Open Cities 2010
Open Cities: New Media’s Role in Shaping Urban Policy is an annual two-day conference, produced by Next American City and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, that unites new media and urban policy’s top thinkers and practitioners. Through a series of panel discussions, presentations and networking opportunities, the conference discussed new media strategies for dealing with a variety of challenges, such as how to build an engaged urban citizenry, best utilize municipal data and develop cost-saving technologies or networks to improve cities.
Among other questions, participants asked:
- How do new media shape the public’s perception of cities?
- How is open data changing the way the public and government interact?
- How can ordinary citizens use technology to participate in the planning and development of their cities?
- Who is being left behind in terms of data literacy and access to information?
DAY ONE
Day one of the conference, which was held at AIA headquarters in Washington, DC, featured welcome remarks from Next American City President & CEO John Cary and Benjamin de la Pena of the Rockefeller Foundation. Beth Noveck, the United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer, told the assembled group in an opening keynote about the efforts of the U.S. government to effectively share and use open data. Innovation has to happen, she said, “where the enthusiasm of hackers meets the realities of governance.” In a bold, informative presentation, she pointed to successful implementations of “Open Gov” around the country, and called cities the “technological incubators for the future.” She closed by pointing out that “transparency” is only a good thing if the data shared are useful to the public, adding that transparency is worth nothing when done for its own sake.
Following Noveck’s speech, representatives from Code for America introduced their organization, which “connects the talents of cutting-edge web developers with people who deliver city services.” In 2011, the organization will send fellows to work with local government in Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Seattle and Boston. Nick Grossman of Open Plans spoke about the new project Civic Commons, which seeks to aggregate different new media tools so cities and governments can find the best tools for them and build connections. Finally, Bryan Sivak, the Chief Technology Officer for the District of Columbia, discussed the efforts of himself and others to change the culture of government when it comes to technology and open data. Since governments are “motivated by fear” to retain information, he said, “the open data movement is backfiring at the federal level because the culture hasn’t changed – people are afraid to show their failures because of risk.” Panel: Living Local in a digital age This panel focused on how new media tools can enhance community life and increase local civic engagement. Moderator Brandy Brooks pointed to the apparent disconnect between engagement and new media tools: When we are at our computers, we are essentially alone. But the three panelists demonstrated how certain tools can foster interaction both online and in the “real” world. Michael Wood-Lewis, the co-founder of Front Porch Forum, shared the story of how his tool helped neighbors connect to do tasks, buy and sell things and share concerns. More than half of Burlington residents and thousands of other citizens in Vermont subscribe to the FPF pilot. Joe Edelman of Citizen Logistics introduced Groundcrew.us, which uses existing social networking tools to organize volunteers and community initiatives – using “people as a platform” to get from data to action. Finally, Conor White-Sullivan told the crowd about Localocracy, an online town commons for civic engagement and online journalism. Together, the three panelists pointed to the apparent demand for civilized online discourse, necessitating the need for good moderation and the use of real names from participants.
Presentation: Intelligent Cities
The Washington, D.C.-based National Building Museum is in the midst of its Intelligent Cities initiative, a multi-year effort to gather as much data as it can about the built environment, ranging from the home to the neighborhood to the city to the nation. The museum will partner with Time magazine to “make the data that’s out there useful” in the form of infographics. The museum hopes to show that “the built environment matters,” and to that end will include information about walking, biking, energy consumption and health data. Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution furthered the conversation by discussing how data must be translated and used properly in order to inform positive change. “We have a major obsession with data,” he said, pointing out that the 1950s interstate highway system and slum clearance were based on data. Bearing those examples in mind, he advised the crowd to not “drink from the firehose.” “Doing needs to be the companion to data collection,” he said.
Panel: Data Empowered Citizenship
In this panel, moderated by Jess Zimbabwe of the Urban Land Institute Daniel Rose Center for Public Leadership in Land Use, participants discussed how citizenship isn’t just the possession of rights and responsibilities; it’s a state of mind. The conversation explored the ways in which data and design can work together to not only improve city life, but, as John Tolva, Director of Citizenship & Technology of IBM put it, “bring city dwellers into a closer relationship with data.” Tolva shared stories of efforts to create a “new information architecture.” Shawn Allen, a partner and designer at the design firm Stamen, pointed to maps and visualizations made by his firms and others that visualize urban life. Design, Allen said, should be “beautiful and useful,” and its place, he said is “at the nexus of beauty and utility. The only thing statistical maps and data do is get the conversation started.” The conversation continued with a story about technology cultivating civic engagement from Ben Berkowitz, the founder of SeeClickFix: In New Haven, bikers and pedestrians were fed up with stories of passersby being mugged near a certain bridge that had no lighting. Together, they lobbied for lights, successfully saw them installed, and threw a party to celebrate. SeeClickFix now feeds directly into the city’s work order system. Still, together the panelists discussed the difficulties of working with government on open data, pointing to a cultural fear in government of exposing its inner workings. “The irony is that when you give data to Google, a private company, it becomes public,” one panelist said, “but when you give it to government, it’s the opposite.”
Presentation: Microsoft
The day closed with a presentation by Keith Hurwitz, who told the crowd about Microsoft’s open government data initiative. In the early evening, attendees heard an evening keynote from James Anderson of the Cities of Service initiative with Bloomberg Philanthropies.
DAY TWO
The second day of Open Cities opened with a keynote speech by Marta Urquilla of the White House Office of Social Innovation, which acts as a convening and publicity-generating force for cabinet-level agencies looking to expand their work in service and volunteerism. Urquilla made a call for government, civilian and private sector groups to work together and explained how her office sorts out how to best use existing government resources in order to “building the echo chamber that needs to happen.” Her office, she said, needs to elevate the conversation with concrete examples to point to of the nexus of communities and policymaking.
Panel: City as Subject
In the morning panel, moderated by Next American City’s Julia Serazio, four editor/journalists discussed how new and old media are tracking urban issues. After collectively dismissing the notion that there is still a divide between “new” and “old” media, the group discussed how the best of new media enhances the traditional practices of reporting, and how newer online organizations continue to be informed by well-established journalistic best practices. Cassim Shepard, the Founding Director of the Urban Omnibus, said that his work helps bring the work of designers into the common conversation. Rick Tetzeli of Fast Company explained how print and online journalists worked together when he reported on the city of Detroit for Time magazine. And Alissa Walker of GOOD and other publications explained how her work as a freelance writer has changed in the Internet era. Overall the tone was optimistic. “What a wonderful problem we have,” said Rick Tetzeli of Fast Company. “We can choose the format based on the content.” People can tailor their news consumption to be what they want it to be. The processes in a city don’t conform to an event-based news cycle. Individuals are the gatekeepers now, and hyperlocal media aims to thinly cover the whole world.
Presentation: CEOs for Cities
In a mid-morning presentation, Carol Coletta of CEOs for Cities, updated the crowd on the work her organization is doing to improve the “talent dividend” in cities around the U.S. She also introduces the US initiative, which is a “challenge event” meant to find the solutions and ideas that will enhance opportunity, livability, connectivity, optimism and community nationwide. She highlighted Give a Minute, by Local Projects, which asks people to write or text brief suggestions on how to improve a certain city service. In its current incarnation the project is focused on Chicago’s public transit system, which is formally involved in fielding the ideas presented.
Panel: Technology for Social Equity
In the panel “technology for social equity,” four panelists discussed how new technologies are helping to close the digital divide and increase economic and social equity in cities. Deirdre Flynn of the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications explained what New York is doing to provide better tech services to underserved neighborhoods. Justin Massa of MoveSmart.org explained how the current systems of finding a new place to live can increase housing discrimination and self-selected segregation, and how his program, which helps people select where to live based on a host pf factors, might enhance neighborhood diversity and equality. Finally, writer Courtney E. Martin pointed to journalistic and technological examples of equity building, but also called on the group several provocative questions, including: How can we create more ways for people to enter where they’re at, using technologies available to them already? Are we making empty promises to people? Are we merely creating a new technological elite, and are we too “attracted to the sexy and the new at the expense of the underserved?
Panel: New Media and Mass Transportation
This panel, moderated by Katie Drennan of Transportation for America, a nonprofit organization focused on transportation reform, for a panel that featured representatives from both local and federal government as well as some of the leading thinkers on these issues. Michael Replogle, Founder & Global Policy Director of the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy, spoke about how social networking and media are helping to access and spread info to conduct research and to really mobilize campaigns. Replogle said that in transportation, technology will help better incorporate the full costs of transportation into what users pay, but we’ll also see a profusion of more types of services that are better tailored to what the customer needs. He pointed to a few demonstrative applications: In Atlanta and in many other places you see transit agencies issuing alerts using things like Twitter so that people can find out about delays in the transit. In London we’ve seen social media used to help people understand and come to support new kinds of charging systems that help better manage the road and public transport networks. In Delhi, India, traffic police are relying on crowd sourcing to identify and report violations of traffic laws. People will be looking for alternatives, he said, and public transit agencies will be looking for ways, of better tailoring services to their markets to increase their efficiency these tools will play an important role in doing that.
David Kuehn, Founding Program Manager of the Federal Highway Administration Exploratory Advanced Research Program, presented a talk about his agency’s work to incorporate the use of open platforms and social media in transportation research—specifically infrastructural health monitoring and energy and resource conservation. He pointed out that while it might be typical for the health community to rely on large volumes of data from the public, engineering is normally more of a closed field. But the EAR Program is developing strategies to use mass public input through open platforms, and this goal of participatory planning is informing a nascent series of projects. For example, the Program is working on innovations that might lead to smarter, safer traffic, which might eventually enable us to never crash, for example, or to always get where we need to go right when we need to be there. The input of individuals, transmitted though a smartphone or perhaps a sensor in a bicycle, might help monitor a bridge’s structural condition. A large number of people tracking their fuel use might lead to solutions that conserve energy. With efficient means of gathering information, the EAR Program can accelerate its internal research by building more knowledge and gaining access to new ideas. In sum, the agency is working on an assortment of highly innovative projects to advance infrastructure health and energy conservation, but also with the purpose of creating multi-sector engagement in transportation research and fostering a public with a vested interest in moving more efficiently, supporting sound infrastructure and reducing energy use.
Bill Schrier of the City of Seattle explained some of the innovative programs that Seattle has undertaken, doing more to inform their commuters about congestion, traffic, available parking spaces and more. Seattle is making huge infrastructure efforts, including the construction of an extremely long underwater tunnel, but is also using technology in new ways. Citylink.seattle.gov is a series of interconnected blogs where city officials talk about what’s going on, quick timely information. There are also neighborhood maps, which cities can use to see what’s going on, almost in real time. Seattle DOT typically tweets, which, combined with a very rich set of neighborhood blogs, helps spread real-time news about transportation and other issues. There is a traffic-tracking system, and a parking space tracking system that allows you to see where the space availability is in certain garages downtown.
Finally, Rolf Pendall, Director of the Metropolitan Housing & Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute, gave a presentation titled, “From Consensus to Coalitions: Media and Emerging Politics of Mass Transit Investment.” After describing how Houston and Denver rallied minorities and smart-growth advocates to expand their metro light rail systems with bonds, he said that both cities exemplify the complexity of mass transportation investment in an emergent age of coalition politics, but still face hurdles. He discussed the challenges of winning the initial public commitment to devoting funds to new rail transportation infrastructure, a campaign strategy and voter mobilization and governing itself, making a long-term commitment. He explained how Miami’s People’s Transportation Plan failed because “essentially it was a Christmas tree that they hung everything on.” Finally, he cautioned against cutting services that help low-income people move around at this risk of harming transit-dependent populations. He asked the audience to think about how data, media and audiences can converge in ways that not only unite transit advocates but also build broader coalitions in support of sustainable regions and cities so that it’s not a zero-sum game.
Panel: Social Media and Local Transit
In this panel, moderated by Next American City Urban Leader Fellow Christian Madera, panelists talked about how social networking and other new media tools are enhancing transportation. Michael Frumin of the MTA explained how the transit agency of New York City is using open technology to develop and enhance real-time bus tracking and customer information systems. He called for public agencies to adopt technology, but not to rush it: “Doing thins late makes it easier,” he said, as “the technology grows up” – and becomes cheaper – if you wait a few years to apply it. Wolf Rozicka showed how his EastBanc Technologies can help users map their transit ride across cities and regions, and Ryan Rzwpecki of SoBi, a bike share system that uses GPS, mobile communications and a secure lock, showed the beta version of his bicycle and conveyed his plans to launch a simple bikesharing system nationwide.
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