Transparency Deserts

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Christina Koningisor: “Few contest the importance of a robust transparency regime in a democratic system of government. In the United States, the “crown jewel” of this regime is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Yet despite widespread agreement about the importance of transparency in government, few are satisfied with FOIA. Since its enactment, the statute has engendered criticism from transparency advocates and critics alike for insufficiently serving the needs of both the public and the government. Legal scholars have widely documented these flaws in the federal public records law.

In contrast, scholars have paid comparatively little attention to transparency laws at the state and local level. This is surprising. The role of state and local government in the everyday lives of citizens has increased in recent decades, and many critical government functions are fulfilled by state and local entities today. Moreover, crucial sectors of the public namely, media and advocacy organizations—rely as heavily on state public records laws as they do on FOIA to hold the government to account. Yet these state laws and their effects remain largely overlooked, creating gaps in both local government law and transparency law scholarship.

This Article attempts to fill these gaps by surveying the state and local transparency regime, focusing on public records laws in particular. Drawing on hundreds of public records datasets, along with qualitative interviews, the Article demonstrates that in contrast with federal law, state transparency law introduces comparatively greater barriers to disclosure and comparatively higher burdens upon government. Further, the Article highlights the existence of “transparency deserts,” or localities in which a combination of poorly drafted transparency laws, hostile government actors, and weak local media and civil society impedes effective public oversight of government.

The Article serves as a corrective to the scholarship’s current, myopic focus on federal transparency law…(More)”.

Transformative placemaking amid COVID-19: Early stories from the field

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Hanna Love at Brookings: “As COVID-19 leaves no place immune – threatening to destabilize urban communities, as well as rural and suburban areas with limited resources and infrastructure to weather the outbreak— the connectivity of people and places matters more than ever. Local responses to the pandemic are revealing that even amid unprecedented distancing, the economic, physical, social, and civic structures of connected communities are laying the groundwork for resilience and recovery.

In this moment of uncertainty, communities are increasingly seeking solutions from the community-based organizations, networks, and coalitions they know and trust in ordinary times. We at the Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking decided to look to there too, revisiting past entries from our Placemaking Postcards series to uncover how these organizations are responding to the COVID-19 crisis….

Across the country, hyperlocal governance organizations are being called upon to play an expanded role in supporting small businesses. This rang true for each organization we spoke with, as place governance entities in urban and rural areas alike modified their work to include compiling COVID-19 resources for small businesses, redirecting existing funding streams, creating new resources for relief, and offering promotions for customers to purchase local goods and services. Some are even stepping in to manufacture health materials for first responders.

For instance, Philadelphia’s University City District—which we highlighted last year for their efforts to measure inclusion in public spaces—is partnering with the University of Pennsylvania to launch a relief fund for local, independently owned retailers and restaurants. Simultaneously, they are working to bring revenue to local businesses through a matching gift cards program, and are sponsoring local restaurants to prepare meals for families with ill children at the Ronald McDonald House.

Rural place-based organizations are engaging in similar efforts. Appalshop, a Kentucky nonprofit we covered last month for their solar energy project, has raised more than $10,000 for local businesses, nonprofits, and first responders. The community development organization Downtown Wytheville in Virginia (whose rural entrepreneurship competition we wrote about this summer), is helping businesses apply for SBA disaster relief funding and running a “Support Local Safely” campaign to publicize open businesses. In Wyoming, Rawlins DDA/Main Street (whose entrepreneurship center we wrote about last fall), is engaging the public about business needs and offering similar promotions. While seemingly small in scale, all of these efforts are critical supports needed to keep businesses open and will lay the groundwork for recovery in the months to come.

Other place-based organizations are adapting their business models to respond to the crisis. In ordinary times, makerspaces and other innovation spaces provide places to collaborate, support entrepreneurship, and challenge economic and social divides. In the midst of COVID-19, makerspaces are abandoning those routines to support frontline responders. Open Works—a Baltimore makerspace we covered for their efforts to build trust between residents, businesses, and institutions—has partnered with Innovation Works and We the Builders to launch a collaborative emergency response effort to manufacture face shields for health care workers….(More)”.

Federalism and Polycentric Government in a Pandemic

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Victoria Perez and Justin M. Ross: “Networks of overlapping local governments are the front line of governmental responses to pandemics. Local governments, both general purpose (municipalities, counties, etc.) and special districts (school, fire, police, hospital, etc.), implement state and federal directives while acting as a producer and as a third-party payer in the healthcare system. They possess local information necessary in determining the best use of finite resources and available assets. Furthermore, a liberal society requires voluntary cooperation of citizens skeptical of opportunistic authoritarianism. Therefore, successful local governance instills a reassuring division of political power.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created two significant challenges for local governments in their efforts to respond effectively to the crisis: public finance and intergovernmental collaboration. This brief recommends practical solutions to meet these challenges….(More)”.

The Routledge Companion to Smart Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Katharine S. Willis, and Alessandro Aurigi: “The Routledge Companion to Smart Cities explores the question of what it means for a city to be ‘smart’, raises some of the tensions emerging in smart city developments and considers the implications for future ways of inhabiting and understanding the urban condition. The volume draws together a critical and cross-disciplinary overview of the emerging topic of smart cities and explores it from a range of theoretical and empirical viewpoints.

This timely book brings together key thinkers and projects from a wide range of fields and perspectives into one volume to provide a valuable resource that would enable the reader to take their own critical position within the topic. To situate the topic of the smart city for the reader and establish key concepts, the volume sets out the various interpretations and aspects of what constitutes and defines smart cities. It investigates and considers the range of factors that shape the characteristics of smart cities and draws together different disciplinary perspectives. The consideration of what shapes the smart city is explored through discussing three broad ‘parts’ – issues of governance, the nature of urban development and how visions are realised – and includes chapters that draw on empirical studies to frame the discussion with an understanding not just of the nature of the smart city but also how it is studied, understood and reflected upon.

The Companion will appeal to academics and advanced undergraduates and postgraduates from across many disciplines including Urban Studies, Geography, Urban Planning, Sociology and Architecture, by providing state of the art reviews of key themes by leading scholars in the field, arranged under clearly themed sections….(More)”.

Developing better Civic Services through Crowdsourcing: The Twitter Case Study

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Srushti Wadekar, Kunal Thapar, Komal Barge, Rahul Singh, Devanshu Mishra and Sabah Mohammed: “Civic technology is a fast-developing segment that holds huge potential for a new generation of startups. A recent survey report on civic technology noted that the sector saw $430 million in investment in just the last two years. It’s not just a new market ripe with opportunity it’s crucial to our democracy. Crowdsourcing has proven to be an effective supplementary mechanism for public engagement in city government in order to use mutual knowledge in online communities to address such issues as a means of engaging people in urban design. Government needs new alternatives — alternatives of modern, superior tools and services that are offered at reasonable rates.

An effective and easy-to-use civic technology platform enables wide participation. Response to, and a ‘conversation’ with, the users is very crucial for engagement, as is a feeling of being part of a society. These findings can contribute to the future design of civic technology platforms. In this research, we are trying to introduce a crowdsourcing platform, which will be helpful to people who are facing problems in their everyday practice because of the government services. This platform will gather the information from the trending twitter tweets for last month or so and try to identify which challenges public is confronting. Twitter for crowdsourcing as it is a simple social platform for questions and for the people who see the tweet to get an instant answer. These problems will be analyzed based on their significance which then will be made open to public for its solutions. The findings demonstrate how crowdsourcing tends to boost community engagement, enhances citizens ‘ views of their town and thus tends us find ways to enhance the city’s competitiveness, which faces some serious problems. Using of topic modeling with Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm helped get categorized civic technology topics which was then validated by simple classification algorithm. While working on this research, we encountered some issues regarding to the tools that were available which we have discussed in the ‘Counter arguments’ section….(More)”.

Global Traffic Scorecard

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “…the 2019 INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard… identified, analyzed and ranked congestion and mobility trends in more than 900 cities, across 43 countries. To reflect an increasingly diverse mobility landscape, the 2019 Global Traffic Scorecard includes both public transport and biking metrics for the first time….

At the global level, Bogota topped the list of the cities most impacted by traffic congestion with drivers losing 191 hours a year to congestion, followed by Rio de Janeiro (190 hours), Mexico City (158 hours) and Istanbul (150 hours). Latin American and European cities again dominated the Top 10, highlighting the rapid urbanisation occurring in Latin America and historic European cities that took shape long before the age of automobile….

INRIX fuses anonymous data from diverse datasets – such as phones, cars, trucks and cities – that leads to robust and accurate insights. The data used in the 2019 Global Traffic Scorecard is the congested or uncongested status of every segment of road for every minute of the day, as used by millions of drivers around the world that rely on INRIX-based traffic services….(More)”

Milwaukee’s Amani Neighborhood Uses Data to Target Traffic Safety and Build Trust

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Kassie Scott: “People in Milwaukee’s Amani neighborhood are using data to identify safety issues and build relationships with the police. It’s a story of community-engaged research at its best.

In 2017, the Milwaukee Police Department received a grant under the federal Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation program, now called the Community Based Crime Reduction Program, whose purpose is to bridge the gap between practitioners and researchers and advance the use of data in making communities safer. Because of its close ties in the Amani neighborhood, the Dominican Center was selected to lead this initiative, known as the Amani Safety Initiative, and they partnered with local churches, the district attorney’s office, LISC-Milwaukee, and others. To support the effort with data and coaching, the police department contracted with Data You Can Use.

Together with Data You Can Use, the Amani Safety Initiative team first implemented a survey to gauge perceptions of public safety and police legitimacy. Neighborhood ambassadors were trained (and paid) to conduct the survey themselves, going door to door to gather the information from nearly 300 of their neighbors. The ambassadors shared these results with their neighborhood during what they called “data chats.” They also printed summary survey results on door hangers, which they distributed throughout the neighborhood.

Neighbors and community organizations were surprised by the survey results. Though violent crime and mistrust in the police were commonly thought to be the biggest issues, the data showed that residents were most concerned about traffic safety. Ultimately, residents decided to post slow-down signs in intersections.

This project stands out for letting the people in the neighborhood lead the way. Neighbors collected data, shared results, and took action. The partnership between neighbors, police, and local organizations shows how people can drive decision-making for their neighborhood.

The larger story is one of social cohesion and mutual trust. Through participating in the initiative and learning more about their neighborhood, Amani neighbors built stronger relationships with the police. The police began coming to neighborhood community meetings, which helped them build relationships with people in the community and understand the challenges they face….(More).

Cividend: A Democratic Urban Planning Mechanism

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jordan Ostapchuk at RadicalXChange: “Urban planning as a professional discipline is implicitly flawed towards its approach to the design of cities. The term “urban planning” is a category error—it is a mistake to view urban environments as something that can be planned.

This stems from our modern desire to make messy systems ‘legible’ through maps, plans, strategies, and grids. It temporarily suppresses the underlying messiness without ever solving it.

The dominant urban planning philosophy of today assumes two contradictory stances.

On one hand, it assumes people know what is best for their life and can faithfully express it via the virtues of the free market. “If people want single family homes with yards, far from the activity of the city centre, then by rights the market has provided!” (Ignoring the five-decade legacy of race-driven zoning policies, loss-making municipal infrastructure subsidies, and hidden costs to health and wellbeing.)

On the other hand, contemporary urban planning assumes that people have no idea what is best for their life and must be saved from their follies by the maternal hand of strict zoning policies, design guidelines, and municipal bylaws. “If we do not intervene, neighbourhoods will devolve into chaos; trust the experts to masterplan your streets and buildings!” (Ignoring the irony of assuming a central bureaucrat can decide what is best for a neighbourhood that they do not live in, work in, or worship in. And the repeated failures of historically master-planned cities and the prevalence of bylaw exemptions.)

There is a better way to think about cities, how they evolve and our role in the process.

It helps to start with two fundamental truths:

  1. Incredibly complex systems arise from a set of very simple rules
  2. We cannot predict the future, but we can invent it.

By thinking about the city differently, we can reframe “the kind of problem a city is” as Jane Jacobs said, one that is better suited to our 21st century challenges and opportunities.

We need to redefine our thinking about cities as collections of interactions, rather than just physical spaces. We should think about cities as market-based, and socially-driven systems.

Michael Batty defines cities as “…aggregates of multiple decision-making processes that generate designs and decisions pertaining to the way we organize our social and economic activities in space and time,” and this is the way they will be approached here. To invent future cities, we must create a system of “radically innovative political economies and social technologies that are truer to the richness of our diversely shared lives” per RadicalxChange’s mission…(More)”.

Is Your Data Being Collected? These Signs Will Tell You Where

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Flavie Halais at Wired: “Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs is testing icons that provide “digital transparency” when information is collected in public spaces….

As cities incorporate digital technologies into their landscapes, they face the challenge of informing people of the many sensors, cameras, and other smart technologies that surround them. Few people have the patience to read through the lengthy privacy notice on a website or smartphone app. So how can a city let them know how they’re being monitored?

Sidewalk Labs, the Google sister company that applies technology to urban problems, is taking a shot. Through a project called Digital Transparency in the Public Realm, or DTPR, the company is demonstrating a set of icons, to be displayed in public spaces, that shows where and what kinds of data are being collected. The icons are being tested as part Sidewalk Labs’ flagship project in Toronto, where it plans to redevelop a 12-acre stretch of the city’s waterfront. The signs would be displayed at each location where data would be collected—streets, parks, businesses, and courtyards.

Data collection is a core feature of the project, called Sidewalk Toronto, and the source of much of the controversy surrounding it. In 2017, Waterfront Toronto, the organization in charge of administering the redevelopment of the city’s eastern waterfront, awarded Sidewalk Labs the contract to develop the waterfront site. The project has ambitious goals: It says it could create 44,000 direct jobs by 2040 and has the potential to be the largest “climate-positive” community—removing more CO2 from the atmosphere than it produces—in North America. It will make use of new urban technology like modular street pavers and underground freight delivery. Sensors, cameras, and Wi-Fi hotspots will monitor and control traffic flows, building temperature, and crosswalk signals.

All that monitoring raises inevitable concerns about privacy, which Sidewalk aims to address—at least partly—by posting signs in the places where data is being collected.

The signs display a set of icons in the form of stackable hexagons, derived in part from a set of design rules developed by Google in 2014. Some describe the purpose for collecting the data (mobility, energy efficiency, or waste management, for example). Others refer to the type of data that’s collected, such as photos, air quality, or sound. When the data is identifiable, meaning it can be associated with a person, the hexagon is yellow. When the information is stripped of personal identifiers, the hexagon is blue…(More)”.

Imagining Regulation Differently: Co-creating for Engagement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Morag McDermont, Tim Cole, Janet Newman and Angela Piccini: “There is an urgent need to rethink relationships between systems of government and those who are ‘governed’. This book explores ways of rethinking those relationships by bringing communities normally excluded from decision-making to centre stage to experiment with new methods of regulating for engagement.

Using original, co-produced research, it innovatively shows how we can better use a ‘bottom-up’ approach to design regulatory regimes that recognise the capabilities of communities at the margins and powerfully support the knowledge, passions and creativity of citizens. The authors provide essential guidance for all those working on co-produced research to make impactful change…(More)”.