Cities, 2012.
Urban design, transit, civic tech, Open311, the city as internet
- Bureaucracy and Trust
Yesterday, I spent the day at a meeting on “city innovation” at Harvard’s Kennedy School, with 30 or so CIOs, CTOs, and other technology executives from around the country. I did a short presentation on predictive analytics and cities (slides here) — thanks so much to everyone who sent in comments a...
- Predictive Analytics and Cities
It’s been a big year for predictive analytics. I’ve been following Nate Silver’s blog on the election, and his deep data analysis cut through the noise, was consistent, and ultimately proved correct. And to look at another (eerily prescient) example, look at this 2006 prediction of what a major ...
- Community, and Why Halloween is the Best Holiday
I love halloween. I think it’s my favorite holiday. The thing that I like about it the most is that it’s one of the only days of the year where you have a reason to go out and meet all of your neighbors. I spent a while last night walking around the neighborhood with Theo… Continue reading
- Hurricane Sandy
It’s really hard for me to comprehend what happened in NYC last night. Everyone I know is safe and sound, and the overall death toll is amazingly low given the severity of what happened. But man, what a hit the city took. The aftermath is going to be long and painful. I was also blown… Continue re...
- The Taxi Business & Working for Sellers & Buyers
I am writing this from 30,000 feet on my way to San Francisco. I have a great car service which I use every week when I travel. This morning, I ended up having a long conversation with Reda, one of my regular drivers, about Uber and how it’s shaking up the taxi and car service business.… Continue r...
- Stuck on the Bus, or, Civic Engagement in a Networked World
Amazing things happen when people are stuck on a bus together. More on that in a bit. I spent yesterday afternoon with Chiefs of Staff and Chief Information Officers from about 10 US cities, at an event convened by the Harvard Kennedy School and Living Cities (a collaborative of large funders who fo...
- Jane Jacobs, Inspiration, and the Internet
Last night at 3am, our daughter Brieza started crying, Frannie and I woke up, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I crawled over into my office and started surfing the web. For about two hours, I wandered from thing to thing, and seemed to keep hitting gems, like this classic Paul Graham article ...
- Transportation Networks aka Bike Share is Awesome
An amazing thing happened yesterday. I was on my way into Boston to get coffee with Jason Schultz — from my house, I had ridden my bike the 2 minute ride to the Green Line T, taken it downtown, and had just gotten off at Hynes Convention Center. From there, it was to be about a… Continue reading
- cibi.me
The Civic Works team at OpenPlans just launched another sweet micro-site: cibi.me — for NYC’s forthcoming bike share program. The site is notable for a few reasons: First, it’s beautiful and fun to use. The OpenPlans team has been putting out a ton of these small, beautifully designed and really fu...
- Cities that Work Like The Web
Here are slides from a talk I gave at the Living Cities Strategic Forum on Technology and Civic Change. Continue reading