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There's been no shortage of hype about the relationship between cities and data, especially so-called big data. For large numbers of tech companies, cities, and even a growing number of urbanists, data promises to solve all manner of urban problems, from predictive policing to improving traffic flow to promoting energy efficiency.

WHAT WORKS CITIES IS DESIGNED TO ACCELERATE CITIES' USE OF DATA AND EVIDENCE TO IMPROVE PEOPLE'S LIVES.

Cities have a central role to play in tackling climate change. By fostering a sense of shared purpose, the C40 network offers cities an effective forum in which to work together, share information and demonstrate leadership.

The real-time city is now real! The increasing deployment of sensors and hand-held electronics in recent years is allowing a new approach to the study of the built environment. The way we describe and understand cities is being radically transformed - alongside the tools we use to design them and impact on their physical structure. Studying these changes from a critical point of view and anticipating them is the goal of the SENSEable City Laboratory, a new research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Smart City Hub is founded in 2016 to provide cutting edge intelligence for professionals and decision makers working in smart cities worldwide.

We build tools to get cities on the path to better technology, help citizens get the responsive government they should expect, and scale up small discussions to city-wide change. We are an impartial, informed guide to civic technology, incorporating technology, transportation and city planning, an open-source approach, and the standards knowledge necessary to deliver valuable tools to our clients.

Designers, programmers, data scientists, and artists alike are invited to take up the challenge: merge and compare mobility data sets from three cities-San Francisco, Geneva, and Zurich-and draw meaningful insights. Winning projects will showcase the power of open governmental data and facilitate the knowledge exchange between cities. Juried prizes include round-trip airfare to one of the participating cities and funding from Fusepool, the European / Swiss Datapool, for developing the project into an app.

William H.(Holly) Whyte (1917-1999) is considered the mentor for Project for Public Spaces because of his seminal work in the study of human behavior in urban settings. While working with the New York City Planning Commission in 1969, Whyte began to wonder how newly planned city spaces were actually working out - something that no one had previously researched. This curiosity led to the Street Life Project, a pioneering study of pedestrian behavior and city dynamics.

"This remarkable equation is why people move to the big city," West says. "Because you can take the same person, and if you just move them to a city that's twice as big, then all of a sudden they'll do 15 percent more of everything that we can measure." While Jacobs could only speculate on the value of our urban interactions, West insists that he has found a way to "scientifically confirm" her conjectures. "One of my favorite compliments is when people come up to me and say, 'You have done what Jane Jacobs would have done, if only she could do mathematics,' " West says. "What the data clearly shows, and what she was clever enough to anticipate, is that when people come together, they become much more productive."

""Tampa is vulnerable to climate change and associated extreme weather. Florida's political representatives remain largely unconcerned about climate change," said lead study author Sabrina McCormick, Ph.D. McCormick said this could mean disaster for Tampa residents living below the flood line - about 125,000 people. (Last week, Climate Central released stark new maps that show cities around the world disappearing under water due to rising sea levels.)"

Using federal grant dollars, InVision Tampa will create a master plan for the city center of Tampa, Fla., spanning from downtown to Ybor City on the east, Armenia Avenue on the west, and north along historic Nebraska Avenue to Hillsborough Avenue. Working with the city, experts and scholars with worldwide experience and insight will walk, talk, photograph, map and - most importantly - listen to yo...See More

There's an important debate taking place right now, as you know, about what will happen to the suburbs and particularly the more distant exurbs when economic conditions and the real estate market pick up a little more. On one side are the suburbanists, such as Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox, who believe that the march of the affluent to distant locations will simply continue, and we will be building more subdivisions 30 and 40 miles out from the cities. Then there are the urbanists, such as Christopher Leinberger, who argue that the Great Recession marks a demographic turning point, and communities far from the urban center are going to be much less attractive to the next generation of affluent homebuyers.

"To promote the wider arguments in the book, Lewis and Conaty produced a series of very short articles. The following Special Report features their series on Community Land Trusts, Mutual Home Ownership, the Garden City Model and the Co-operative Land Bank. The Garden City Model merits special attention, as Garden Cities that took land out of the market were a full expression of radical socialist and co-operative economy planning. Nowadays, a number of parts of the world are showing an interest in reviving them."

Public spaces are an important part of Knight Foundation's work in cities and the communities where we invest. We believe that great public spaces have the power to transform cities. They are where neighbors can meet and residents can enjoy local arts and culture, take a jog or spend time with family. They help to advance civic engagement and the attachment people feel to their cities - both necessities for creating more informed and engaged communities. Recent research by the Center for Active Design shows that public spaces can help to facilitate community connection, trust and involvement.

Next City finds compelling projects that might inspire your own work or be worth replicating in your city. We ask practitioners to present the project, including the challenges, roadblocks and lessons learned. Then we moderate a live conversation with the audience.

Through SC2, 19 federal agencies work together in partnership with committed city leaders as they implement locally driven economic visions. SC2 does not involve new federal money nor is it a top-down approach. Based on a city's local vision and its request for federal involvement, SC2 seeks to support each city by increasing federal-local collaboration and improving how the federal government invests in and delivers technical assistance to advance locally driven economic development and job creation goals.

United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) represents and defends the interests of local governments on the world stage, regardless of the size of the communities they serve. Headquartered in Barcelona, the organisation's stated mission is: To be the united voice and world advocate of democratic local self-government, promoting its values, objectives and interests, through cooperation between local governments, and within the wider international community.

Urban planning in the 20th century sprang from that horrified perception of 19th-century cities. Oddly, it began with Ebenezer Howard. In a slim book, self-published in 1898, the man who spent his days transcribing the ideas of others articulated his own vision for how humanity ought to live-a vision so compelling that half a century later Lewis Mumford, the great American architecture critic, said it had "laid the foundation for a new cycle in urban civilization."

The reality is that technology and innovations in business and service delivery are everywhere.  But often, because of the day-to-day pressure within local government to simply keep things running and improve in the most conventional areas, new approaches and cutting edge technology is not being used in the optimal way, to benefit those living within cities, towns, counties and so forth.  This is not the fault of local governments.  Cities , towns, counties and universities have huge demands on limited resources, and day-today operations are all-consuming and critical. So it can be difficult to learn what is available that would make the biggest difference.

The focus was on creating "cities for life" - that is, on promoting equitable development in the urban environments in which a majority of the world's citizens already live, and in which two thirds will reside by the year 2050.