The Shifting Landscape of Cities and Technology For years it has been obvious that digital technologies have become deeply embedded in cities, but it has been difficult to conceptualize this change. My scholarly career has seen a revolving door of buzzwords and concepts surrounding technology in cities, like open data, open government, gov 2.0, civic […]
New Article: ‘Lessons for developing a planning support system infrastructure: The case of Southern California’s Scenario Planning Model”
How can a region create a shared technical infrastructure for planning? In order to find out, together with a student research assistant Cassie Hackel, I conducted an exploratory study of an effort to build such a system in Southern California. Here is the abstract of the paper which resulted from our research project: Although planning […]
Registration Open for Urban Informatics Unconference
Together with collaborators at the UM School of Information, I am helping organize another Urban Informatics Unconference this fall, to be held from noon-5pm on Friday, October 20th. Here’s some more information: Urban informatics is an interdisciplinary field of research and practice that uses information technology for the analysis, management, planning, design, inhabitation, and usability […]
New Journal Article: ‘Sketching and Learning: A Planning Support System Field Study’
An article containing findings from my research on social learning and GIS-based planning tools has been published by the journal Environment and Planning B, the leading journal for research on IT and analytical methods applied to urban problems. The article is titled “Sketching and learning: a planning support system field study,” and the abstract is […]
Register Now for 9/26 Urban Informatics Ann Arbor Unconference
I’m pleased to announce an unconference planned for 9:30 am – 4:00 pm on Saturday, Sept. 26th, in the Art & Architecture Building at the University of Michigan North Campus. Urban informatics is an interdisciplinary field of researchers and practitioners interested in using information technology for the analysis, management, and planning of cities. It encompasses […]
Present Your Urban Tech Research in Boston in 2015
In 2013 I had the pleasure of attending the 13th International Conference on Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management (CUPUM), held at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands. Although the conference tends to fly under the radar, the event was a true pleasure. The attendees included many scholars whose work I knew from the literature, and featured […]
New Article on Smart Cities: Moving Beyond Urban Cybernetics
In August, an article I wrote about smart cities was published in the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society. In it, I critique the existing corporate-led smart city discourse, and discuss why smart city technologies do not eliminate the need for other types of technologies to improve cities. Here’s the title and abstract: Smart […]