Cities, 2010.
Urban design, transit, civic tech, Open311, the city as internet
- CityScience
Earlier this year, my friend and former colleague Thor Snilsberg started a new nonprofit organization called CityScience to improve the quality and relevance of science education for urban students. In their words: CityScience is committed to raising the quality of science education and supporting ...
- Required Reading
At OpenPlans, we’ve hired two new Project/Product managers within the last month. I couldn’t be happier with the hires, and they are already doing great work. Jeff Maki is handling our work with public transit agencies (like the OpenTripPlanner and our shiny new real-time bus tracking project with ...
- Missed Connections
In her bathroom, a friend of mine has some really beautiful illustrations of posts from the Craigslist Missed Connections section. If you’ve never looked at missed connections, you should — there are some really wonderful notes in there (also some sketchy ones). Here’s a beautiful one from today: ...
- Talking transit tech @ the MTAdev conf
Next Wednesday, I’ll be on a panel at the MTA Developers Unconference. I’m very much looking forward to the event, because among other things, one of my fellow panelists will be the new MTA Chief, Jay Walder. Here, I’ll give an overview of what I’m hoping to discuss on the panel; any feedback woul...
- Introducing OpenPlans, and the evolution of a brand
After many moons of plotting and scheming, yesterday we announced our organizational rebranding: The organization formerly known as The Open Planning Project (or TOPP) is now OpenPlans. I am excited, and I think this is a welcome development. For years, there has been mass confusion (chaos! pandemo...
- Interview on the Engadget Show is live
A few months ago, I did a short interview for the Engadget Show on the state of real-time bus information here in NYC. The interview was for a video segment which led into a live interview with the reporter I worked with, Rick Karr. The whole episode is now available online. Before our section is...
- Say hello to Civic Works
Thank you so much to everyone who helped us think through our re-name of TOPP Labs yesterday. Your feedback and insights were absolutely invaluable to our process. After a long night and day of deliberations, we’ve settled on our new name. Drumroll please… (and this is obviously unnecessary since i...
- TOPP Labs needs a new name
For the past year or so, the group at TOPP that I manage has been known as TOPP Labs. TOPP Labs was originally chosen not because it was the best or most compelling name, but because as we were dialing back work on the OpenCore project, we needed a name that was better than “The… Continue reading
- Making cities easier to use
I always have a hard time explaining what we do at The Open Planning Project. The front page of our website reads: “TOPP is a catalyst. We empower civil society through software, media, and smart urban policy.” While this makes sense if you think about it for a while, when I first say it to… Cont...