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Articles in "Trends"

Mobile Devices Help Citizens Become More Connected as Traditional Community News Outlet Circulation Continues to Decline

Nicole Davis

Local newspapers have always been a relied-upon source for citizens, playing a complex role in the civic life of American communities. According to the 2012 State of the News Media report by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, newspaper circulation is dropping while the number of people reading news on mobile devices is on the rise.

How does finance shape urban form?

Ben Schulman

The answer would seem implicit. As a market good, real estate development should reflect the will of the dollar. If the prevailing condition of sprawl has spread out across the land, it’s only because the dollar felt like stretching out.

Charrettes and the Next Generation of Public Involvement

Evan Carver

If a mark of a healthy organization is its capacity for allowing internal debate and dissent, the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) is quite healthy, at least judged by the recent 20th annual conference held in West Palm Beach, Fla.  New Urbanism has been, in the words of founder Andrés Duany, “the least unsuccessful” recent movement in community building, and therefore has some confidence and capacity to entertain dissent.  Nevertheless, even the greatest of skeptics would have been impressed by the range of topics featured in different sessions, and the range of speakers within given sessions.  One session was particularly notable for its central importance to the evolving nature of New Urbanist project and its interdisciplinary and intergenerational panel. Great skeptics might point out some glaring absences from that panel, but the lively discussion was evidence that New Urbanist leaders are deeply committed to a future of intelligent, collaborative city building.     

The Past & Future of Tactical Urbanism: A Conversation With Mike Lydon

Evan Carver

The 20th annual Congress for the New Urbanism was held this week in West Palm Beach, Fla.  Such anniversaries are an occasion for reflection on past accomplishments, and also for looking ahead.  One of the most exciting topics on the docket was “tactical urbanism,” the movement of incremental, small-scale – usually temporary, sometimes unsanctioned – improvements to the built landscape.  One session featured Ralph Rosado, of C3TS, who presented on a project that turned a parking lot along Miami’s Biscayne Boulevard into a park for a week.  Russ Preston, Design Director of the Principle Group, described how informal outdoor movie projections activated a neighborhood (and eventually became sanctioned by Paramount Pictures).  Ellen Dunham-Jones, of Georgia Tech, described how her students installed temporary bike signage, historical markers, and storytelling benches to downtown Lithonia, Ga., to help catalyze long-term change there.   The session was emceed by Mike Lydon, principle of Street Plans Collaborative, and lead editor of the Tactical Urbanism manual, volume 2 of which was just released.  Following the session, Lydon stepped aside with EngagiesCities to discuss the past and future of tactical urbanism.

Visualization Through Data-Driven Storytelling or Geospatial Animation

Chris Haller

The concept of data-driven storytelling is now “on the map.” Geospatial data, or simply data concerning a place, is now collected in real time. When geospatial data is animated, we get an interactive visualization that is impressive and can be even more powerful than static data. Andy Kirk, a UK-based data visualization expert, emphasizes that when you plot data onto “the scenery of a map and then create a shifting window into the scene through the sequence of time, you create a data-driven story.”

Municipal Data Integration: Breaking Down the Silos and Sharing Information

Terra Curtis

Recently, I posted an article on the Living Labs Global blog, Report on Mobility, which prompted someone to comment on the distinction between open data and actual information.  Raw data are valuable, but the information synthesized from the data is golden.  My experiences this summer continue to highlight the need not only for better data, but also for better information.

From GIS to Place-Based Stories [Cartography]

Michael Hinke

A couple of weeks ago, I was able to attend the 2012 Where Conference, held in San Fransisco, California, and I am pleased to say that this year’s event surpassed all of my expectations. For those of you not familiar with this conference, the annual event features the latest and greatest in location-based social applications, mapping technology, and innovative GIS related public engagement best practices. While many of the presentations at this year’s Where Conference focused on leveraging location-based social media apps installed on our smart phones and tablets, it was the presentations about creating compelling stories about place and space that caught my attention as they relate specifically to public involvement, which can provide planners with some very useful resources in citizen engagement. Overall, I would say that “doing GIS” is getting easier.

DistrictBuilder Software Offers Public Participation Power Shift in Redistricting Process

Chris Haller

When you approach the polls this November to choose the members of Congress you’d like to see elected or re-elected, you will likely have put in some time prior to the election studying up on how your candidates compare to your views. It’s worth noting that there are now websites created just for that reason, such as VoteSmart.org’s “VoteEasy” platform. But it may not have crossed your mind that elected representatives and their political allies in the state legislatures will have pre-selected their voters by creating partisan electoral districts through the manipulation of maps.

Avoiding Road Blocks On The Way To Building a Smarter City

Chris Haller

From the point of view of city planners, ICT leaders, city engineers and analysts today, Smart City initiatives can hit roadblocks and come up against obstacles to their realization. It is especially obvious that technology alone cannot adequately fix our urban problems. In short, it might be said that the one thing missing from “intelligent city” projects is the people who reside there.

The Democratization of Mapmaking: The Result of a Potent Digital Revolution

Christine McLaren

We see them every day, popping up on our Twitter feeds, filtered through blogs, or even scattered throughout the New York Times: maps portraying not the usual locations or destinations, but data. From people’s kisses in Toronto, to the concentration of pizza joints in New York, to the number of women who ride bikes, to the likelihood of being killed by a car in any given American city, the list of lenses through which we can now view our cities and neighborhoods goes on, thanks to data-mapping geeks.