This tool from Sidewalk Labs lets planners draw upon vast quantities of data to create agent-based models, simulating who gains and loses when changes are made.
Comparing it to a far-more-accurate version of Sim City, Oscar Perry Abello covers Doppelgänger, an agent-based modeling tool from Google's Sidewalk Labs. Doppelgänger provides "real-world planners a simulation based not on some 1990-era coder's best approximation of people, but instead one based on the terabytes upon terabytes of real-world data available in today's digital world."
According to Sidewalk Labs modeling lead David Ory, "Doppelgänger enables planners to create a set of virtual households that accurately reflects real neighborhoods, cities, regions, or states, along any dimension relevant to the problem at hand. [It] can create households that have accurate numbers of children, seniors, teachers, persons with disabilities, electric-vehicle owners, swing-shift workers, and so on."
With its capacity for future projections, the tool may help planners visualize which sections of a city benefit (or lose out) from a given change.
Read the full story: Digital Tool Aims to ID Urban Planning’s Winners, Losers
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City of Rosemead
Rutgers University, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
One Hundred Miles
University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS)
Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY)
The Architects Foundation
City of Cambridge
Montrose County
The Pocatello Development Authority