The Responsive City

Leveraging Big Data and 21st century technology to renew cities and citizenship in America The Responsive City is a guide to civic engagement and governance in the digital age that will help leaders link important breakthroughs in technology and data analytics with age-old lessons of small-group community input to create more agile, competitive, and economically resilient cities. Featuring vivid case studies highlighting the work of pioneers in New York, Boston, Chicago and more, the book provides a compelling model for the future of governance. The book will help mayors, chief technology officers, city administrators, agency directors, civic groups and nonprofit leaders break out of current paradigms to collectively address civic problems. The Responsive City is the culmination of research originating from the Data-Smart City Solutions initiative, an ongoing project at Harvard Kennedy School working to catalyze adoption of data projects on the city level. The book is co-authored by Professor Stephen Goldsmith, director of Data-Smart City Solutions at Harvard Kennedy School, and Professor Susan Crawford, co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg penned the book’s foreword. Based on the authors’ experiences and extensive research, The Responsive City explores topics including: Building trust in the public sector and fostering a sustained, collective voice among communities; Using data-smart governance to preempt and predict problems while improving quality of life; Creating efficiencies and saving taxpayer money with digital tools; and Spearheading these new approaches to government with innovative leadership.

Leveraging Big Data and 21st century technology to renew cities and citizenship in America The Responsive City is a guide to civic engagement and governance in the digital age that will help leaders link important breakthroughs in technology and data analytics with age-old lessons of small-group community input to create more agile, competitive, and economically resilient cities. Featuring vivid case studies highlighting the work of pioneers in New York, Boston, Chicago and more, the book provides a compelling model for the future of governance. The book will help mayors, chief technology officers, city administrators, agency directors, civic groups and nonprofit leaders break out of current paradigms to collectively address civic problems. The Responsive City is the culmination of research originating from the Data-Smart City Solutions initiative, an ongoing project at Harvard Kennedy School working to catalyze adoption of data projects on the city level. The book is co-authored by Professor Stephen Goldsmith, director of Data-Smart City Solutions at Harvard Kennedy School, and Professor Susan Crawford, co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg penned the book’s foreword. Based on the authors’ experiences and extensive research, The Responsive City explores topics including: Building trust in the public sector and fostering a sustained, collective voice among communities; Using data-smart governance to preempt and predict problems while improving quality of life; Creating efficiencies and saving taxpayer money with digital tools; and Spearheading these new approaches to government with innovative leadership.

Clearly demonstrates the specific characteristics that make for comprehensible, friendly and controllable places; 'Responsive Environments' - as opposed to the alienating environments often imposed today. By means of sketches and diagrams, it shows how they may be designed in to places or buildings. This is a practical book about architecture and urban design. It is most concerned with the areas of design which most frequently go wrong and impresses the idea that ideals alone are not enough. Ideals must be linked through appropriate design ideas to the fabric of the built environemnt itself. This book is a practical attempt to show how this can be done.

The book presents governance with a particular focus on the social and spatial aspects of climate responsiveness and reads the practice of governance across different scales. It conceptualizes a framework of scale composed of three main categories including (i) scientific knowledge, (ii) plans and policies, and (iii) authorities of action. This framework presents ‘practice’ as the social context in which these three can interplay adaptively. Within this framework, the book presents case studies from Turkey, Italy, Ecuador, Chile and the UK, that reach meaningful planning and design solutions at national, city, and neighbourhood scales in the face of climate change. It offers implementation clues that are transferable to ever-increasing climate action around the globe. The book will be of interest to both professionals and scholars involved in urban design, urban planning and architecture, especially those in the field of climate responsive urbanism. It will also be a valuable resource for non-governmental organizations and social enterprises dealing with sustainability and climate change policies.

This publication calls all urban stakeholders to invest in child-responsive urban planning, recognizing that cities are not only drivers of prosperity, but also of inequity. Through 10 Children’s Rights and Urban Planning principles, the handbook presents concepts, evidence, tools and promising practices to create thriving and equitable cities where children live in healthy, safe, inclusive, green and prosperous communities. By focusing on children, it provides guidance on the central role that urban planning should play in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, from a global perspective to a local context.

Why technology is not an end in itself, and how cities can be “smart enough,” using technology to promote democracy and equity. Smart cities, where technology is used to solve every problem, are hailed as futuristic urban utopias. We are promised that apps, algorithms, and artificial intelligence will relieve congestion, restore democracy, prevent crime, and improve public services. In The Smart Enough City, Ben Green warns against seeing the city only through the lens of technology; taking an exclusively technical view of urban life will lead to cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality. He proposes instead that cities strive to be “smart enough”: to embrace technology as a powerful tool when used in conjunction with other forms of social change—but not to value technology as an end in itself. In a technology-centric smart city, self-driving cars have the run of downtown and force out pedestrians, civic engagement is limited to requesting services through an app, police use algorithms to justify and perpetuate racist practices, and governments and private companies surveil public space to control behavior. Green describes smart city efforts gone wrong but also smart enough alternatives, attainable with the help of technology but not reducible to technology: a livable city, a democratic city, a just city, a responsible city, and an innovative city. By recognizing the complexity of urban life rather than merely seeing the city as something to optimize, these Smart Enough Cities successfully incorporate technology into a holistic vision of justice and equity.

The topic of streets and street design is of compelling interest today as public officials, developers, and community activists seek to reshape urban patterns to achieve more sustainable forms of growth and development. Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities traces ideas about street design and layout back to the early industrial era in London suburbs and then on through their institutionalization in housing and transportation planning in the United States. It critiques the situation we are in and suggests some ways out that are less rigidly controlled, more flexible, and responsive to local conditions. Originally published in 1997, this edition includes a new introduction that addresses topics of current interest including revised standards from the Institute of Transportation Engineers; changes in city plans and development standards following New Urbanist, Smart Growth, and sustainability principles; traffic calming; and ecologically oriented street design.

This book critically engages with the contemporary challenges and opportunities of wild cities in a climate of change. A key focus of the book is exploring the nexus of possibilities for wild cities and the eco-ethical imagination needed to drive sustainable and resilient urban pathways. Many now have serious doubts about the prospects for humanity to live within cities that are socially just and responsive to planetary limits. Is it possible for planning to better serve, protect and nurture our human and non-human worlds? This book argues it is. Drawing on international literature and Australian case examples, this book explores issues around climate change, colonization, urban (in)security and the rights to the city for both humans and nature. It is within this context that this book focuses on the urgent need to better understand how contemporary cities have changed, and the relational role of planning within it. Planning Wild Cities will be of particular interest to students and scholars of planning, urban studies, and sustainable development, and for all those invested in re-shaping our ‘wild’ city futures.