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 […]
Urban Democracy, One Click at a Time?
The Economist magazine dedicated a special section of their March 1st issue to democracy. That essay observed that two decades after the triumphant 1990s, the political ideology is facing challenges. China’s rise has shown the economic efficiency of centralized power, and Russia, Venezuela, Ukraine, and Argentina are “perpetuating a simulacrum of democracy” rather than doing […]
Review: Ehrenhalt’s The Great Inversion
In the acknowledgements section at the end of his book, The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City, author Alan Ehrenhalt demurred he is “no Jane Jacobs” but says he followed her advice for researching cities, namely to study them through close personal observation using a minimum of preconceptions. The results of this […]
Which Cities Create Comprehensive Plans?
I attended a lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) last night where Robert Yaro from the New York Regional Plan Association (RPA) presented about his organization’s intention begin a new plan for the New York region. (See a video). GSD professor Jerold Kayden introduced Robert Yaro. After a brief synopsis of the […]
New Planetizen Post: The Coming Urban Data Revolution
I just posted a new article on the Planetizen blog: “The Coming Urban Data Revolution“: Historically, data sources for urban planning have remained relatively stable. Planners relied on a collection of well-known government-produced datasets to do their work, including statistics and geographic layers from federal, state and local sources. Produced by regulatory processes or occasional […]
Announcement Planning & Technology Conference
I’m helping plan this conference at MIT in April. We opened registration and announced the call for papers today. REGISTRATION INFORMATION & CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS AND PAPERS PLANNINGTECH@DUSP 2011 Friday, April 8, 2011 11:30 AM – 6:00 PM Location: MIT Building 9 DESCRIPTION New technologies are transforming how we communicate, expanding access to data and […]
Which Crowdsourcing?
I wrote this article for the most recent APA Technology Division Newsletter, which we sent out this week. Other articles include city apps, water quality mapping, TOD database, a VMT estimation tool, and online participation. The expansion of the Internet has made possible amazing examples of the collaboration of large groups of people, a phenomenon […]