1. Digital technologies introduced to advance sustainability goals can generate unintended ecological and social rebound effects. Municipal administrations should therefore institutionalize procedures to assess lifecycle impacts, energy and resource use, and social externalities before and during deployment. 2. Sustainable digitalization requires structured reflexivity. Cities can embed review mechanisms, impact assessments, and cross-departmental coordination processes that systematically examine tensions between digital efficiency gains and ecological or social costs. 3. Local governments should integrate a spatiotemporal perspective into routine decision-making, considering not only impacts on current local users but also long-term consequences and effects along global supply chains – asking, for example: ‘Who is affected here and now , and who is affected there and then ?’
Leixnering et al. (Thu,) studied this question.