Next American City's Christian Madera reports on a series of seminars looking at how the growing open data movement is helping to offer cities solutions to some of their operational problems.
Opening data up to the public has resulted in a vast array of online tools and applications. But the potential impact goes beyond web developers making cool programs for smart phones.
"While getting more municipal data released can help empower citizens, there's growing recognition that open data also has a role in empowering governments to better cope with the management challenges that urban areas face. With that in mind, John Tolva, Director of Citizenship & Technology at IBM, talked about how his company's efforts to create new tools that allow cities to interact with municipal data to generate insights into issues such as traffic, energy use, and public safety.
IBM has been busy repositioning itself for several years around the idea of using the technology and process management techniques it specializes in to help develop solutions for some of the enormous social challenges of the world – many of which are concentrated around cities."
FULL STORY: Solving Urban Challenges With Open Data
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Why Transit Agencies Should Open Their Data
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Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
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Silicon Valley ‘Bike Superhighway’ Awarded $14M State Grant
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Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
Caltrans
City of Fort Worth
Mpact (founded as Rail~Volution)
City of Camden Redevelopment Agency
City of Astoria
City of Portland
City of Laramie