urban planning

Cities in the 21st Century

Curated on February 28, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Oriol Nel-lo and Renata Mele: “Cities in the 21^st Century provides an overview of contemporary urban development. Written by more than thirty major academic specialists from different countries, it provides information on and analysis of the global network of cities, changes in urban form, environmental problems, the role of technologies and knowledge, socioeconomic developments, and finally, the challenge of urban governance.

In the mid-20th century, architect and planner Josep Lluís Sert wondered if cities could survive; in the early 21st century, we see that cities have not only survived but have grown as never before. Cities today are engines of production and trade, forges of scientific and technological innovation, and crucibles of social change. Urbanization is a major driver of change in contemporary societies; it is a process that involves acute social inequalities and serious environmental problems, but also offers opportunities to move towards a future of greater prosperity, environmental sustainability, and social justice.

With case studies on thirty cities in five continents and a selection of infographics illustrating these dynamic cities, this edited volume is an essential resource for planners and students of urbanization and urban change….(More)”

Data Collaboratives: Matching Demand with Supply of (Corporate) Data to solve Public Problems

Curated on February 24, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Stefaan G. Verhulst, IrynaSusha and Alexander Kostura: “Data Collaboratives refer to a new form of collaboration, beyond the public-private partnership model, in which participants from different sectors (private companies, research institutions, and government agencies) share data to help solve public problems. Several of society’s greatest challenges — from climate change to poverty — require greater access to big (but not always open) data sets, more cross-sector collaboration, and increased capacity for data analysis. Participants at the workshop and breakout session explored the various ways in which data collaborative can help meet these needs.

Matching supply and demand of data emerged as one of the most important and overarching issues facing the big and open data communities. Participants agreed that more experimentation is needed so that new, innovative and more successful models of data sharing can be identified.

How to discover and enable such models? When asked how the international community might foster greater experimentation, participants indicated the need to develop the following:

· A responsible data framework that serves to build trust in sharing data would be based upon existing frameworks but also accommodates emerging technologies and practices. It would also need to be sensitive to public opinion and perception.

· Increased insight into different business models that may facilitate the sharing of data. As experimentation continues, the data community should map emerging practices and models of sharing so that successful cases can be replicated.

· Capacity to tap into the potential value of data. On the demand side,capacity refers to the ability to pose good questions, understand current data limitations, and seek new data sets responsibly. On the supply side, this means seeking shared value in collaboration, thinking creatively about public use of private data, and establishing norms of responsibility around security, privacy, and anonymity.

· Transparent stock of available data supply, including an inventory of what corporate data exist that can match multiple demands and that is shared through established networks and new collaborative institutional structures.

· Mapping emerging practices and models of sharing. Corporate data offers value not only for humanitarian action (which was a particular focus at the conference) but also for a variety of other domains, including science,agriculture, health care, urban development, environment, media and arts,and others. Gaining insight in the practices that emerge across sectors could broaden the spectrum of what is feasible and how.

In general, it was felt that understanding the business models underlying data collaboratives is of utmost importance in order to achieve win-win outcomes for both private and public sector players. Moreover, issues of public perception and trust were raised as important concerns of government organizations participating in data collaboratives….(More)”

Technology and the Future of Cities

Curated on February 24, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Mark Gorenberg, Craig Mundie, Eric Schmidt and Marjory Blumenthal at PCAST: “Growing urbanization presents the United States with an opportunity to showcase its innovation strength, grow its exports, and help to improve citizens’ lives – all at once. Seizing this triple opportunity will involve a concerted effort to develop and apply new technologies to enhance the way cities work for the people who live there.

A new report released today by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), Technology and the Future of Cities, lays out why now is a good time to promote technologies for cities: more (and more diverse) people are living in cities; people are increasingly open to different ways of using space, living, working, and traveling across town; physical infrastructures for transportation, energy, and water are aging; and a wide range of innovations are in reach that can yield better infrastructures and help in the design and operation of city services.

There are also new ways to collect and use information to design and operate systems and services. Better use of information can help make the most of limited resources – whether city budgets or citizens’ time – and help make sure that the neediest as well as the affluent benefit from new technology.

Although the vision of technology’s promise applies city-wide, PCAST suggests that a practical way for cities to adopt infrastructural and other innovation is by starting in a discrete area – a district, the dimensions of which depend on the innovation in question. Experiences in districts can help inform decisions elsewhere in a given city – and in other cities. PCAST urges broader sharing of information about, and tools for, innovation in cities.

Such sharing is already happening in isolated pockets focused on either specific kinds of information or recipients of specific kinds of funding. A more comprehensive City Web, achieved through broader interconnection, could inform and impel urban innovation. A systematic approach to developing open-data resources for cities is recommended, too.

PCAST recommends a variety of steps to make the most of the Federal Government’s engagement with cities. To begin, it calls for more – and more effective – coordination among Federal agencies that are key to infrastructural investments in cities. Coordination across agencies, of course, is the key to place-based policy. Building on the White House Smart Cities Initiative, which promotes not only R&D but also deployment of IT-based approaches to help cities solve challenges, PCAST also calls for expanding research and development coordination to include the physical, infrastructural technologies that are so fundamental to city services.

A new era of city design and city life is emerging. If the United States steers Federal investments in cities in ways that foster innovation, the impacts can be substantial. The rest of the world has also seen the potential, with numerous cities showcasing different approaches to innovation. The time to aim for leadership in urban technologies and urban science is now….(More)”

The city as platform

Curated on February 18, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

The report of the 2015 Aspen Institute Roundtable on Information Technology: “In the age of ubiquitous Internet connections, smartphones and data, the future vitality of cities is increasingly based on their ability to use digital networks in intelligent, strategic ways. While we are accustomed to thinking of cities as geophysical places governed by mayors, conventional political structures and bureaucracies, this template of city governance is under great pressure to evolve. Urban dwellers now live their lives in all sorts of hyper-connected virtual spaces, pulsating with real-time information, intelligent devices, remote-access databases and participatory crowdsourcing. Expertise is distributed, not centralized. Governance is not just a matter of winning elections and assigning tasks to bureaucracies; it is about the skillful collection and curation of information as a way to create new affordances for commerce and social life.

Except among a small class of vanguard cities, however, the far-reaching implications of the “networked city” for economic development, urban planning, social life and democracy, have not been explored in depth. The Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program thus convened an eclectic group of thirty experts to explore how networking technologies are rapidly changing the urban landscape in nearly every dimension. The goal was to learn how open networks, onlinecooperation and open data can enhance urban planning and administration, and more broadly, how they might improve economic opportunity and civic engagement. The conference, the 24th Annual Aspen Roundtable on Information Technology, also addressed the implications of new digital technologies for urban transportation, public health and safety, and socio-economic inequality….(Download the InfoTech 2015 Report)”

Another Tale of Two Cities: Understanding Human Activity Space Using Actively Tracked Cellphone Location Data

Curated on February 17, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Yang Xu et al: “Activity space is an important concept in geography. Recent advancements of location-aware technologies have generated many useful spatiotemporal data sets for studying human activity space for large populations. In this article, we use two actively tracked cellphone location data sets that cover a weekday to characterize people’s use of space in Shanghai and Shenzhen, China. We introduce three mobility indicators (daily activity range, number of activity anchor points, and frequency of movements) to represent the major determinants of individual activity space. By applying association rules in data mining, we analyze how these indicators of an individual’s activity space can be combined with each other to gain insights of mobility patterns in these two cities. We further examine spatiotemporal variations of aggregate mobility patterns in these two cities. Our results reveal some distinctive characteristics of human activity space in these two cities: (1) A high percentage of people in Shenzhen have a relatively short daily activity range, whereas people in Shanghai exhibit a variety of daily activity ranges; (2) people with more than one activity anchor point tend to travel further but less frequently in Shanghai than in Shenzhen; (3) Shenzhen shows a significant north–south contrast of activity space that reflects its urban structure; and (4) travel distance in both cities is shorter around noon than in regular work hours, and a large percentage of movements around noon are associated with individual home locations. This study indicates the benefits of analyzing actively tracked cellphone location data for gaining insights of human activity space in different cities….(More)”

Designing for Cities: Technology and the Urban Experience

Curated on February 9, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

eBook byPaul McConnell and Michael Clare: “How can today’s growing cities use technology and design to improve their infrastructure, management, and quality of life? In this O’Reilly report, Paul McConnell and Mike Clare from Intersection review how connected services and platforms are redefining how cities function, and how people interact within them.

As the world becomes more urbanized and connected, design methods can be applied to some of the most critical challenges among three major groups: citizens, civic stakeholders, and commercial interests.

This report will provide you with background, examples, and approaches for citizen-centered experiences and civic innovation projects. The authors provide examples from projects including the MTA Subway System and LinkNYC—an ambitious program to replace New York’s aging pay phone infrastructure with the world’s largest and fastest free municipal Wi-Fi network….(More)”

The Smart City and its Citizens

Curated on February 2, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Carlo Francesco Capra on “Governance and Citizen Participation in Amsterdam Smart City…Smart cities are associated almost exclusively with modern technology and infrastructure. However, smart cities have the possibility to enhance the involvement and contribution of citizens to urban development. This work explores the role of governance as one of the factors influencing the participation of citizens in smart cities projects. Governance characteristics play a major role in explaining different typologies of citizen participation. Through a focus on Amsterdam Smart City program as a specific case study, this research examines the characteristics of governance that are present in the overall program and within a selected sample of projects, and how they relate to different typologies of citizen participation. The analysis and comprehension of governance characteristics plays a crucial role both for a better understanding and management of citizen participation, especially in complex settings where multiple actors are interacting….(More)”

The Open (Data) Market

Curated on February 2, 2016August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Sean McDonald at Medium: “Open licensing privatizes technology and data usability. How does that effect equality and accessibility?…The open licensing movement(open data, open source software, etc.) predicates its value on increasing accessibility and transparency by removing legal and ownership restrictions on use. The groups that advocate for open data and open sourcecode, especially in government and publicly subsidized industries, often come from transparency, accountability, and freedom of information backgrounds. These efforts, however, significantly underestimate the costs of refining, maintaining, targeting, defining a value proposition, marketing, and presenting both data and products in ways that are effective and useful for the average person. Recent research suggests the primary beneficiaries of civic technologies — those specifically built on government data or services — are privileged populations. The World Banks recent World Development Report goes further to point out that public digitization can be a driver of inequality.

The dynamic of self-replicating privilege in both technology and openmarkets is not a new phenomenon. Social science research refers to it as the Matthew Effect, which says that in open or unregulated spaces, theprivileged tend to become more privileged, while the poor become poorer.While there’s no question the advent of technology brings massive potential,it is already creating significant access and achievement divides. Accordingto the Federal Communication Commission’s annual Broadband Progressreport in 2015, 42% of students in the U.S. struggle to do their homeworkbecause of web access — and 39% of rural communities don’t even have abroadband option. Internet access skews toward urban, wealthycommunities, with income, geography, and demographics all playing a rolein adoption. Even further, research suggests that the rich and poor use technology differently. This runs counter to narrative of Interneteventualism, which insist that it’s simply a (small) matter of time beforethese access (and skills) gaps close. Evidence suggests that for upper andmiddle income groups access is almost universal, but the gaps for lowincome groups are growing…(More)”