Content about Education

How can technology provide useful insights in how cities function? How can this contribute to more informed planning? How does this impact society? The multidisciplinary conference, City of Flows, last week in Potsdam, Germany, explored these questions last week, providing unique“perspectives on the digital city in analog spaces”. I was fortunate to attend the conference and came away with many reflections concerning mapping and visualization of geographical data and the effects this technology has on society. 

Velo-city Global is the world’s premier international cycling planning conference. The four day event offers delegates from around the world a chance to share best practices for creating and sustaining cycling-friendly cities, where bicycles are valued as part of daily transport and recreation.

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.

I recently met with a local Philly organization that is doing something different that has sparked quite a bit of creativity and cohesion among local neighbors and business owners. Alex Hillman, of Philadelphia’s own Independents Hall (or Indy Hall for short), sat down with me and allowed me to pick his brain about an up-and-coming business movement called Coworking. The concept is surprisingly simple, and the idea is popping up in urban areas everywhere. The best part is, business leaders all over the world are coming to Philadelphia (and more specifically, to Alex at Indy Hall) to see how it’s done right.

On May 2/3 2012 the Living Labs Global Award will culminate in an Award Ceremony, a Matchmaking Summit and an Executive Training Workshop to bring solution providers and cities together and enable the dialogue around major urban challenges. The Living Labs Global Award Ceremony will take place on the eve of the Rio Summit on Service Innovation in Cities on May 2nd 2012. 21 Cities will present the shortlist and winners for their challenges in a festive ceremony.

Carl Steinitz, professor of landscape architecture at Harvard University, first described how the GeoDesign Framework worked by posing it as a series of six questions relevant to landscape change.  The first three questions describe the world as it is and assess its condition (the assessment process). The last three questions describe the world as it could be, evaluating proposed design alternatives and their impacts (the intervention process).

We recently came across a USC Dornsife Study that has revealed a connection between experience in labor unions and the tendency toward civic participation among Latino immigrants in the United States. The study suggests that labor union participation contributes to the political incorporation of Latino immigrant parents by helping them overcome barriers to civic participation that are related to their class and immigrant backgrounds.

We recently learned of a cool new interactive mobile app designed to initiate the discovery of public spaces and their hidden potential for meaningful and fun exchanges between people and their cities. Revel turns sets of instructions, called challenges, into adventures and experiences that can be shared by friends or strangers. You can write your own challenges in any of Revel’s seven categories: Appreciation, Exploring, Fitness Traning, Games, Neighbors & Networks, Photography, and Storytelling. Players are simply encouraged to be creative with their interpretations of these fields! One main ground rule for the game: challenges have to take place in public space, such as a city street, sidewalk, or park.    

When it came time to engage citizens in a recent Master Planning process, the City of Lowell, Massachusetts opted for an unorthodox approach: an interactive online game. In order to engage a diverse population, the city partnered with Emerson College researchers to debut a newly developed participatory planning tool for the first time in June 2011.

Eastern Kentucky University and the City of Richmond will host the International Town and Gown Association’s seventh annual University-City Relations Conference in 2012.