MetroQuest is an application that provides a suite of tools that can be used to improve the public participation process. The tools support all three types of collaboration: engagement, education and process. It’s been used for many transport projects including Toronto’s Big Move 25-year transportation plan.
radwende.de is a really neat project from Wiesbaden Germany. They use a GPS tracking app to crowdsource bike trips and then turn the information into a beautiful map you can hang on the wall. Of course they use the data too to help determine where people ride in the city to help planners improve bike […]
MIT’s Mobility Futures Collaborative and Media Lab’s Changing Places have been developing tools to enable more meaningful citizen engagement in the transportation planning process. The project is supported by the Barr Foundation and makes use of open data. Like this website, the project is designed to help address the difficulties people have in understanding transport […]
The study “Who benefits from civic technology? (PDF) – Demographic and public attitudes research into the users of civic technologies” prepared by mySociety research director Rebecca Rumbul is a very interesting analysis on the state of civic technology today. The study attempted to assess the impact of civic technology – defined as technologies “that enable citizens to hold governments to […]
Beth Simone Noveck from NYU’s Governance Lab has written a new book titled “Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governance”. The book describes methods for sharing knowledge that have helped improve government with examples and presents ideas for improving their implementation and effectiveness. Noveck’s earlier book “Wiki Government” (2009) […]
Richard Moss has written an excellent history of city planning (building) games in Ars Technica. It’s great to see how city planning games have evolved and some of the ideas developers have implemented over the years. Lots of lessons for taking city games further. Full article: “From SimCity to, Well, SimCity: The History of […]
Here’s what looks like a great reference book for participation in planning: Planning Support Systems and Smart Cities is an edited compendium of peer-reviewed papers presented at the 14th International Conference on Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management (CUPUM 2015). The book is co-edited by Robert Goodspeed and Joseph Ferreira, Jr., the conference program co-chairs, […]
We’re excited to be launching the Ringstrasse150 – Ring Ride project. The project consists of a website with information on improving walking and cycling in Vienna and a mobile phone game designed to increase engagement by linking to the website in the game results screen. The website is available here: Ringstrasse150 We’ll be working on […]
Our “Smart City” focus is on people and participation (see my presentation “People make cities smart”) and we’ll be using this website to showcase interesting ideas and projects focused on people. The “Hello Lamp Post” project is a great example of a wonderful way to engage people and increase their awareness of city systems. But, […]
The first draft of Using the BusMeister Public Transport Game in the Classroom is now available. The illustration above is included to help describe some of the controls and information available on the BusMeister screen. Let us know if you’re interested in using BusMeister as part of a school curriculum or class project.