Planetizen Newswire
Keep up with essential planning news and commentary, delivered to your inbox every Monday and Thursday.
Technology
Amidst the uncertainty of the pandemic, the four biggest U.S. technology companies have leased or bought enough office space in New York City for 22,000 employees.
The New York Times
Virgin Hyperloop's Hyperloop Certification Center (HCC) will be located on an 800-acre site straddling Tucker and Grant counties in West Virginia.
Smart Cities Dive
Is this the "Kitty Hawk moment" driverless car companies have been seeking?
Waymo
A new layer showing the seven-day average of confirmed COVID-19 cases started rolling out to Android and iPhones last week.
The Verge
A new company called Civvl is hiring contract workers to help evict people during the economic struggles of the pandemic.
Vice
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign developed a high-frequency coronavirus testing system that would be the envy of an country or corporation, testing students, faculty and staff twice a week, but it still failed to stem a major outbreak.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
The broader safety implications of the death of Elaine Hertzberg after being struck by an Uber autonomous vehicle in Tempe is still being litigated. Last week, the back-up driver of the vehicle was charged with negligent homicide.
NPR
It is time to make bold, disruptive changes to Barcelona's economy, according to this article, by fueling innovation, sustainability, and policies to improve residents' quality of life.
Cities of the Future
In the Philadelphia region, residents of wealthier neighborhoods will be more likely to work from home in the future, thus altering travel patterns and transit usage, according to a new mapping project powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
Smart Cities Dive
New data from National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) shows the number of rides on electric scooters and shared bikes rising by 60 percent between 2018 and 2019.
Smart Cities Dive
The future is now.
DCist
Amazon and FedEx are developing bots that would travel on city streets and sidewalks. The companies are also working behind the scenes on legislative efforts that would help them deploy the technology in the future.
Wired
Smart cities technologies are not going to lead to the right outcomes unless end users are recognized as integral players in the planning process.
Smart Cities Dive
Anthony M. Townsend's new book goes beyond autonomous automobiles to examine autonomous transportation in a larger context.
Inside Higher Ed
A data-driven approach is needed to figure out how the disease has spread in the islands and what can be done to contain it.
Honolulu Star-Advertiser
Uber and Lyft were set to cease operations in California, but an appeals court has granted them a reprieve and the controversy continues.
The New York Times
Highlighting the ways in which the pandemic’s disruption is unleashing innovation, panelists share their hope for streamlining public-private collaborations to solve some of the region’s housing, transportation, and equity challenges.
The Planning Report
We seem to have an app for everything. Now we have one that walks a viewer through the river’s history from the pre-historic era to the present.
Los Angeles Times
L.A. City Chief Resilience Officer Aaron Gross elaborates on how the pandemic is shaping the city’s understanding of resilience and the cascading impact that overlapping disasters of earthquake or wildfire could have on the city’s limited resources.
The Planning Report
Policymakers and venture capital firms love the idea of Mobility-as-a-Service. The public hasn't proven as receptive, despite the willingness to download apps by the millions.
Bloomberg CityLab
