This week in Chapel Hill a new year began. Thousands of students converged upon UNC’s campus (a select few upon New East, home of Carolina Planning) to begin the annual academic cycle, just as they have in innumerable seasons past. For Angles, though, this year is a special one. It is the blog’s tenth anniversary, an occasion which we believe merits celebration and contemplation.
Throughout the year, we will be publishing a series called “Angles of Reflection,” in which writers will engage in conversation with posts from the blog’s archive and explore how the field has changed — and how it has not — over the years. To kick things off, we’re going back to one of its earliest posts, Planning for the Phone Age.
Originally written in 2013 for Changing Media’s The Good Plan, this piece, by DCRP alum Lindsay Davis, took a look at the increasing distractions that smartphones were proving to be. Even at that time, Davis noted how they took people out of their physical surroundings, often to the detriment of interpersonal connection. “This,” she wrote, “leaves a new task up to cities — integrating the self and the cellphone into the public realm.”
A decade later, Davis’s words feel prescient. The self and the cellphone are by now intimately integrated, and devices guide our movement through the public realm almost like another sense. Beyond their use as tools — restaurant menus, bus passes — their influence extends into the very way we perceive ourselves and our places. GPS maps distort our sense of space and direction even as they increase our ability to get from one point to another. Group messages, digital classrooms and online forums take on many of the characteristics of social spaces. At a deep level, we relate ourselves to our screens, to our digital representations as dots on a map and text on a page. And, at times, this new sense of identity comes at the expense of our surroundings; our locations and our social interactions become more rooted in information than experience.
Photo credit: Robin Worrall, Unsplash
Often, and understandably, the focus has been on the disorienting effects of these changes. GPS navigation and social media physically alter our brains. In recent years, with the rise of AI-generated text and images, the links between digital and physical reality have become tenuous. It’s enough to rattle the nerves of even the staunchest techie.
Fundamentally, the challenge remains the same today as it did in 2013. How can we — individuals, communities, organizations, cities — use devices to connect to our environments, instead of bypassing them? How can we use them to expand our consciousness, rather than restricting it?
The solutions, undoubtedly, will require deep reflection.
Joe Wilson is a second year master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC Chapel Hill, and the managing editor of Angles.
This week, we are featuring a book review from Volume 46 of the Carolina Planning Journal, The White Problem in Planning. Joungwon Kwon reflects on Ruha Benjamin’s Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code.
Book Review by Joungwon Kwon
Ruha Benjamin’s Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code offers past and current technology examples in our everyday life to demonstrate technology’s failures in eliminating racism. Without assessing the problems entailed by emerging technology, the public and private sectors are quickly implementing technology in different settings. Although many advocates frame technology as an unbiased tool, Benjamin asserts that technology, including AI and robots, are not neutral. Indeed, to Benjamin, the dominance of emerging technologies, and the racism underlying their design and use, constitutes a “New Jim Code.”
“Data, in short, do not speak for themselves and don’t always change hearts and minds or policy.” (p. 206)
When programmers create technological tools, they use data that reflects the systematic racism built into our society. The most common example is discrimination based on names. Research shows that white-sounding first names have advantages over Black-sounding names (Benjamin 2019, 15), and technology that uses this racially biased data reproduces this racism and continues to support White supremacy. Benjamin informs users that critical thinking is necessary, and it may be challenging compared to the past. For example, Robert Moses’s plans to build bridges in New York City so low that buses would not be able to pass underneath were an explicitly racist effort to exclude poorer people of color. In contrast, racism in technology is challenging to detect because technology is often framed as an objective tool. It is difficult for users to understand all the data and design choices that programmers have made. Therefore, Benjamin encourages users to not blindly accept what is shown on the screen, and to ask questions about programmers’ intentions and how the design of technology can disadvantage some communities over others.
“Invisibility, with regard to Whiteness, offers immunity.” (p. 14)
One of the most infamous algorithms for racial bias is predictive policing. Predictive policing tries to predict future crimes by analyzing historical crime data, which perpetuates racist historical patterns of incarceration among Black and Latinx populations.
Benjamin provides ways to flip the script for racially biased algorithms. One example is the White-Collar Early Warning System, which highlights financial crimes on a heat map and includes a facial recognition program to identify corporate executives, mostly White, who are likely to be perpetrators. It makes Whiteness and financial crimes visible.
The book also includes cases of apps focused on decarceration, especially for people who cannot afford bail money. Promise tracks individuals’ locations before trial or sentencing, thereby reducing the need for bail payments. Although the app may seem “good,” it can easily be used against individuals due to the nature of its continuous surveillance. Both systems allow technology to be abolitionist tools instead of perpetuating racism. However, the “good” apps can always be used in reverse at any moment. Another decarceration app, Appolition avoids Promise’s surveillance problems by crowdfunding donations for bail out money for incarcerated people.
“By deliberately and inventively upsetting the techno status quo in this manner, analysts can better understand and expose the many forms of discrimination embedded in and enabled by technology.” (p. 211)
Benjamin closes the book with what society can do to bring justice to technology: disrupt the techno status quo. The current status of technology embeds discrimination. Therefore, disrupting the status quo means to change and question the technology. In the first four chapters, she illustrates how technology has perpetuated Jim Crow laws, and how analysts, artists, and activists need to work to reform these systems. Moreover, new apps, programs, and data require a holistic understanding instead of an ends-justify-the-means approach. She argues that “New Jim Code fixes are a permanent placeholder for bolder change” (p. 174). A solution to one problem may bring more problems to other areas, so the fixes need to be cautiously thought through with a long-term vision that prioritizes justice.
Although Benjamin presents examples, many questions are left without answers. For instance, she states that society needs an abolitionist toolkit for technology. The abolitionist toolkit is not specific and centers data analysts and designers. For technology users, the book does not provide solutions to disrupt the techno status quo, which may frustrate some readers. However, technology is dramatically changing, and these problems do not have one-size-fits-all solutions. Benjamin’s examples are helpful in understanding the New Jim Code, but they are sometimes not described in detail. For example, the book mentions several apps, such as Promise, and their problems without offering enough context. This lack of description may leave readers perplexed. Nonetheless, the book helps to recognize emerging technology problems and bring the conversation to various settings in the public and private sectors.
Race After Technology lies at the intersection of many disciplines studies and will be interesting for those who are curious about systemic racism, technology, and cities. Benjamin’s background is in African American Studies, which presents the book with a clear racial justice lens. Benjamin poses many questions about technology’s influence on today’s societies and enables readers to imagine more equitable cities. The takeaways for readers are that technology users need to think critically, flipping the script for digital platforms and upsetting the techno status quo instead of accepting technology’s default, if they want to change the New Jim Code. In the future, specific solutions for tech users and more detailed examples would be great additions to the book.
Find Volume 46 of the Carolina Planning Journal online here.
Jo (Joungwon) Kwon is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of City and Regional Planning. She hopes to interweave various data sets and narratives of housing and communities together with new digital technologies. With a background in Statistics and English Literature, she received her M.A. in Computational Media at Duke University. In her free time, she enjoys watching indie films, going to live performances, and drinking good coffee.
With the introduction of new technologies and the pandemic forcing many people to work from home, the media has increasingly used the term “smart cities.” There will be more smart cities worldwide in the coming years, from Toyota’s Woven City to Copenhagen Connecting. However, some have also been scrapped, like Google’s Sidewalk Toronto project, due to the economic uncertainty caused by COVID-19.[i] So what are smart cities? The term is a buzzword, but most people are not sure what it means. Does it simply mean that smart cities are more intelligent than previous cities? What does it mean to be smart? Is Chapel Hill a smart city?
Smart City Example: Toyota’s Woven City
Many institutions have come up with different definitions. Urban planning news site Planetizen states, “A smart city uses information and communications technology (ICT) to enhance its livability, workability, and sustainability.”[ii]Moreover, smart cities bring technology, economy, mobility, environment, people, and government together.[iii] This technology includes apps for real time data, such as leaf collection or free public Wi-Fi. The concept of smart cities encompasses the use of technologies in cities to increase connectivity in various sectors.
Cities have been eager to implement new technologies due to the benefits of efficiently connecting different city sectors,[iv] reducing environmental footprints,[v] improving public transportation,[vi] and increasing economic development,[vii] digital equity,[viii] and more. However, there are also concerns related to smart cities. Some significant issues are surveillance,[ix] security,[x] data bias,[xi] and the digital divide impacting smart city residents.[xii] Cities also have difficulty creating and connecting infrastructures, consistently updating new technologies, and collaborating with the private sector.[xiii], [xiv]
The Town of Chapel Hill is also envisioning itself as a smart town, and has embedded parts of the smart cities initiatives into projects such as the technology solution business plan and the West Rosemary Street Development.[xv] The Town has also participated in AT&T’s Spotlight City project to develop a smart cities framework, and encouraged North Carolina Science Festival participants to use the iNaturalist app to identify plants and animals in Pritchard Park and share knowledge on insects in Chapel Hill. Additionally, Chapel Hill uses sensors to offer real-time, mobile-friendly data on adverse weather activity, leaf collection, and street maintenance. The Town continues to further smart city initiatives by providing internet access for residents and businesses, adding electric vehicle charging stations, implementing parking deck sensors, increasing cyber asset security, and more.
Chapel Hill’s Mobile-Friendly Street Maintenance
As cities and towns become “smart,” resident participation is vital in order for any plans to incorporate their concerns and ensure an equitable approach. Several cities are committed to developing smart city plans with equity goals, such as Portland’s Smart City PDX.[xvi] As the future of Chapel Hill moves towards a smart city model, it will be necessary to start talking about digital equity in order for Chapel Hill to become the next smart equitable town.
If you would like to know more about smart cities and Chapel Hill’s smart cities initiatives, or want to offer input, please visit Smart Town.
[ix] Zoonen, Liesbet van. 2016. “Privacy Concerns in Smart Cities.” Government Information Quarterly, Open and Smart Governments: Strategies, Tools, and Experiences, 33 (3): 472–80.
Jo (Joungwon) Kwon is a Ph.D. student in the Department of City and Regional Planning. She hopes to interweave various data sets and narratives of housing and communities together with new digital technologies. With a background in Statistics and English Literature, she received her M.A. in Computational Media at Duke University. In her free time, she enjoys watching indie movies, going to live performances, and drinking good coffee.
In light of Apple’s announcement that they will be placing one of their headquarters in Wake County, many fear skyrocketing housing costs in response. Apple touts that this new 3,000 new jobs to the area, potentially encouraging mass migration to the Raleigh-Durham area. Google has also recently announced their plans to build a hub in Durham and claims that they will eventually create 1,000 jobs in the area. These announcements are being made during a time of large inbound migration to North Carolina, with North Carolina now considered the 5th most popular state to move to.
All these changes beg the question of how increased housing demand from high-income tech sector employees will affect housing affordability in North Carolina. This is of special concern to the currently booming metropolitan areas of NC: Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte. Who will be displaced by this mass migration? How big of a threat is gentrification? How can we ensure sustained affordable housing for North Carolinians?
North Carolinians’ fears about what happens if Raleigh-Durham becomes the “new Bay Area” are not unfounded. It’s easy to look at the Bay Area, California as a blueprint for the impact of expansive tech sector development on housing affordability. San Francisco is currently the most expensive housing market in the US, with other Bay Area cities such as San Jose and Oakland following closely behind. However, this future is not set in stone for North Carolina. State and local policymakers can begin to reform our current housing system to accommodate newcomers in a way that balances the needs of long-term residents with the goals of economic development.
SB349, the NC Senate’s “Increase Housing Opportunities” bill, is a good start. The bill legalizes “missing middle” housing in residential area (townhouses, duplexes, quadplexes), blocking local attempts at single family zoning that restrict more affordable housing options. It also legalizes additional dwelling units, or ADUs, without any parking minimums or conditional use permits, further increasing housing stock. It also blocks local downzoning attempts without substantial evidence indicating public health or safety risk. Compared to other state bills, NC’s bill goes further than most, preventing local governments from banning land uses that are not a demonstratable threat to health or safety.
In short, SB349 will make housing construction easier and avert local attempts to block new housing development. This bill is the floor that North Carolina needs to preserve existing housing affordability. By permitting housing construction, NC housing markets can meet growing demand from incoming tech workers. This isn’t purely theoretical either – research indicates that housing supply restrictions raise housing costs.
For those concerned about the displacement effects of new economic development, bills like SB349, and other laws permitting housing construction, are still the best bet. Some may argue that the construction of new, market-rate units creates an induced demand effect. Under this logic, new construction encourages wealthier people to move in, landlords appease these newcomers by evicting low-income tenants and raising rents, and low-income residents are then displaced.
However, evidence suggests just the opposite. Market-rate housing construction does not increase rents in nearby units. In fact, new construction lowers rents in nearby housing. A recent working paper by Xiaodi Li found that for every 10% increase in housing stock, local rents decrease by 1%. The construction of new, market-rate housing offsets potential displacement caused by migration. Artificial housing scarcity creates a system where low-income residents are competing against (and often losing to) higher-income, newcomers for the same units. By creating new housing units, however, newcomers with money can buy or rent the newer units, while low-income residents can keep their homes.
If NC policymakers want to create economic dynamism and growth while ensuring an affordable housing market, they should embrace SB349. It is a bold state bill that will protect the rights of individuals to build on their own property and increase housing stock. Beyond SB349, NC state and local authorities can do more even to encourage an affordable housing market. Many localities in NC have laws restricting the construction of manufactured housing and specific restrictions targeted at trailer parks. These should be repealed, as manufactured housing is an important element of NC’s affordable housing stock. The creation of community land trusts (CLTs) and affordable housing trust funds (such as those in Asheville) can also provide opportunities to support permanently affordable housing for low-income residents.
Without preemptive action, North Carolina risks creating the same problems that plague Silicon Valley and the greater Bay Area. That future, however, is not inevitable. Policies that promote housing development and affordable housing can create an inclusive, prosperous NC for everyone.
Elijah Gullett is a rising fourth-year undergraduate student majoring in Public Policy with minors in Urban Studies and Environmental Justice. His academic interests include fair and affordable housing, sustainable development, and LGBTQ+ urban life.
The following is written under the assumption that by the year 2050, the United States will have completely converted to the usage of level 5 autonomous vehicles (AVs). This means that all vehicles will be fully automated and capable of performing all driving functions under any conditions. Innovations such as camera sensors, Lidar, Radar, ultrasound, and computer vision will enable AVs to resolve technical problems and safety issues currently of concern. Consequently, the conversion to AVs throughout the U.S. will create both benefits and drawbacks related to land use planning, subsequently facilitating various economic scenarios. The primary land use benefits and concerns are outlined below, along with policy recommendations to address them.
Benefits
Improved Efficiency of Parking Structure and Location
The conversion to level 5 AVs throughout the United States enables the improved efficiency of parking facilities in regards to location and design. The use of autonomous vehicles lessens the need for onsite parking due to built-in self-parking capabilities. Instead of requiring on-site parking, AVs, whether public or private, can drop off and pick-up users as needed. As a result, parking in urban areas can be consolidated outside of the city center where the land value is cheaper. Currently, the average comprehensive parking costs in the U.S. range from $3,300 to $5,600 per parking space in central business districts. On the other hand, the cost of parking falls to $680 to $2,400 in peripheral urban areas. Consequently, parking companies are incentivized to relocate parking structures to the urban periphery where there is still demand but costs are lower. Since parking will be consolidated in the urban peripheries, AVs enhance the viability of combined parking structures for people shopping, commuting, and engaging in leisure activities.
Automated parking systems also allow parking to be more space-efficient. Developers predict that through replacing ramps and aisles with lift shafts and reducing the size of parking spots, each parking deck will be able to hold 60% more parking. Combined with the consolidation of parking spaces in the urban peripheries, improved space-efficiency will significantly lower the amount of land dedicated to parking. Currently, there are 800 million surface parking spaces in US urban areas, equal to 1/3 of the United States’ combined downtown area. By cutting down on these parking spaces, the quality of the built environment will be improved by replacing urban parking structures with new land uses such as residential, commercial, and green spaces. The change of land uses will subsequently increase the density of core urban areas, which allows for enhanced economic activity.
Redistribution of Road Spaces
Similar to parking, the proliferation of AVs enables the redistribution of road spaces into more efficient uses. Due to AVs’ automation and safety capabilities, planners no longer need to account for human error in the design of roads and lanes. Assuming vehicles remain the same size, engineers believe lane size can be reduced by 20%. Moreover, since AVs have a significantly faster reaction time and can communicate with other vehicles, they are capable of traveling closer together than human-operated vehicles. This increases throughput of each lane, which reduces the demand for lane expansions and can potentially lead to fewer traffic lanes. Additionally, the use of medians as a method of providing a safety buffer between traffic lanes will no longer be needed, allowing roads to consolidate space.
Throughout the United States, road networks are a major land use of any city or suburban area, constituting 25% to 35% of the total land. Therefore, the redistribution of roadways can create a significant amount of space for bicycle and pedestrian facilities, active streetscapes, and greenspaces. As seen below in Figure 1, the use of AVs can transform American streetscapes into complete streets, allowing for a more diverse system of transportation for many different modes. The implementation of complete streets creates many long-term economic benefits for urban areas, including increased property values and opportunities for private investment along the roadways.
Figure 1: The Transformation to Complete Streets with AVs (Source: Florida DOT)
Drawbacks
Greater Urban Sprawl
While the change to fully autonomous vehicles does create beneficial land-use impacts, AVs may also facilitate the continuation of urban sprawl. Planners have discovered that individuals believe their living environment and quality of life to be more important than living near where they work. Since AVs create travel that is less burdensome for riders, riders are incentivized to continue living in cheaper and greener areas located farther from the city center. A survey completed by the Transportation Institute at Texas A&M found that 80% of respondents want to remain within suburban areas while utilizing an AV. Furthermore, 20% of respondents expressed a desire to relocate farther away from the city center after obtaining an AV. As seen in this survey, the conversion to AVs increases an individual’s willingness to live farther away from work because the cost of traveling is worth living farther from the city center.
Due to this increased urban sprawl, residential and commercial land use patterns will continue to disperse and fragment. The construction of low-density single-family dwellings will spread throughout rural domains, which will also incentivize the creation of new commercial strip developments. As development grows farther away from urban cores, greater economic deterioration may occur in those areas. Moreover, the combination of commercial and residential relocation away from city centers creates urban decay as property values and public investments decline. Overall, AVs will make transportation easier for riders, resulting in increased urban sprawl and economic disinvestment in urban areas.
Policy Recommendations
Supporting the Potential Land Use Benefits
For AVs to create land use benefits, planners must ensure that any new policies or repurposing of public roads and parking spaces prioritize the needs of the whole community, rather than focusing strictly on serving vehicles. For public roads, city and regional planners can utilize federal grants to fund capital investments in surface transportation infrastructure such as encouraging the redistribution of road spaces and implementation of complete streets. In the case of Saint Paul, Minnesota, planners utilized a USDOT TIGER II grant to create a street design manual to be used to implement complete streets throughout the city. Furthermore, the use of public engagement strategies will educate public stakeholders about the benefits of reducing lane sizes, adding bike lanes, and increasing sidewalk size. Such demonstrations can help garner public support, enhancing the viability of new complete street policies.
Additionally, planners can incentivize public infill of abandoned parking facilities by implementing smart growth policies that reduce the amount of parking within urban areas. According to the EPA, a 50% reduction in parking would reduce parking capital costs by 25% and allow for 20% more residential units. As a result, developers can lower their capital costs and increase profitability. This increased profitability will incentivize more investment in public infill areas, increasing opportunities for inner-city development and economic revitalization.
Preventing Potential Land Use Drawbacks
Other than supporting the aforementioned benefits, planners must also implement policies that actively prevent the spread of urban sprawl and incentivize the densification of living spaces. Urban planner Craig Lewis states that sprawl will only continue if planners continue to support sprawl through focusing on free highway infrastructure and providing little access to affordable and attractive alternatives. By eliminating subsidies for highway infrastructure, planners can influence people to remain in their current suburbs or relocate within the city. Local and regional planning organizations can implement land-sharing plans or zoning laws to protect more rural areas from new development. Through these methods, planners can limit the potential for future urban sprawl and redirect movement back into the urban cores.
Conclusion
Within the next 30 years, land use plans will experience a significant change as the nation converts to the use of level 5 autonomous vehicles. In order to promote beneficial land use changes, planning organizations must implement policies that support the redistribution of public road space and incentivize the improved efficiency of parking infrastructure. Additionally, planners will need to develop policies that prevent the expansion of urban sprawl and redirect economic development to the city core. By implementing these measures, planners will promote centralization and rekindle economic growth throughout the nation’s urban landscape.
Will Anderson is a third-year undergraduate student with a major in Environmental Studies and minors in Urban Planning and Geographic Information Science. His academic interests include sustainability, land use planning, transportation planning, urban design, and architecture. I his free time, he enjoys playing tennis, mountain biking, and surfing.
“All that is left of the original impulse toward autonomy and initiative [of American suburbia] is the driving of the private motor car, but . . . clever engineers already threaten to remove the individual control by a system of automation.” – Lewis Mumford, The City in History, 1961
Carolina DCRP students, especially those who have taken courses on transportation, have been part of many discussions speculating on what a world dominated by autonomous vehicles (AVs) would look like. I am already tired of these exercises; I could shout all of my dire, probably redundant predictions, but what I’d rather do is point out the conceptual oxymoron of autonomous vehicles. Though I am not a fan of cars in general, AVs are so baffling that they remind me of why we have cars in the first place and of the (few) blessings of driving.
First of all, we drive because it is fun. Transportation is almost a national sport in the United States. Ask almost anyone who drives – we like being in control and experiencing the ultimate technological exercise of freedom, admittedly impossible to attain through mass transit. For some, cars are a hobby, a livelihood, an expression. Cars and the American road trip have provided a kind of adventure previously unimaginable and have even enabled an outdoor culture and ironic love for nature on a scale not typically found in other countries. Cars are responsible for a great deal of the social ills contemporary planners spend their lives fighting, but there is fun and ruggedness in the experience of driving.
Cars are not, however, any embodiment of practicality or justice; they are aristocratic toys that have been thrust into the duty of being the basis of society. They are not cheap or efficient; they are an entire motor, capable of hauling thousands of pounds, for every human soul. They are not safe; they provide the highest chance of tragedy by maximizing the potential for and impact of error. Certainly AVs might mitigate some of these characteristics, but that is not what I am trying to discuss here.
AVs would undo the original purpose of the car. They are an attempt to derive efficiency from the least efficient mode, to make the most dangerous device in the world safe, and to remove the fun of driving from all of this. Maybe these things need to be done given our infrastructural realities, but doesn’t it seem conceptually pointless? Wouldn’t a bus do if you weren’t driving? No, it is not this simple, and yes, the vast majority of car owners own one because they need to. I only want to highlight the absurdity of this point we have gotten to as a country. Should planners really go along and look to an unproven, expensive technology when there are simpler solutions that are, at least in theory, efficient and just?
AVs are a long way off and may never happen. This does indeed make more technical debate about them moot (Lewis Mumford was airing these same concerns almost sixty years ago). But that is just it – AVs are little more than an idea at this point, an idea I would love to destroy if I could.
About the Author: Evan King is a first year masters student in city and regional planning. His interests include transportation policy in the developing world, light rail, and freight movement on inland waterways. He can found in his free time trying to kayak long distances and making hand-drawn maps. Evan hails from central Connecticut and completed an undergraduate degree in Maryland. Opinions are his own.
Featured Image: A human driver on an adventure. Photo Credit: Getty Images
It’s no secret that community engagement is a necessary part of planning that includes citizens in the ways that their communities are shaped. What is a secret is the best way to run community engagement processes. Planners have had varying success with engagement plans when balancing how to include as many voices as possible with getting feedback that is valuable to planning projects.
Typically community engagement is done face to face at community meetings, however it’s difficult to engage with the entire community at community meetings when there are many restraints such as time commitments, lack of accessibility, and pessimism about the ability to make a difference. There are also several drawbacks to traditional forms of engagement like public forums and charrettes, including high costs, lack of effectiveness, and being too exclusive.
While becoming increasingly frustrated with trying to navigate the Town of Chapel Hill’s website to learn more about a recent planning project, I couldn’t help but think that there has to be a better way to design websites that provide information but allow for the collection of feedback from the community. With a fair bit of research I found myself in a field of technology that I had no idea existed in the planning world: Online Community Engagement Tools.
This developing technology has allowed for towns and planning departments to increase their community outreach in the form of mobile apps, websites, or social media platforms that utilize methods of providing information and collecting feedback. These tools can be significantly cheaper, reach more people, and collect significantly richer data than traditional engagement. In recent years there has been valuable research on why we should be using technology to improve community engagement, however there hasn’t been much research on how we should be using this technology.
There are many different types of online engagement tools being developed and not every tool is ideal for specific engagement efforts. With so many different types of tools, it makes it very difficult for planners researching engagement tools to know which one is the best to pick, or even to understand all their options. Finding a list of 50+ tools on a blog post from OpenPlans, a software incubator, I decided to focus my master’s project, a year-long project as part of my degree requirements for a Masters in City & Regional Planning from UNC-Chapel Hill, on researching best practices for using these tools and creating a user guide that would assess each tool for practical use by planners.
My master’s project critiques typical community engagement efforts, explores the current field of community engagement technology, and analyzes three online engagement technology case studies to analyze best practices for using digital tools developed for community engagement. From this research, I created the user guide, assessing the 23 tools that are still publicly available, organizing them into five categories (surveys, message boards, mapping, budget simulation, and website builders), and developing a chart for each with the findings. This user guide is available to anyone interested on a website I created.
Types of online engagement tools (Image credit: Author)
I hope that by creating this guide and making it available to planners it will assist communities in improving the ways that they engage with residents, making it easier to provide meaningful engagement opportunities and getting more citizens involved in the ways that their communities are shaped.
About the Author: Sarah Parkins is a master’s student in UNC’s Department of City and Regional Planning, concentrating in housing and community development. She has a bachelor’s degree in architecture, and her current academic interests include affordable housing and placemaking. When not working at the Carrboro Parks and Rec department, Sarah is baking and DIY-ing her way through Pinterest.
In 2009, cell phones were far from new. The iPhone turned two that year. Smartphones weren’t quite ubiquitous yet, but as a culture, we were thinking consciously about our phones. Although we relied on them and used them less than we do today, that didn’t stop “Telephone,” the iconic duet by Lady Gaga and Beyoncé, from becoming a chart-topping hit (and internet sensation in early 2010 thanks to its associated Quentin Tarantino-inspired music video).
It’s interesting, then, to consider what “Telephone” tells us about the function and cultural significance of cell phones at the time. With lyrics like “stop callin’, stop callin’” and “call all you want, but there’s no one home,” our culture was seemingly reflecting that phones were still, well, phones, for talking. Beyoncé’s annoyance with the distraction of her phone culminates with regret:
I shoulda left my phone at home ‘Cause this is a disaster
– Beyoncé, 2009
Fast forward seven years to 2016. Lizzo bursts onto the scene with the incredibly catchy “Phone.” After a night out, the lights come on at 2:15am, and she realizes she’s lost her phone and doesn’t know how she’ll get home.
Where the hell my phone? Where the hell my phone? Where the hell my, where the hell my phone, huh? How I’m ‘posed to get home?
– Lizzo, 2016
In less than a decade, our culture went from viewing phones as an annoyance while out, enjoying life (to the extreme that one might have even considered leaving the device at home while one was out for the evening — a situation that would be virtually incomprehensible to today’s youth), to an essential technology around which we structure our lives, including in how we spatially navigate the world around us.
In 2009, figuring out how to get from one place to another looked a lot different. Uber, which launched its ride-hailing service in San Francisco in 2010, didn’t yet exist. Digital maps with instant directions weren’t quite widespread. Transit apps telling us when the next bus or train will arrive were still an evolving technology. Getting around required a working knowledge of how the places we visited were spatially connected as well as a general understanding of transit frequency in those places or where to catch a cab.
But today, with an Uber or Lyft a tap away, traffic-optimized directions available at a voice command, and the ability to track a train or bus in real time, having a spatial understanding of our surroundings is less necessary. Lizzo, after she’s left the bar and has started walking home, even admits, “I don’t know where I’m going,” even though she’s trying to get to her own home, in her own city.
Technology has long been a defining factor in how cities function and how cities are organized spatially. The easiest example of this is to contrast the urban forms of cities built pre-automobile with those built post-automobile. But smartphones, and the effects they have on our cities and how we navigate them, are somewhat different. The effects they have on our cities occur not because of a need to accommodate a new transportation technology in physical space, but rather because of the individual relationship each of us has with the built environment around us. What does it mean for cities when residents never have to develop a sense of spatial awareness? What does it mean for cities when its residents conceptualize of their home as only a series of unconnected places rather than one geographic entity? What does that mean for a city’s culture and economy? And what does it mean for the future of the urban form of cities?
These are just a few of the questions raised by the cultural change demonstrated by these two songs separated by just seven years. How we seek to answer them, and other questions like them, in terms of both culture and policy, will have a significant impact on the future of our cities and our lives.
About the Authors: Nate Seeskinis a second-year Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, where he concentrates in transportation, land use, and environmental planning. Hailing from the midwest originally, Nate can often be found perusing around Carrboro on his bicycle. Travis Craytonis a dual-degree master’s candidate pursuing degrees in city & regional planning and public administration. He is professionally interested in transportation planning & policy and is personally passionate about pop culture.
I used to think virtual reality (VR) was a silly endeavor of the late 20th century. As a kid, I recall shooting at two-dimensional 32-bit flying aliens as the heavy headset kept sliding off my head. Even then, in the 1990s, I viewed VR as a sad excuse for a game experience. Gamers were better off avoiding the hassle of these clunky devices that did nothing but disappoint with their terrible graphics and uncomfortable gear. As much as I loved the idea of an immersive experience, the execution never impressed me.
When I noticed a resurgence of VR technology a few years ago, I warned people of my disappointment as a kid. “It’s probably going to be a dud,” I used to say. My preconceived notions of VR just couldn’t allow me to see the technology’s potential. So when the company I work for began investing in VR technology for public health, I was skeptical. It wasn’t until a colleague of mine explained the potential of VR that it began to click. VR could be used to deliver messages for health education, simulate workouts, reduce pain, and train public health professionals on food safety.
I didn’t become a true believer in the value of VR until I took part in the experience myself at one of Facebook’s events in New York City promoting Oculus Rift, a VR headset serving as Facebook’s effort to reboot VR. When I put on the Oculus, I felt like I had been transported to gorgeous places around the world. The experience took me on a river boat in Vietnam, an elephant sanctuary in India, Lebron James’ training facility, and outer space. The interactive nature was still a bit awkward, but the visuals were pretty impressive.
Credit: Facebook
Today many people are pursuing the potential of VR, including urban planners. Last year I learned about North Carolina State University’s VisionDome, an “immersive, multi-user, single projection Virtual Reality environment” that doesn’t use goggles or any other devices. The College of Design is using the VisionDome to translate landscape architecture, urban planning, and engineering designs into an experience that the client can envision.
Other urban planning VR projects are used for community engagement to immerse the public in designs that might affect the spaces they inhabit. Smart Favela, for example, is an award-winning app that visualizes redevelopment of favelas (slums) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and shows it to the community for feedback. Unlike traditional 3D renderings, the virtual creation of the favelas allows people to interact with the city to assess its transportation, infrastructures, and water and sanitation services. Though it is not true VR with goggles–users see the virtual world on their phone–the app is a prototype that is building a virtual world for an immersive experience eventually.
Over at the MIT Media Lab, researchers are developing “sensor networks that document ecological processes and allow people to experience the data at different spatial and temporal scales” through a responsive environment. What this means is that you’re able to enter a 600-acre virtual wetland and witness how curated environmental data like climate and soil conditions affect the wetland’s ecosystem. This has implications for the way we respond to changes in the environment and restore natural landscapes. MIT is also using virtual and augmented reality1 to allow designers, architects, and engineers to work in real time inside virtual reality through a speech-driven artificial intelligence tool. They’re able to create urban planning projects within simulated worlds and modify the designs while elements of the world are created in real time.
I should have noticed years ago that virtual reality isn’t what it used to be. It’s no longer an expanse of clunky renderings of mansions or poorly designed mystical creatures. It’s so much better. It’s exciting and it has the potential to change how we interact with and improve our environments.
1 Augmented reality allows people to interact with virtual elements in the real world, whereas virtual reality allows people to interact in a virtually created world.
About the Author:Karla Jimenez-Magdaleno is a dual master’s student at UNC’s Department of City and Regional Planning and School of Public Health. Her academic interests are in land use and health behavior. When she’s not exploring new food joints, she is obsessing over the NBA. Prior to UNC, Karla was a public health research analyst at RTI International and a radio producer at WNCU 90.7 FM Jazz.
North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park, and its surrounding region, have grown exponentially over the last half century. This change is driven by a variety of knowledge-based industries that transformed the region into one of the most productive and innovative in the country. Information technology (IT), telecommunications, biotechnology, medicine, and innovative entrepreneurship have all contributed to local and regional economic growth, aided by a steady flow of research and investment in education and training from local universities and community colleges. In the 21st century, the Research Triangle region is poised to become a leader in the cleantech economy: there are a growing number of large companies and small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) on the cutting edge of smart energy, smart water, and smart transportation, as well as support industries for this emerging sector, including information technology and data analytics.
Government officials and clean energy advocates understand the implications of using resources more efficiently and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but are less clear about how the shifting economy will impact regional economic development. One major challenge moving forward is understanding how regional institutions can prepare for the new cleantech economy. During the first half of 2015, Carolina Planning alumni Sara Lawrence of RTI International (MCRP ‘01), Christa Wagner Vinson of the Research Triangle Cleantech Cluster (MCRP ‘10), and I set out to answer that question: What will the future workforce for clean energy and technology look like, and how can the region proactively position itself to have the most competitive workforce and business climate for cleantech?
In a collaboration with RTI International, the Research Triangle Cleantech Cluster, the NCTA, and Duke University, we reached out to over 600 local companies in a mix of sectors, including power engineering, energy services, utilities, renewables, data analytics, software, and consulting to understand their workforce needs and what they envisioned as target areas for growth and job creation. What we found surprised us: the desired skills for workers in clean energy and technology companies are not traditionally associated with energy or utilities. Companies large and small were looking to diversify and add software and analytics capacities, increase their ability to work more quickly, and incorporate more ‘smart’ technology.
Using this data, we came to two important conclusions. First, this sector is poised to grow and add more than 3,000 local jobs in the next five years. Second, the jobs that will be created in this sector do not fit the traditional molds of education and work that existed in the past. Companies are looking for creativity, cross-cutting skills, passion for the field, and an ability to think proactively and solve problems. The future of the cleantech sector will require a combination of regional strategies to strengthen the workforce. These strategies include companies partnering with educational institutions, using apprenticeships, internships, and hands-on training at the K-12, community college, and university levels to train tomorrow’s workers. Regional collaboration will strengthen the role of SMEs and allow their voice to be heard at a national level, improving the local cluster1 and attracting more attention and investment from around the world.
The success of cleantech as a driver for regional economic growth depends on proactive thinking and the continued growth of a strong workforce. The Research Triangle is well positioned to become a national leader in the Clean Energy and Technology sector.
1Clusters are groups of interconnected firms, suppliers, related industries, and specialized institutions that arise in particular locations. Popularized by Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School, clusters are a method of regional economic analysis. An overview and data on clustering can be found here.
About the Author: Michael Hogan is an economic researcher at RTI International and a second year MCRP student specializing in economic development. Originally from North Carolina, he comes to UNC via Santiago, Chile, where he worked on innovative business development projects for the copper mining industry, investing in new copper products and improved mining and refining processes. His research and professional interests include local and regional economic development through industry transformation, diversification, and value chain upgrading.
