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Articles in "Tools"

Vine as an engagement tool? Useful or weird? What do you think?

Because Vines are so time limited, they are very concise and could have all sorts of uses analogous to community photography exercises. It’s not always desirable to limit the length and detail of people’s input but if you are asking them to show you something this has all sorts of benefits in terms of being able to efficiently process the information.

A New Site Puts The Hyper Into Hyperlocal

A startup based in downtown Boston, BlockAvenue has divided up the U.S. into a small pieces, and then aggregated as much data as it can find to start telling stories about them.

SEETY - A bottom-up approach to urban lighting in Milan

Daria Casciani

What, when and how are we going to illuminate the city of Milan? SEETY is a proposal for a bottom-up approach to lighting in Milan. It’s intended to provide a reflection on who urban lighting is made by and who is using it.

Public/Private

Chris Haller

As city dwellers become more comfortable taking on active roles in shaping their cities, it is just as important that they find a sense of privacy within their urban environment. Could our well-being be linked with the level of privacy that our cities offer? Are those living in cities happy with the level of privacy they receive?

Data Modeling Tools Help Planners Visualize Different Futures

Geneva Faulkner

Turning streams of data--demographic information, population projections, number etc.--into meaningful and easily visualized information can be challenging and time consuming for planners. Likewise, figuring out land use and population projections as well as economic and social conditions can be maddeningly difficult. Urban planners and designers can greatly benefit from three types of data visualization that have emerged over the past few years. 

From Rust to Riches: How Three Places Came Back from the Brink

Rebecca Sanborn Stone

 

A lot of American cities are looking a tad rusty these days – and they’re not just limited to the Rust Belt. Whether it was the collapse of a mill economy in the early 1900s, the slow decline of American manufacturing, or recent busts in the auto industry, towns everywhere know what it means to fade. Ironically, there are a handful of communities that have been spurred on to amazing stories of recovery by – and during – our most recent economic crisis. Here are the stories of three places that are rediscovering what makes them special, and abandoning the rust for a whole range of community riches.

Golden, CO Launches Crowd-sourced Sightseeing App

Nicole Davis

Innovative new city marketing techniques are being employed by local governments around the world to aide in the transformation of their city into a thriving center of tourism, culture and development. More and more municipalities see the need to capitalize on their community’s assets and create good public spaces in order to attract more investment, business, residents and visitors.

Crowd-Sourced Feedback Provides Balanced Perspectives and Guides Intelligent Voting

Nicole Davis

Three “democracy startups” are setting the ball rolling for citizens to be highly savvy voters, receive balanced political perspectives, and take matters into their own hands as they run for political office.

Online Tool Helps New Hampshire Municipalities Examine the Cost of Sprawl

Geneva Faulkner

Urban planners can often find it difficult to assess the impact of sprawl in their municipalities. Calculating future infrastructure needs and the various fiscal impacts of different land use decisions can be challenging and time consuming. Enter New Hampshire’s new Cost of Sprawl tool (www.costofsprawl.org). The New Hampshire Cost of Sprawl (NHCOS) is an internet-based model to examine the impact of land uses and sprawl on municipalities in New Hampshire and allows planners to get a sense of the fiscal impact of certain land use patterns on municipalities. Created under the auspices of the New Hampshire Office of Energy and Planning (NHOEP) and developed by RKG Associates, Placeways, and Urban Interactive Studio, this tool is geared toward town planners in New Hampshire.

New Mobile Technology Solutions Offer Expanded Options For Citizen Involvement

Geneva Faulkner

 

Mobile technology is powerful; literally everyone seems to own a cell phone these days. When used in public settings, it has the potential to involve citizens in various stages of planning processes. A few projects have used mobile  tools to help enfold citizens into community planning at the pedestrian level.