Urban planning is a dynamic field that can often take you out of the office, but you still need access to the tools of the trade. Luckily with everyone equipped with smartphones, this is not only possible but incredibly easy. Today we will take a look at some of our

Private transportation companies gather a lot of data about transit patterns of citizens. This data could help local authorities shape good transportation policies. But once the data is in possession of the local government authorities, the data becomes public property. Anyone can request access to this data and that could create some security

The term ‘playable cities‘ describes an urban design approach that seeks to put playfulness and entertainment in outdoor daily life activities. Playing is especially important for children. Physical activity and brain stimulation help children to stay healthy and develop skills like creativity and critical thinking. Nowadays, parents work long hours, children have school, homework and other activities. All this

Geoff Boeing, Urban planning professor at Northeastern University, has developed a tool to visualize the consistency of a city’s street network. Boeing’s tool calculates what percentage of a city’s roads run along each section of a compass, and plots it on a circular bar chart. A similar concept was created recently by data scientist Seth

City of Toronto and Sidewalk Labs joined forces in October 2017 on a project called Sidewalk Toronto. The goal of the project is to create a modern, sustainable and dynamic neighborhood on Toronto’s Eastern Waterfront. The new neighborhood will be called Quayside. At a roundtable meeting on 14th and 15th of August,

Over the last two decades, Vancouver has put a complete streets design principles into action and the city is already seeing the benefits. Complete streets design policy Complete streets is a transportation policy and design approach. It requires streets to be planned and operated in a way that enables safe and comfortable travel and access for

Increased use of autonomous ride-sharing cars is expected to reduce the need for parking spaces in the future. Therefore, it is wise to design today’s parking garages in a way that they can be easily transformed into offices, shops or even housing. “Future-proof” parking garages “Within a decade, certainly within two decades, the demand of parking

Two previously industrial areas in Sydney are undergoing enormous urban development. One area – Coal Loader Platform – became a public space for meeting, resting and recreating. The other area became a multi-residential development called Eve Apartments. These projects demonstrate how to create a new and improved environment with inventive urban greening. The

New eco-friendly, sustainable building materials have emerged to reduce the environmental impact of building construction and operations. To determine how eco-friendly a certain building material is, we must consider several factors. For example, materials that are locally sourced don’t use a lot of energy for transportation. The durability of material

Urban planners today aim to create compact, transit-oriented urban landscapes. In his blog post, Michael Lewyn, assistant professor at Touro Law Center in Long Island, explains that there are two options to achieve this goal. Tall buildings or …? Many cities are facing a growing number of new residents. That means that

In their study, PhD candidate Pinchao Zhang  and assist. prof. Sean Qian show that the pattern of when electricity is used in households during the night can predict the start of morning traffic congestion better than real-time monitoring of transit. The study is based on 79 days’ worth of time-of-day electricity data from 322 anonymous

Researchers at St. Louis University discovered that cities can be a place where bees thrive. That is good news because bees are endangered and we need them. Bees are vital for reproduction of many sorts of plants. If bees disappear, the foods that we take for granted will decrease in supply and increase in price. But

Today’s cities require complex urban plans that can be adapted quickly. Good software can ease the making and adapting of comprehensive plans. One such type of software is Geographic Information System (GIS). Let’s have a look at what GIS is and how it can be used in urban planning. System that

The Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA) wants to analyse the impact of proposed building projects on the surrounding area in the early stages of urban planning process. To achieve that, they will use a Smart 3D City Model. A Web-Based Smart 3D City Model The 3D Smart Model was developed in collaboration with the

Statistic shows that poor people generally have more health issues than wealthy people. However, a recent study by UC San Francisco has uncovered that the quality of a neighborhood where people live has an impact on people’s health, too. Poor children living in a good neighborhood have better health than poor children living in a run-down neighborhood. Researchers from UCSF Department of Psychiatry compared

The Trust for Public Land organization wants to ensure that every person in America has access to a park or natural area within 10-minute walk from home. To achieve this goal, the Trust for Public Land teamed up with Esri, a leading GIS software company. Together they developed a mapping software named ParkServe. It measures and analyzes

One of the motives to become an urban planning professional is to help create better living conditions for the people. An urban planner plans the land use in a way that will serve the community best. But what can we do when the well being of the community clashes with the well being

Cities are looking for ways to save energy and resources and to reduce pollution. Toronto, Seattle and San Francisco for example have developed a set of green building standards to lower their carbon footprint. But building low energy houses from ecological materials is not enough. Why optimizing urban form isn’t the only factor to consider? The biggest

Research shows that playing – especially at an early age – helps children to develop their capabilities better. But children have less and less time to play. The kindergartens often have structured programs that do not allow much time for play. Parents often don’t have time to play with children because

Adaptive traffic control system (ATCS) is a traffic management strategy where the timing of traffic lights changes according to actual traffic demand. And the city of Aberdeen is among the first that plans to implement the system in order to optimize the daily commute in the urban environment. Currently there are 15 traffic signals along Sixth

In the last years many new technologies emerged that help us make our daily lives easier.  Could some of these technologies be used to help with governing and designing the cities as well? We think the answer is yes. Here are 3 of them and ways in which they can be

Cities should make the lives of their residents easier and better. Implementing changes that do not serve the citizens would be a mistake. That is why city leaders should encourage citizens to participate in making decision about the city’s future. A good example of this is how city of Minneapolis updated its

Construction companies have taken 3D printing technology to the next level. They have started using it to construct houses, offices, bridges and more. How will this new construction method help cities and their residents? 3D printing of a building looks similar to 3D printing of smaller objects: a robots applies layer after layer of material until the

Minneapolis is updating it’s comprehensive plan. The update emphasizes energy efficient construction, housing density and reduction of car usage to help lower the city’s carbon footprint. One of the proposed solutions of how to achieve this goals started a huge debate. The controversial issue is whether to allow building of fourplexes in practically all city areas.  A fourplex is

The 3 day 2018 Smart Cities Connect conference hosted nearly 2,000 attendees from government, businesses and academia from all over the world. What are the most important lessons from this meeting in Kansas City? 1) Don’t be afraid of failure, learn from it When we try new things and approaches, e.g. using technology to improve

The March/April 2018 issue of MIT Technology Review magazine published a list of 10 technological breakthroughs it believes will make the most impact over the next years. One of the breakthroughs listed is a Sidewalk Toronto project – a plan to successfully integrate cutting-edge urban design with state-of-the-art digital technology.