Municipal governments are riding a volatile wave of economic, ecological, and social change. But one thing is constant—the accelerating spread of digital technologies. More specifically, municipal governments are learning how to use software to measure, analyze, and optimize service delivery.…
Following the publication of The Future of Urban Tech: A Ten-Year Horizon Scan, we began a collaboration with Paris-based think tank Urban AI that is now entering its second year. Over a series of 10 scheduled webinars, we brought together…
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA, better known as the “Bipartisan Infrastructure Law”) launched the biggest 5-year push to repair, expand, and most importantly—improve—the nation’s civil infrastructure. This act authorizes more than $550 billion in spending on transportation, broadband,…
The Digital Cities Index 2022, published by The Economist “combines highlights from the DCI with expert commentary on the key factors determining success in the utilisation of digital technology in today’s cities, and uses the rankings to benchmark performance and…
Self-repairing roads and sewers. Forests and farms inside buildings. Software that follows our instructions rather than following us around. These are just some of the possibilities and pitfalls for urban tech in the decade ahead. This site is a kaleidoscope…
This paper is the first output from our ongoing work with the Urban Tech Hub @ Cornell Tech, and identifies key ethical dilemmas shaping the future of networks, sensing, and computation in cities. This discussion paper explores the emerging territory…
We were delighted to participate in a fascinating new study by longtime collaborators Lean Doody and the team at Arup on “workplacemaking”, a new approach to designing and managing distributed work in the post-pandemic city. See the report, Making Place:…
Rather than rushing out with a perspective early on in the pandemic that I’d later regret, I decided to wait and see how things shaped up. Finally, in late October 2020, I had a chance to reflect in Nautilus (article)…
In the spring of 2020, we began working with Julia Powles, Bianca Wylie, and the team at Minderoo Foundation as part of a larger effort to reset the global conversation about technology platforms and power. Almost as soon as we…
The oceans are at once an e xploited and under-developed resource, a mysterious territory put to use with the most primitive of technologies. As part of our growing partnership with Boston-based bluetech startup platform SeaAhead, we worked with the University…
Over the last decade, resilience has emerged as an important movement in urban planning, and New York City’s multiple disasters and crises—from September 11 to Superstorm Sandy—have raised awareness in one of the world’s economic, media and cultural hubs. But…
Update: Check out St. Louis Magazine’s in-depth coverage of the Design Downtown STL project. “Smart Cities author Anthony Townsend, an expert on urbanization and digital technology, says St. Louis should develop a long-term stand-alone digital master plan, just as it…
City governments have a lot of places to turn to for ideas and blueprints about focused ways to use big data and analytics to drive innovation. But there’s nothing to help them think strategically about big data and make coordinated…
Over the last decade, so-called “urbantech” firms have transformed the way people live and work in cities. Are Uber, WeWork, and AirBnB too big to fail? This panel discussion, at CityLab DC 2019, features * City Group’s Anthony Townsend alongside…
How can cities harness AVs to solve pressing mobility challenges? What kinds of pilots can they undertake, and how should they run them? This web-based atlas, researched over two years, provides encyclopedic information on more than 136 cities across the…
This talk, delivered in spring 2019 at Toronto’s Evergreen Brickworks campus to kick off TD Bank’s Future Cities Speaker Series, provided a tear-down of the big trends behind automated mobility and explored how new types of automated vehicles—very small and…
In this interview, produced by Esquire UK for the launch of the Hyundai IONIQ Electric, we explore how urban sharing has shaped cities and how technology will create new opportunities in the near future.
The third and final output from our collaboration with Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Aspen Institute on the Initiative on Cities and Autonomous Vehicles was a set of four scenarios. Published in collaboration with the National League of Cities, these scenarios…
In 2017, we developed a primer for 10 global cities working with the Bloomberg Philanthropies on long-term planning for AVs. This briefing book (PDF) offers insights on the big trends taking shape in AVs, and the consensus among experts about the nature…
Most of the world’s population are now city dwellers, and mobile, wireless computers outnumber desktops. In an age of urbanization and technological ubiquity, how is the social compact around environmental degradation, science, and policy and planning shifting? What new challenges…
