UrbanPlanning
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Uber is releasing its London ride data to help urban planning
Uber recently started sharing its ride-sharing data in a limited number of cities in the US, and now the incredibly useful urban-planning tool is coming to the UK. Uber Movement launches today in London, letting developers and city officials see historical traffic data during road closures, infrastructure development and other major events. "London businesses will welcome this initiative as a sign that Uber is committed to working in closer collaboration with city and transport planners to keep London moving," said London First infrastructure head David Leam.
BMW hopes AI-managed electric bike roads will ease traffic
In some cities, the most common electric vehicles are likely to be two-wheelers like bikes and motorcycles. But cities aren't really designed for them -- you have to compete with cars on the road and at charging stations. BMW and Tongji University think they can do better: they've developed a concept, Vision E3 Way, that gives e-bike riders their own roads. The paths would be safer and reduce traffic congestion, as you might expect, but they'd also take advantage of the electric nature of the vehicles to make two-wheel riding more accessible.
Lyft thinks it can fix Los Angeles traffic with fewer lanes
For the past several decades, cities have designed streets around the assumption that they'll be used for personal cars. If you need a poster child for this, you just have to look at Los Angeles' Wilshire Boulevard -- it has a whopping 10 lanes for vehicles, and even the bus lanes are almost treated like afterthoughts. It's no wonder gridlock is such a common problem, since LA is practically inviting more drivers and the traffic chaos that results. Lyft isn't happy with this state of affairs, and it thinks urban planners need to reinvent the road if they want to reduce traffic and embrace the future. It's partnering with designers at Perkins+Will and Nelson/Nygaard on a conceptual Wilshire Boulevard redesign for an era when car ownership fades away and public options dominate. There would be fewer lanes, but it could potentially serve up to 77,000 people per hour instead of today's 29,600.
ICYMI: Channel your inner magician with IoT controllers
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: If you've gotten chicken juice on your smartphone one too many times while trying to whip up a masterpiece in the kitchen, you may be interested in a motion sensor that you can control with a wave of your hand. There's the practical option, or the adorable. Do you. Meanwhile, an MIT study aims to understand urban decay and will next automate the process of scoring city photos to help with urban planning. The parody video your shortcut-obsessed friend needs to see is here, while the Silicon Valley Fashion Show story is here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Airbnb hopes to redesign small towns
For Airbnb, it's not enough to try to shape city policies on home sharing -- it wants to shape the cities themselves. The service tells FastCo Design that it has created an innovation lab, Samara, whose aims include rethinking architecture and urban planning. If Airbnb can spark new life in small towns, the reasoning goes, it can create "new types of commerce" and attract more rentals to areas that might be on the decline. Samara's initial effort is a communal housing project for the small Japanese town of Yoshino (due to open soon after its October arrival), but there's talk of similar work for other small towns as well as new product designs, software and "economic models."
Sidewalk Labs' smart city kiosks go way beyond free WiFi
The details of an ambitious plan from Google's sister company Sidewalk Labs to create entire "smart neighborhoods" just got a little clearer. According to Sidewalk Labs' pitch deck, which was obtained by Recode this week, the plan goes far beyond those free WiFi kiosks that are already on the streets of New York City. The kiosks will monitor everything from bike and pedestrian traffic to air quality and street noise.
'Blockhood' is a beautiful game about eco-architecture
What happens when an architect makes a video game? Block'hood, a "neighborhood-building simulator" from one-man developer Plethora Project. It started life as a research project at the University of Southern California's School of Architecture, where its creator, Jose Sanchez, is an assistant professor but has slowly transformed into an educational game published by Devolver Digital, which produced games like Hotline Miami and Broforce. With a focus on expanding upward rather than outward, and a pared-down visual style, it's a different take on the building experience offered by SimCity or Cities: Skylines. It instead plays like a cross between Anno, SimEarth and reverse Jenga.
Google sister company wants to build smart city districts
Forget just providing internet access on city streets -- Google's sister firm Sidewalk Labs wants to create whole smart neighborhoods. Wall Street Journal sources hear that Sidewalk is about to propose to Alphabet that it should design whole city districts with technology in mind. It wants to revamp existing areas (likely in declining cities) with everything from higher-tech electrical grids to self-driving cars. It's even hoping to get city regulation waivers so that it can experiment with elements as basic as street design.
Los Angeles is hiring an advisor for ridesharing and robotic cars
Los Angeles might be opening up to next-generation transportation between its loosening stance on ridesharing and its deal with Waze, but it's still looking for someone who can shed more light on the subject. Mayor Eric Garcetti has revealed that the city is hiring an advisor who'll create a transportation strategy that factors in newer technology, including ridesharing services and self-driving cars. The hope is that this will modernize both road safety and traffic flow in a metropolis that's notorious for its dependence on cars. The catch? This is a year-long fellowship, not a permanent position. LA may set off in the right direction, but it's not certain that the local government will be prepared if future tech introduces new problems.
Your nightlife tweets can improve urban planning
Tweeting about your fun night out with the gang could do much more than just instill FOMO in your followers -- it could help improve your city, too. At least that's what two computer researchers, Vanessa and Enrique Frías-Martínez, from Telefonica University and the University of Maryland respectively, have proposed in a recent study published in the journal Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence. The brother-and-sister duo theorizes that the geolocation and timestamp data provided by millions of tweets could be used as a complementary source to figure out where and when urban density occurs. In particular, Twitter could be used to determine nightlife activity, which has traditionally been a blind spot in urban planning.
Chicago is getting lamp posts that count people and track pollution
Apparently, Chicago is becoming even more like its Watch Dogs doppelganger than we first thought. Researchers are deploying networked, sensor-equipped lamp posts from this July onward to learn how they could help urban planning and safety. They'll collect environmental data like air quality, noise levels and wind, and they'll also measure foot traffic by counting the number of passing cellphones. If the project takes off, Chicago officials could easily tell if air pollution is on the rise, or if a narrow sidewalk is creating a choke point.
Audi competition aims to unlock the potential of connected cars
We've all heard about how connected and self-driving cars from Google, BMW and others are going to change our lives, but how? Audi wants to find out with its Urban Future Award, a four-city, multidisciplinary competition. Each team has a different quest, but all center around the ways that connected cars -- like Audi's "Piloted Driving" model -- can make city transportation better. For example, a Boston group will see if vehicles can take up less space using self-parking features, while in Seoul, researchers will help connected commuters socialize over in-dash displays. The Berlin team will bridge private and public transit for more efficient commuting and, finally, Mexico City's crew will crowdsource traffic data to reduce the city's notorious congestion. Audi will update each project regularly in its blog, with the best plan taking a $140,000 prize.
SimCity beta kicks off January 25th, feeds our city-building ambitions
While we can't speak for everyone, SimCity's urban construction triggers fond memories for more than one of us -- mostly the small thrills of building our first arcologies or getting statues in our honor. A chance to feed our nostalgia (and megalomania) is coming quickly with the advent of EA's beta for the SimCity reboot. Windows users who register before January 20th will get one hour's worth of game time to use between January 25th and 28th, along with an opportunity to provide feedback on bugs and play balancing. It's an almost cruel tease when we know we'll have to wait until the final version's March 5th launch to play more, or to play on a Mac, but we'll take the beta offer when many of us haven't seen a 'pure' SimCity game for a decade. [Thanks, David]
