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As Hurricane Season Strengthens, NYC Tells Residents to “Know Your Zone”
New York’s Office of Emergency Management has stepped up efforts to educate residents about disaster preparedness. (From NYC.gov) Just five years ago, most New Yorkers were unaware that their city was...
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When Big Data Maps Your Safest, Shortest Walk Home
(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast) Boston University and University of Pittsburgh researchers are trying to do the same thing that got the creators of the app SketchFactor into so much trouble over the...
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New York Has More Than Enough Taxis
(AP Photo/Richard Drew) As anyone who has stood on a street corner desperately waving an arm at passing taxis can tell you, the current system for hiring a cab is less than perfectly efficient. Uber,...
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Low-Income Smartphone Users Want an App for That Too
(Source: Easy Food Stamps) Jimmy Chen says that one of the reasons that apps and “life hacks” tend to solve the problems of the wealthy is that “people tend to build technology that solves their own...
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VIDEO: Boosting Bangkok’s Flood Resilience With Community-Based Technology
(Photo by Still Life Projects) This is the first of four films in our series, Asia H20: How Water Issues are Changing an Urbanized Continent. Related Stories The D.I.Y. Disaster PlanA Tale of Two...
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How Cities Build Vibrant Tech Scenes
It’s one thing to hear about a Twitter way off in S.F., but it’s another thing to know neighbors who work at a homegrown tech success story. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) More and more cities are hoping to...
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VIDEO: How Phnom Penh Built One of the World’s Best Water Systems
(Photo by Still Life Projects) This is the third of four films in our series, Asia H20: How Water Issues are Changing an Urbanized Continent. Related Stories Can Too Much Infrastructure Doom a...
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Measuring the Bright Lights of a Big City
(Data courtesy Marc Imhoff of NASA GSFC and Christopher Elvidge of NOAA NGDC. Image by Craig Mayhew and Robert Simmon, NASA GSFC.) At one time, the small coastal city of Encinitas, California was...
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Should Tokyo Build Methane-Powered Cow Farms in the Sky?
A rendering of one man’s vision for urban agriculture in Japan. After decades of rampant development, Tokyo is slowly upturning its layers of concrete and re-greening itself. The Tokyo Metropolitan...
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“Electronic Stop-and-Frisk” Is at the Fingertips of 3,000 Police Departments
(Photo by Cbl62) There was an uproar on Reddit last month when GameStop, the national video-game retailer, announced a policy of fingerprinting customers who turned in used games at all of its...
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NYC BigApps Winner Wants to Help New Yorkers Stay Warm
(AP Photo/Seth Wenig) The problem: If you live in a high-rise with a central heating system, your comfort is dependent on your landlord. Should he choose not to turn on the boiler on a frigid day, you...
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A Plan to Rebuild Downtown Christchurch, This Time With Sensors
Following an earthquake that destroyed much of downtown, Christchurch is considering rebuilding as a smart city. (Photo by AP / Martin Hunter) Cities, says self-proclaimed “serendipity architect”...
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Big Data Has Potential to Both Hurt and Help Disadvantaged Communities
(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan) In the future, all aspects of daily urban life might be tracked and translated into data points. Local governments and companies collecting this type of information are...
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A Vision to Turn Old Pay Phones Into Listening Devices
An NYU music professor wants to use pay phones to monitor noise pollution — and create city soundscape concerts. (AP Photo/Pat Wellenbach) New York City has 11,412 pay phones, which currently do...
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Has Floating Architecture’s Moment Finally Arrived?
The Sea Tree, a floating natural habitat. (Photo by Waterstudio) In a quiet, shady street in Rijswijk, the Netherlands, Koen Olthuis and the design team at Waterstudio are changing the world. From...
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“Already on Roof!”: How Rescuers Sift Through Twitter to Find Disaster Victims
Victims of Hurricane Katrina check tweets on a Red Cross computer in Ohio. (Photo by AP / Jamie-Andrea Yanak) In August 2012, Manila was flooded by an unnamed storm. Concerned citizens set up a Google...
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Five Reasons Solar Will Power the Future
Workers install solar panels on the roof of an Ikea in Miami. (Photo by AP / J Pat Carter) Just a short time ago, solar power was a groovy little niche industry in the broad field of energy...
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L.A. to Spend $213M on High-Tech Help for Homeless
(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) Perhaps no place in the U.S. has struggled more with homelessness than Los Angeles, where there’s a nightly unsheltered count of roughly 25,000. Despite laudable projects like...
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What Questions Should We Be Asking About Big Data?
A test of an AeroVironment Puma drone. Some envision a future in which drones fly off to gather information, perform tasks and keep their owners oriented and safe. (AP Photo/BP Alaska) Huge sets of...
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Have You Ever Wondered What Civic Tech Is Doing for Cities?
(Credit: Hawk Krall) Ten years ago, reporting a pothole in the city of Philadelphia meant calling a desk at City Hall and waiting. There were multiple points of contact and no guarantee that your...
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