As city planners we are increasingly recording, measuring, and organizing city data—a practice known as urban science. Learn about resources across the globe helping to better understand our cities.
I recently traveled to Glasgow, Scotland with students and faculty from around the world learning about Cities and Citizens in the Digital Age. The sessions were wonderful, and I am sharing installments about a number of the key sessions of interest to the Planetizen community.
As city planners we are increasingly recording, measuring, and organizing city data—a practice known as urban science. Urban science is increasing in importance and universities across the globe are focusing on urban problems through urban science. Dr. Chris Pettit, a professor of Urban Science at the University of New South Wales, shared a range of labs and resources that are analyzing cities. Below is a list of resources offering insight and access into this emerging field. I encourage you to spend some time clicking through these websites—there is lots of planner eye candy, from gorgeous maps to fascinating city facts.
Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network: AURIN is a national collaborative delivering e-research infrastructure to empower better decisions for Australia's urban settlements and their future development.
Beijing City Lab: The Beijing City Lab employs interdisciplinary methods to quantify urban dynamics, generating new insights for urban planning and governance and ultimately producing the science of cities required for sustainable urban development.
Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis: This center is a leading force in the science of cities, generating new knowledge and insights for use in city planning, policy, and design—drawing on the latest geospatial methods and ideas in computer-based visualization and modeling.
Center for Urban Science and Progress: The Center for Urban Science and Progress is a public-private research center that uses New York as its laboratory to help cities around the world become more productive, livable, equitable, and resilient.
Future Cities Laboratory: The Future Cities Laboratory focuses on sustainable urbanization on different scales in a global context.
The Programmable City Project: The Programmable City Project examines software-enabled technologies and services to augment and facilitate how we understand and plan cities, how we manage urban services and utilities, and how we live urban lives.
Senseable City Lab: The Senseable City Lab deploys sensors and hand-held electronics to study the build environment.
SustainCity: SustainCity addresses the modeling and computational issues of integrating modern mobility simulations with the latest micro-simulation land use models.
Urban Big Data Centre: The Urban Big Data Center is a resource promoting the use of innovative methods and complex urban data to solve global problems.
Urban Observatory: The Urban Observatory is an interactive app and website that allow people to compare and contrast cities from around the world. This of this as a "live museum with a data pulse."
Warwick Institute for the Science of Cities: WISC focuses on the means to gather city-scale data and the apparatus to transform this data into knowledge, capitalizing on emerging developments in big data and in interdisciplinary solutions to the world's urban challenges.
An Expanded Approach to the Analysis of Cities
Even with so much data in the world, cities are a slippery subject. What if an everyday part of life in cities—the "scenes" comprised by businesses, people, and practices of similarly distinct aesthetics—can help our understanding?
How Data-Driven Research Is Shaping Sustainable Urban Development
Explore how data-driven research is revolutionizing sustainable urban development, creating smarter, greener, and more resilient cities for the future.
Hoboken's Curbs Are Going Digital
Hoboken, New Jersey, is leveraging technology to up its curb management game with a digital streetscape map that will allow real-time demand monitoring.
Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.
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The proposed campus would consume 11 times the power of Denver International Airport; as it has across the country, opposition mounts.
US to reduce Colorado River water deliveries to Mexico
A new Colorado Treaty amendment reduces Mexico’s Colorado River water allocation by 250,000 acre feet.
Judges permit Denver to divert 77,000 acre feet from the Colorado River for reservoir expansion
Overuse and climate change have caused the Colorado River’s water levels to plummet.
Amtrak, CN end decades-long dispute with eight-year agreement
The new operating agreement establishes an updated framework for the companies to work together, including processes to resolve disputes.
Raised interest rates may kill financially vulnerable construction projects
The chief economist at ConstructConnect warns that if construction project owners are negatively impacted by the raised rates, it could result in delayed payments to contractors.
FREE Course: Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
After describing his path towards focusing on walkability as the essence of good planning, Jeff Speck marches through his five principal reasons for making more walkable places.
Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold
The course focuses on the opportunities and imperatives that shape reinvention of mall sites.
KFH Group Inc.
Greater Baltimore Committee
Eagle County Government
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello
