City Tech Blog

City Tech Fall Update 2021: Announcing City Tech's Future

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 13:41:39 GMT

Our Fall 2021 newsletter includes the announcement of two new organizations, a toolkit to support resident engagement, and important updates on City Tech's future.

City Tech Launches New Organization to Drive Public Value from Urban Infrastructure

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 13:00:09 GMT

Civic Infrastructure Collaborative Will Work with Asset Owners, Operators, Technology Providers, Public Officials, and Residents to Develop Practical, Place-Based Infrastructure Solutions

Chicago – City Tech Collaborative (City Tech) is channeling deep industry partnerships and a proven innovation methodology into a new nonprofit organization to drive public value from core urban infrastructure. The new Civic Infrastructure Collaborative will bring together physical, digital, and social resources to help cities thrive.

Cities and their residents are demanding more than ever of urban infrastructure. Far from being isolated and inanimate objects, urban buildings, roads, parks, bridges, transportation facilities, and utility infrastructure make up complex systems that must connect with each other and the people who depend on them. Infrastructure plays a key role in achieving public, social, economic, and environmental goals. But making the most of urban infrastructure requires novel approaches, business models, and partnerships – especially in light of evolving technologies and constituent expectations.

The Civic Infrastructure Collaborative brings together infrastructure and technology experts as well as widely recognized civic innovation leaders. City Tech’s Director of Strategic Partnerships Jamie Ponce will be the organization’s Executive Director, with City Tech’s Manager of Solution Development Tom McCoy as Director of Infrastructure Solutions. City Tech’s Executive Director Brenna Berman will serve as Board Chair, joined on the Board of Directors by Rick West, CEO of Millennium Parking Garages, LLC.

“Infrastructure investment is on the tip of everyone’s tongues right now, but what’s missing from too many conversations is a recognition that 21st century infrastructure must address more diverse needs and constituents than ever before,” says Jamie Ponce, Civic Infrastructure Collaborative’s Executive Director. “We need to think deliberately, creatively, and collaboratively about the role of urban infrastructure in modern cities and how technology can create far-reaching value.”

Millennium Garages in downtown Chicago ( www.MillenniumGarages.com ) will be the anchor facility for Civic Infrastructure Collaborative’s first projects. As a publicly owned, privately operated asset spanning 3.8 million square feet, the garages are the largest underground public parking system in the United States. With leadership and support from the City of Chicago and global infrastructure investment firms Northleaf Capital and AMP Capital, the facility connects residents, commuters, and tourists with Chicago’s central business district, cultural destinations, Lake Michigan’s waterfront, highway networks and public transit, and the Chicago Pedway through a network of four garages.

According to Millennium Garages’ CEO Rick West, “I am proud to work with Civic Infrastructure Collaborative on building solutions that deliver value to the City of Chicago, Millennium Garages’ investors, and the public. This new organization is helping our asset to realize a long-term strategy to stay relevant and productive for many years to come.”

The launch of Civic Infrastructure Collaborative builds on City Tech’s track record of urban solution development. Since its founding in 2015, City Tech has completed more than 30 projects and solution development collaborations to make cities happier, healthier, and more productive. City Tech has prevented flooding using smart green infrastructure , enabled dynamic management of city curbs , averted utility damage in underground utilities , and facilitated COVID-19 recovery in shared urban spaces . In 2020, City Tech launched the Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab to embed parking more fully into transportation systems, to facilitate smart infrastructure management, and to cultivate high-value services and space uses to ensure continued relevance and productivity of parking facilities.

Civic Infrastructure Collaborative is one of several new efforts by City Tech to address industry-specific challenges in the rapidly evolving smart cities arena. City Tech has also announced the launch of SWITCH (Sustainable Wellness through Innovation, Technology, & Collaborative Health), an organization focused on improving health and wellness in historically underserved communities, as well as the open sourcing of City Tech’s resident engagement program on public-facing technology and design.

To learn more about Civic Infrastructure Collaborative, please visit www.InfrastructureForward.org .

For more information about City Tech Collaborative, please visit www.CityTech.org .

Click here to download the press release [PDF].

About Civic Infrastructure Collaborative

Civic Infrastructure Collaborative drives public value from core urban infrastructure through cross-sector collaboration and technology-enabled innovation. As a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization, the Collaborative uses a proven methodology to identify, develop, deploy, and scale inclusive infrastructure solutions. We help infrastructure asset owners, operators, public officials, technology providers, and other stakeholders to deliver economic, social, and environmental returns for the communities they serve.

About City Tech Collaborative (City Tech)

City Tech is an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. City Tech’s work uses IoT sensing networks, advanced analytics, and urban design to create scalable, market ready solutions. Current initiatives address mobility, healthy cities, connected infrastructure, and emerging growth opportunities. City Tech was born and raised in Chicago, and every city is a potential partner.

City Tech Launches New Organization to Broaden Health Equity in Chicago

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 13:00:09 GMT

SWITCH Will Leverage Technology-Enabled Solutions to Improve Community Health and Wellness in Historically Underserved Communities

Chicago – City Tech Collaborative (City Tech) is launching a new organization to leverage technology-enabled solutions and measurably improve community health delivery and wellness outcomes in Chicago’s most underserved communities.

The new organization, SWITCH, which stands for Sustainable Wellness through Innovation, Technology, & Collaborative Health, is a collaboration platform that accelerates, innovates, and scales tech-enabled solutions for healthcare challenges. SWITCH will bring together skilled partners as well as engage residents and healthcare patients to ensure they have an active voice in solution creation. In addition, SWITCH will leverage a robust and proprietary racial equity and inclusion (REI) methodology to address inherent bias in existing solution development processes.

SWITCH builds on City Tech’s solutions and partnerships to create healthy cities such as expanding partnerships and social determinants of health for the Chicago Health Atlas , engaging residents to give feedback on new local air quality tools , and quantifying cities’ urban heat island reduction efforts . To prioritize accountability, equity, and inclusivity throughout solution development, City Tech developed REI tools that underpin each step of the process. General Counsel and Director of Legal Affairs & Growth Initiatives Angela E.L. Barnes will lead SWITCH, which she says is addressing the inherent inequities in the provision of services throughout Chicago.

“The pandemic has only exacerbated what we already know to be true: systematic disparities and biases create significant barriers to achieving health and wellness for all communities,” said Angela E.L. Barnes, founder of SWITCH. “These growing health disparities are even more evident in Chicago’s BIPOC communities on the South and West sides. With the development of SWITCH, I’m excited to deliver resident- and community-informed solutions that overcome these physical, digital, and socioeconomic barriers to health so that all communities can flourish.”

Verizon , the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) Innovation Center , and OSF HealthCare join SWITCH as partners. The UIC Innovation Center and OSF will leverage diverse and talented students from the Innovation Center to help grow SWITCH and its solutions. In September, SWITCH joined the 2021 Health Equity Innovation Accelerator Program powered by MATTER and YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago. The eight-week accelerator program is supporting SWITCH and other organizations through mentorship, exclusive resources and interactive curriculum from subject matter experts, and business concept validation to bring solutions to market.

SWITCH will also carry forward elements of City Tech’s solution development process and will leverage its proven methodology to identify urban issues, develop and implement solutions using technology and collaboration, and scale those solutions to drive broader impact. Using these tools, SWITCH will:

Enable healthcare systems to deconstruct barriers to equitable healthcare;
Empower residents with information, tools, technology, and models to successfully address community health inequities; and
Engage geographically targeted entrepreneurs and established corporate entities to develop community health wellness solutions and processes to be proven within the local community.

The organization’s first solution will focus on solving health inequities and building trust between healthcare providers and residents in historically underserved communities. SWITCH will leverage OSF’s existing CommunityConnect software and expand the program to non-OSF clinics and community-based organizations to serve Medicaid patients as well as integrate SWITCH’s racial equity and inclusion tool into the application’s care plan development. The software is currently in use at 14 OSF hospitals across Illinois; pandemic healthcare workers have used the software to keep individuals with a low risk of COVID-19 complications out of the hospital and identify appropriate interim teams and interventions.

“SWITCH is well-positioned to develop responsive solutions that address the diverse needs and priorities of community residents,” said Dr. John Vozenilek, Vice President, Chief Medical Officer for Innovation and Digital Health at OSF HealthCare. “We’re proud to be a partner in improving health and wellness for all communities.”

This effort highlights how removing technology barriers can result in more effective and equitable health outcomes. Community-based health workers and volunteers are key links between patients and care providers. Too often, however, these care team members do not readily have access to patients’ electronic health records, and therefore critical information can be missing from care planning, coordination, and management. Tools such as OSF CommunityConnect utilize social determinants of health as a critical component to create better patient care plans, track patient outcomes, and achieve measurable improvements in the health outcomes of communities.

SWITCH is one of several new efforts by City Tech to address industry-specific challenges in the rapidly evolving smart cities arena. City Tech has also announced the launch of Civic Infrastructure Collaborative , an independent nonprofit organization focused on driving public value from core urban infrastructure, and new tools to support and scale City Tech’s resident engagement program .

To learn more about City Tech’s future, please visit www.CityTech.org .

For more information about SWITCH, please email Angela E.L. Barnes at Angela.Barnes@CityTech.org .

Click here to download the press release [PDF].

About SWITCH

Sustainable Wellness through Innovation, Technology, & Collaborative Health (SWITCH) a collaboration platform that accelerates, innovates, and scales tech-enabled solutions. Our mission is to increase health equity and measurably improve community health delivery and wellness outcomes in Chicago’s most underserved communities through collaboratively developing solutions; engaging residents and patients to ensure they have an active voice in solution creation; and leveraging a robust racial equity and inclusion (REI) methodology to address inherent bias in existing solution development processes.

About City Tech Collaborative (City Tech)

City Tech Launches Two New Organizations to Foster Infrastructure Innovation and Community Health and Develops Open-Source Toolkit for Resident Engagement

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 13:00:07 GMT

City Tech to Close Its Doors as New Programs Continue Legacy of Collaborative Innovation

Chicago – City Tech Collaborative (City Tech) is launching two new, independent organizations focused on civic infrastructure innovation and community health and wellness, as well as an open-source toolkit to support and scale direct resident engagement in urban innovation. Following the successful launch of these efforts, City Tech will close its doors.

The newly launched organizations, Civic Infrastructure Collaborative and SWITCH, will address urban infrastructure and community health, respectively. Later this year, City Tech will also publish tools related to its resident engagement program, the Civic User Testing group (CUTgroup).

Since its founding in 2015, City Tech has completed over 30 projects and solution development collaborations to make cities happier, healthier, and more productive.  With an ecosystem of more than 100 corporate, municipal, civic, and philanthropic partners, City Tech has played a critical role in advancing practical, tech-enabled products and services.

“City Tech has a rich history of driving partnerships and developing collaborative solutions to cities’ greatest challenges,” said Brenna Berman, CEO of City Tech Collaborative. “We’re excited to launch efforts that dive even deeper and address industry-specific needs in the rapidly evolving smart cities arena.”

CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURE COLLABORATIVE

The new Civic Infrastructure Collaborative is an independent nonprofit organization that that will bring together physical, digital, and social resources to help cities thrive. Its mission is to drive public value from core urban infrastructure through cross-sector collaboration and technology-enabled innovation.

Civic Infrastructure Collaborative will work with asset owners, operators, technology providers, public officials, and residents to develop and implement place-based infrastructure solutions. The organization will harness important trends like digitization, connectivity, urban systems integration, and adaptive reuse to identify new roles that urban infrastructure assets can play and new sources of value for the communities they serve. Millennium Garages in downtown Chicago will be the anchor facility for the organization’s first projects. Learn more about Civic Infrastructure Collaborative here and at www.InfrastructureForward.org .

SUSTAINABLE WELLNESS through INNOVATION, TECHNOLOGY, & COLLABORATIVE HEALTH (SWITCH)

The second organization, SWITCH – which stands for Sustainable Wellness through Innovation, Technology, & Collaborative Health – will enable solution development for healthcare challenges. SWITCH will bring together skilled partners, engage residents and healthcare patients to ensure they have an active voice in solution creation, and leverage a robust and proprietary racial equity and inclusion methodology to address inherent bias in existing solution development processes. The organization’s first solution will focus on solving health inequities and building trust between healthcare providers and residents in historically underserved communities. SWITCH will leverage OSF HealthCare’s existing CommunityConnect software and expand the program to non-OSF clinics and community-based organizations to serve Medicaid patients; in addition, the team will integrate SWITCH’s racial equity and inclusion tool into the application’s care plan development. Learn more about SWITCH here .

OPEN-SOURCE RESIDENT ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMMING

Since its inception, City Tech has prioritized creating inclusive, equitable solutions and believes that successful public-facing technologies rely upon direct resident engagement and community-focused design. The Civic User Testing group (CUTgroup) has been an integral part of City Tech’s work since a merger between City Digital and the Smart Chicago Collaborative in 2017. Through CUTgroup, City Tech has offered guidance, convened residents, and conducted specialized user testing to support the development and roll-out of digital tools, websites, technology plans, and civic products. Today, CUTgroup includes nearly 1,600 Chicago residents and has supported the design and deployment of over 25 new products, technologies, and public-facing solutions.

In 2020, City Tech created a Civic User Testing Network of five resident engagement programs in the U.S. and Canada. Chicago, Miami, Cleveland, Detroit, and Toronto have joined the Network to share resources and develop best practices, building a more robust framework to make local technology more user-friendly, accessible, and relevant.

Over the next two months, City Tech will engage key stakeholders and develop a toolkit to support and scale direct resident engagement in urban innovation. Building on existing best practices and the CUTgroup approach, City Tech will make these tools available on open-source platforms by the end of 2021.

CITY TECH COLLABORATIVE: HISTORY AND IMPACT

City Tech was founded in 2015 (as City Digital) to facilitate collaboration among public officials, technology companies, startups, civic institutions, academia, and cross-sector stakeholders. In 2017, City Digital merged with Smart Chicago Collaborative – a nonprofit organization focused on increasing city residents' access to the internet and digital tools to help people connect with local government – to form City Tech Collaborative.

As City Tech evolved, its work and impact grew to encompass transportation, infrastructure, public health, and emerging opportunities to shape urban life. City Tech has offered a platform for local government, universities and research institutions, startups, and tech corporations to tackle our cities’ most complex challenges. Signature City Tech solutions range from tracking urban heat islands and assessing hotspot mitigation efforts , to improving safety and visitors’ experiences in shared urban spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic . Additional solutions include expanding health data on the Chicago Health Atlas , mitigating congestion from freight deliveries , and understanding the economic impact of events such as Chicago Blues Fest and Jazz Fest .

In 2019, City Tech elevated its solution development process by launching the Advanced Mobility Initiative , an effort to create a more seamless, connected, accessible, and far-reaching urban transportation systems for people and goods. The following year, City Tech established the Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab , a groundbreaking partnership to integrate parking more fully into urban transportation systems, develop tech-enabled solutions for smart infrastructure management, and cultivate value-added services and space uses.

All of these solutions illustrate technology’s tremendous potential to improve urban life, while recognizing that no single organization or sector has the resources, capabilities, or perspective to solve cities’ biggest challenges alone. City Tech has lived up to ambitious goals for public-private partnerships, cross-sector collaboration, and diversity through a combination of strategic and tactical technology integration, market validation, partnership development, and civic engagement. City Tech developed and implemented much-needed structure and tools – including multiparty legal agreements, go-to-market channels, policy and landscape analysis, and racial equity and inclusion assessments – to ensure that innovation can flourish in the real world as well as under pilot conditions.

In addition, City Tech has been a key convener in lesson-sharing to broaden the impact of smart cities solutions. Outreach efforts include an international, multi-day City Solutions conference with the United Nations’ URAIA platform, UN-Habitat, and the Global Fund for Cities Development. City Tech coordinated lesson-sharing among senior city officials during the 2017 North American Mayors’ Climate Summit , and City Tech co-chaired the City of Chicago’s 2018-19 New Transportation & Mobility Task Force. City Tech has moved critical topics and conversations forward in partnership with notable leaders including Reuters, CityAge, MOVE and Fira Barcelona. City Tech’s work is showcased in publications including Wired , American Inno , Crain’s Chicago Business , the Chicago Tribune , the Chicago Sun-Times , and Smart Cities Dive .

The organization’s unique mission, approach, and impact have attracted partnership, participation, and support of many of the most influential companies and organizations in the smart cities arena. Since its founding, City Tech’s board of directors has included corporate representatives from Microsoft, Accenture, Mastercard, ComEd, HERE Technologies, and HBK Engineering. These and many other corporate members’ strategic input, technical capabilities, and financial contributions have informed, enabled, and helped to scale City Tech’s work.

City Tech is grateful for grant investments and program support from the US federal government and some of the countries’ leading philanthropic institutions, including US Department of Energy, the US Economic Development Administration, the John G. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Otho S.A. Sprague Memorial Institute, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and Data.org, as well as partnerships with prominent research institutions such as Argonne National Laboratory. These and other funders have trusted City Tech to help cities and their residents make good use of technology to create jobs, accelerate economic development, improve quality of life, and ensure the broadest possible access to these benefits across geographically and demographically diverse communities.

City Tech has been recognized for its achievements including winning the 2020 Chicago Innovation Awards for its work on the Chicago Health Atlas , and City Tech team members have received local and national accolades as rising stars and leaders in their fields. City Tech alumni are serving as senior officials in state and national government, business executives, and research experts in academia.

Visit www.CityTech.org to learn more about City Tech’s work.

Click here to download the press release [PDF].

About City Tech Collaborative

City Tech Collaborative (City Tech) is an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. City Tech’s work uses IoT sensing networks, advanced analytics, and urban design to create scalable, market ready solutions. Current initiatives address mobility, healthy cities, connected infrastructure, and emerging growth opportunities. City Tech was born and raised in Chicago, and every city is a potential partner. Visit www.CityTech.org for more information.

About Civic Infrastructure Collaborative

About SWITCH

About CUTgroup

City Tech's Civic User Testing group (CUTgroup) is a 1,600+ member civic engagement program that invites Chicago residents to contribute to emerging technology while providing public, private, and social sector partners with feedback to improve product design and deployment. Learn more at www.CityTech.org/CUTgroup .

City Tech's Urban Heat Response Featured in Journal

Jamie.Ponce@citytech.org (City Tech Collaborative) — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 18:21:06 GMT

City Tech's work to understand the impact of green spaces to reduce urban heat islands' effects was featured in the latest issue of Sustainable Cities & Society.

Highlights

Green infrastructure can be evaluated with low-cost remote sensing imagery.
Quasi-experimental research designs can identify the cooling effects of green roofs.
Not all green roofs can fully counteract localized warming trends.

Abstract

In the coming decades, millions of urban residents will be exposed to increasingly deadly heat extremes. As an adaptive response to rising temperatures, many cities have begun to install vegetated ”green” roofs, which now vary widely in structure and size, and have generally been shown to have cooling capacity. Yet, little research has been done to differentiate which types of green roofs are most effective at reducing urban heat. We present a method to evaluate the cooling effects associated with green infrastructure that draws on publicly available satellite imagery and open-source software for analysis. Based on a quasi-experimental research design that integrates social and physical science approaches, this technique is able to identify the cooling effects of green infrastructure against background warming trends associated with urbanization and climate change. We demonstrate this method at three green roof sites across the City of Chicago, finding that the study sites with larger, intensive green roofs accompanied by diverse plant species have greater cooling benefits than the extensive, monoculture green roof. Our low-cost method can aid policymakers and planners in empirically evaluating the cooling capacity of green roofs in their own communities.

Download the Study

Download your copy free before November 26, 2021: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210670721006491?dgcid=coauthor

View the full study at Science Direct: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210670721006491

Learn More

Learn more about this project at City Tech's Urban Heat Response case study .

About City Tech Collaborative

City Tech, Navy Pier, and Partners Implement Tools to Improve Visitor Experience During COVID and Beyond

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 14:01:36 GMT

After a busy summer and an uncertain year, city residents and visitors are excited to return to destinations for fun while also bringing raised expectations and cautious optimism for what it means to be in the public realm. Complex facilities such as attractions, museums, and convention centers have long prioritized safety, but now capacity management, proactive communication, and guest navigation are more critical than ever to ensure that each experience is a great one.

In March 2021, City Tech announced a new partnership with NTT, SDI Presence, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), Intel, and Chicago’s Navy Pier to develop new capacity management and visitor experience solutions for shared urban spaces. Typically welcoming nearly 9 million annual guests, these solutions will improve Navy Pier’s long-term operations as an iconic space for recreation and commerce while also helping it navigate quickly shifting COVID-related capacity limits and public health and safety concerns.

By bringing together new capacity intelligence sensors with Navy Pier’s robust existing sensor network and data systems, the team increased the accuracy of real-time capacity and overall attendance counts at Navy Pier. Optical sensors and technology from Axis Communications and Anixter allowed NTT Smart Solutions to integrate, analyze, and model collected data to develop advanced trip planning tools and an occupancy dashboard that provides predicted and real-time capacity in different zones throughout the Pier. SDI Presence then integrated these solutions into Navy Pier’s existing network and physical infrastructure. SOM also identified creative and flexible opportunities to improve operations through design and wayfinding recommendations, such as projectors and digital screens with responsive messaging to improve pedestrian flow and on-site wayfinding. Throughout the project, Intel lent its expertise on edge compute and data privacy to inform the overall solution.

Together, these tools provided new and more nuanced insights into how guests move through Navy Pier’s multiple spaces and attractions. In addition, changes in overcrowding conditions can trigger responses in the physical space, such as communicating urgent messages through digital signage and projects, or staff encouraging social distancing, redirecting guests to other attractions at Navy Pier, and proposing flexible itineraries of alternate activities for guests using trip planning tools. Using these solutions, Navy Pier can more quickly respond to current and projected overcrowding in specific areas.

“We are always looking for new, innovative ways to proactively meet the needs of our guests and provide a memorable experience at Navy Pier,” said Mark Thompson, Vice President of Data, Analytics & Strategic Marketing at Navy Pier. “By more seamlessly managing the space, Navy Pier staff can continue to prioritize health and safety to allow visitors to focus more on making the most of their dining, fun, shopping, and cultural experiences at Navy Pier. We are excited to carry these learnings forward into the fall and winter.”

Understanding how people plan their trips and navigate to and throughout the Pier was crucial for the team to develop the best solutions for visitors. In June 2021, City Tech surveyed members of its Civic User Testing group (CUTgroup), a 1,600+ resident engagement program that invites individuals to contribute to emerging technology while providing public, private, and social sector partners with feedback to improve product design and deployment. Residents helped the solution team understand visitors’ attitudes towards returning to Navy Pier, what they consider a smooth and safe experience moving through and post-COVID, and how trip planning tools and physical design changes could support their experience. City Tech incorporated these survey results into the solution team’s final outputs, including recommendations for the Pier improve overall wayfinding as well as share accessible information about crowding and mitigation measures. [Learn more about the results of this resident engagement activity here: link.]

Although managing capacity brought on new meaning during the pandemic, the need has been present long before – and will continue to be long after – COVID-19. As guests from all over the Chicago area and beyond reenter the public realm, they can expect a better experience when visiting these spaces. Whether behind-the-scenes occupancy counting or interactive navigation tools, new solutions can help attractions such as Navy Pier put visitors’ enjoyment and safety first while also increasing their resiliency long-term.

To learn more about this collaboration, visit www.CityTech.org/Capacity-Management .

Click here to download the announcement [PDF].

About City Tech Collaborative

Smart Mobility today— a conversation with five cities

Wed, 08 Sep 2021 17:30:43 GMT

Author: Isabelle Ji, Mobitas Advisors
Co-author: Philipp Willigmann, Vice President Corporate Strategy at a sustainable, smart infrastructure multinational and Former Co-Founder Global Deloitte Future of Mobility Practice

This article was originally published on Mobitas Advisors' website .

In April 2015, Mayor de Blasio announced the release of One New York: The Plan for a Strong and Just City, a comprehensive plan for a sustainable and resilient New York City, with smart transport and mobility as a core pillar. In December 2015, the US DOT launched the Smart City Challenge, asking mid-sized cities across America to develop ideas for emerging transportation technologies that address their most pressing problems. In 2016, Ford officially established its Ford Smart Mobility LLC to expand its business model to be both an auto and a mobility company. So, since half a decade ago, there has been a lot of energy, hype, and investment poured into “Smart Mobility” from the public and private sectors, with an overarching vision of helping people and goods move more quickly, cheaply, and efficiently through the use of new digital technologies. After years of development, where does Smart Mobility stand today? For those of us involved in the industry from a consulting or investing perspective, we often learn about developments of technologies and city programs on a high level, but what is actually happening in the field? Are cities achieving their objectives? What have been their core challenges and key lessons learned for the operators themselves?

For this blog post, Philipp Willigmann and I collaborated and chatted with six experts leading Smart Mobility initiatives across five cities to learn about their vision, boots-on-the-ground experience, and path forward. Big thanks to the experts for the conversations—

CHICAGO | David Leopold, Director of City Solutions at City Tech Collaborative
COLUMBUS | Mandy Bishop, Deputy Director of Public Service and Smart Columbus Program Manager
MIAMI | Carlos Cruz-Casas, Assistant Director, Department of Transportation and Public Works of Miami-Dade County
MIAMI | Michelle Abbs, Managing Director, Mana Tech
RENO | Carlos Cardillo, Director of Nevada Center for Applied Research
SAN DIEGO | Alyssa Muto, Director of Mobility and Sustainability Department at City of San Diego

Q1: What is your vision of Smart Mobility?

Miami & Miami-Dade County

Miami-Dade County comprises 34 municipalities. Other than snow and slopes, the County has all the ecosystems and its unique transportation use cases.

“Our vision for Smart Mobility is the ability to maximize our resources in a way that is aligned with our community goals. For example, there’s a lot of competing needs for the public right of way, and it is our responsibility to manage the lanes, the curb, the lights. The end goal is not just transportation for transportation's sake, but rather to achieve sustainability, maximize space, create impact to business and communities, and help people move faster.”

Assistant Director of Transportation and Public Service Carlos Cruz-Casas says that the County has good quantitative data on throughput and travel times, and is focusing now on gathering more qualitative data from the community to better understand community needs and goals. The County received a grant from the Knight Foundation to have community members from four cities convey what types of transportation needs they have and how they prefer that to be solved.

Separately, we spoke with Michelle Abbs, the Managing Director of Mana Tech , the technology-focused arm of Mana Common, a real estate platform that owns 50+ buildings in Miami’s Flagler District with a core focus on urban revitalization, sustainability, and community building. Mana Tech strategically recruits startups to work on key priorities at the city and county levels. In the last few years, there has been a thematic focus on Smart Cities, and Mana Tech has worked to recruit corporations to participate as partners and weave in startups from the Plug and Play community.

“Recently, Mayor Suarez met with Elon Musk, which began a conversation around thinking more futuristically and dreaming even bigger about the vision of Smart Mobility.

We are starting to talk about the influx of thousands of people moving to Miami from other cities, and starting to talk about what that means in terms of moving people and goods. I’m pleased to see that we are dreaming bigger and exploring conversations around aerial mobility, point-to-point solutions, kiosk integrations, street management, and better utilization of our greatest asset—the water.”

Chicago (City Tech Collaborative)

For Chicago, we connected with David Leopold at City Tech Collaborative , a member-driven consortium and 501(c)(3) organization that creates cross-sector teams from industry, academia, and government to develop solutions to urban challenges including mobility, health, and infrastructure. In 2019, the Collaborative launched its Advanced Mobility Initiative (AMI), and for the last two years has been in progress with 16 projects spanning 70 partners that address mobility challenges.

“For AMI, our vision is a more seamless, connected, accessible, and far-reaching transportation system for all people and goods that move about the city. We’ve seen that there has not been an appetite for a single private or public sector actor to manage and control an integrated transportation system, resulting in gaps that can be detrimental to the user experience. Where a lot of our work has focused is on smoothing out the transitions between modes through solutions that enable better collaboration between partners and making their data more shareable, systems more interoperable, and business models more open.”

Columbus

In 2016, Columbus won the hotly contested Smart Cities competition among U.S. cities for a $50 million award from the U.S. DOT and the Paul Allen Family Foundation. As part of the Smart Columbus program, the City deployed a broad portfolio of emerging mobility technologies including connected vehicles, two autonomous shuttles, mobility hubs, bike share, and a number of applications tailored to specific needs such as non-emergency transport. We connected with Mandy Bishop, the Deputy Director of Public Service and Smart Columbus Program Manager.

“As for what Smart Mobility vision looks like, we have succeeded in deploying smart mobility when everyone has equitable transportation options.

Have we reached it? No.

It’s an ongoing process, and the way that we are measuring improvement is to look at what our transportation enables: how many jobs, education opportunities, and healthcare services do we put in reach.”

San Diego

San Diego has been a hot market for new mobility technology, with deployments of shared bikes and scooters, neighborhood shared electric vehicles, ADA accessibility, and circulators that supplement the transit system. They are even keeping an eye on the developing technologies associated with autonomous vehicles and aerial mobility with their regional partners. Looking forward, San Diego is moving forward with a competitive RFP to get a mixed fleet of shared mobility devices—scooters, e-bikes, cargo bikes, adaptive scooters—that can increase mobility options with the newest technology for operator partners and their users to get around the city, says City of San Diego Director of Mobility and Sustainability Department Alyssa Muto.

“For Smart Mobility—from a functional perspective, there need to be available and accessible transportation options that are real alternatives to single-occupancy vehicles for different lengths and trip types, with a key focus on underserved communities.

From a technology perspective, it’s about having data and performance indicators that can help us innovate in the right direction. For example, Smart Mobility data can help us understand if a certain corridor is a lead corridor for getting from one neighborhood to another via a scooter or bike and requires attention to improve on safety or the user experience.”

Reno (Nevada Center for Applied Research)

For Reno, we chatted with Carlos Cardillo, Director of Nevada Center for Applied Research (NCAR) , a University of Nevada, Reno research and development center sponsored by the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development that creates technologies and innovation through partnerships between industry, startups, and university students and professors. Three years ago, NCAR established Intelligent Mobility intending to develop projects using the triple helix model of innovation: a collaboration between government, industry, and university.

“A few years ago, we had an excellent meeting in Las Vegas with stakeholders regarding the grand vision of the Intelligent Mobility initiative. While keeping an eye on the grand vision, we decided we needed to start small and create a tangible project. The project we decided on was mass-transit automation, where we took a Proterra electric bus operated by the Washoe County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) and instrumented it with a suite of sensors, lidar, camera, GPS, and computing platform (all of the technology that goes into autonomous vehicles). The objective is to collect data and better understand how the fusion of technology behaves under various environmental conditions, for example, if sensors lose accuracy in 100-degree weather, can camera/lidar/radar take over as backup? In parallel with the electric bus instrumentation, we are also piloting connected traffic signals and exploring the legal/regulatory and socioeconomic impact of this program.”

Read the full article at Mobitas Advisors.

Brenna Berman featured on Look Both Ways Podcast

Wed, 25 Aug 2021 15:13:54 GMT

In the original plans for Disney World, EPCOT wasn’t a theme park at all. Join us as we explore Walt Disney’s unrealized dream of an experimental prototype community and the impact it might have had on urban design. We’re also joined by Brenna Berman, Founder and CEO of City Tech, to unpack what human-centered design means in today's cities, and why certain aspects of urban living will simply never go according to plan.

Listen to the podcast at the Look Both Ways website.

Listen on Spotify.

Listen on Apple Podcasts.

Listen on Google Podcasts.

City Tech Collaborative and Winners of the 2020 Chicago Innovation Awards Ring the Nasdaq Closing Bell

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 14:30:08 GMT

Celebrating Innovation in the Chicago Region

Chicago – City Tech Collaborative (City Tech) will join fellow winners of the Chicago Innovation Awards, the Chicago region’s foremost annual celebration of innovation, in New York City on Wednesday, August 18th to ring the Closing Bell of the Nasdaq Stock Market. The event will emphasize the surge of innovation that is occurring in the Chicago region and shine a spotlight on the organizations that make up its vibrant economy.

“Chicago Innovation Award winners cut across all industries and represent the best in new product and service development from large companies, startups and non-profits,” said Tom Kuczmarski, co-founder of the Chicago Innovation Awards. “Their winning innovations are solving a range of unmet needs in the marketplace, and we’re proud to celebrate their successes on a global stage by ringing the Nasdaq Bell.”

Joining City Tech will be other winners of the 2020 Chicago Innovation Awards, including: 2nd Kitchen, A Safe Haven Foundation, Abbott, ActiveCampaign, BMO Harris, Chicago Community Covid-19 Respond Fund, Chicago Hopes for Kids, CMC Materials, Enduvo, FLEX Lighting, Gensler, Hologram, Horizon Therapeutics, I Grow Chicago, InstaShield, NOCD, Novartis Gene Therapies, NowPow, Quest, Sabanto, The Small Exchange, and Threekit.

City Tech received the Wintrust Chicago Neighborhood Award for its work on the Chicago Health Atlas; the award recognizes organizations solving problems for Chicago’s neighborhoods and residents.

In 2021, the Chicago Health Atlas moved from its home at City Tech Collaborative to the University of Illinois Chicago's School of Public Health. The Chicago Health Atlas – which is managed through a partnership between UIC’s School of Public Health, Metopio, and the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) – is a free community health data resource that residents, community organizations, and public health stakeholders can use to easily search, analyze, and download neighborhood-level health data for Chicago’s 77 community areas. For nearly 10 years, the Chicago Health Atlas has created opportunities for learning and action on more than 160 public health indicators and datasets from more than 30 participating healthcare, community, and research partners, including CDPH, MAPSCorps, and the Sinai Urban Health Institute.

The Chicago Health Atlas is generously funded by the Otho S.A. Sprague Memorial Institute.

To learn more about the Chicago Innovation Award winners, read their stories and watch their videos .

Click here to download the press release [PDF].

Watch the bell ringing ceremony here.

About City Tech Collaborative (City Tech)
City Tech is an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. City Tech’s work uses IoT sensing networks, advanced analytics, and urban design to create scalable, market ready solutions. Current initiatives address advanced mobility, healthy cities, connected infrastructure, and emerging growth opportunities. City Tech was born and raised in Chicago, and every city is a potential partner. Visit www.CityTech.org and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn .

About Chicago Innovation
Chicago Innovation was established in 2002 as the Chicago Innovation Awards, an annual ceremony to celebrate the most innovative products and services in the Chicago region. The organization has evolved into a year-round series of events and activities designed to educate, connect and celebrate innovators in the Chicago region. The organization’s expansion includes the Chicago Student Invention Convention to empower Chicago’s youth to be innovators, the Chicago Innovation Women Mentoring Co-op to support female innovators, and Ageless Innovators to support older adult innovators and bridge generations in the workplace. For more info, visit www.chicagoinnovation.com . To follow Chicago Innovation on social media, find it on Twitter ( @Chi_Innovation ) or Facebook ( Chicago Innovation ).

Video Recap- Data-Driven Digital Deliveries: Better Curb Management for Urban Logistics

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 17:06:58 GMT

Missed our webinar with Vianova? Watch the recording of the event below.

About the event:

City Tech joined Vianova on July 7, 2021 to discuss better curb management methods.

Event Description:

Covid-19 has brought challenging transformations to commuting, shopping, education, leisure and socialisation. All of this has also created an increasing demand for deliveries in residential areas, but also across cities. The logistics of a digitised, remote or flexible workforce, who increasingly use their homes for a multitude of previously location specific tasks, while we continue to expand classic public transport services and rollout micro-mobility, is challenging basic assumptions of space utilisation in cities and particularly at the curb! For cities this is one of the next mobility challenges!

Topics we discussed with guests:

How should cities look to manage streets and specifically curb space in the digital age where demand for this space is rapidly increasing due to home based lifestyles which are supported by prompt access to a wide range of retail and personal service deliveries?
What are cities doing today regarding managing the curb and what are the immediate plans by innovators to deliver new management techniques?
Furthermore, can we apply lessons from other digitized digital services in managing urban curb space?

Watch City Tech's session, "Data-Driven Digital Deliveries: Better Curb Management for Urban Logistics" below.

Speakers:

Efrain Larrea | Senior Consultant , MCRIT Consulting | Barcelona, Spain

Eduardo Green | Service Designer , City of Amsterdam | Amsterdam, Netherlands

David Leopold | Director of City Solutions , City Tech Collaborative | Chicago, United States

Julien Weyl | Strategy Manager , Stuart | London, UK

Astrid Cabanes | Head of Development FR, BE, LATAM, Vianova | Paris, France

Streets of the post-pandemic future: Retrofitting city streets for 21st century needs

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 15:56:55 GMT

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, streets have become an integral part of our public health infrastructure—they’re spaces to walk, exercise, play, perform, dine and more safely convene. Street amenities once considered “nice-to-haves” have become “must-haves” as we seek to make our cities more safe, resilient and responsive.

Driven by this sense of urgency, cities have partially closed streets to create car-free spaces for pedestrians and cyclists. Restaurants and businesses have reimagined outdoor spaces to provide open-air, socially distanced customer experiences. And there’s been an increase in deliveries and curbside services, demanding new strategies at the street’s edge.

We’re also entering a new era of mobility. From hand-held technologies and remote sensing to on-demand and autonomous vehicles with optimal route selection, our streets will need to continue to adapt to meet this new future.

At the same time, we have certain expectations about what our streets should look like and how they should perform. In addition to connectivity within a broader transportation network to traffic management, site access and ensuring pedestrian and cyclist safety, we also want to generate economic development and vibrant public spaces. The beautification and landscaping of our streets also plays an essential role in reducing heat island effects and supporting local habitat.

Read the full article at American City & County.

City Tech Summer Update 2021: Smart Cities Grow Up

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 14:06:45 GMT

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Preparing for EV Growth: City Tech and Partners Expand EV Charging Data for Asset Managers

Tue, 29 Jun 2021 20:17:46 GMT

For the first time, many people are imagining themselves behind the wheel of an electric vehicle as prices drop . With rosy growth projections and commitments from major vehicle manufacturers , the shift to EVs is feeling more certain than ever. However, lack of EV infrastructure is the top reason many drivers are hesitant to make the change. They are looking to apartment buildings, retail shops, grocery stores, garages, and other public spaces to provide more places to fuel. How can facility owners and operators prepare for this new reality, allow for flexibility and changes as new information surfaces, and demystify the decisions that go into managing charging infrastructure?

One way to seize electrification opportunities while guarding against the risk of unnecessary or stranded investments is to pursue EV planning in the context of a comprehensive asset strategy. As physical and digital needs evolve, facilities will have to decide how to integrate sensors, analytics, compute and storage, networks, and physical infrastructure (including electricity and other utilities). These components comprise a cyberphysical foundation to capture information and to guide operational decisions.

Currently, most garage operators have limited charging equipment and little visibility into EV charging utilization across multiple charging platforms and providers. This lack of data prohibits data-driven pricing (static or dynamic) and active space management, which constrains the EV parking/charging market and limits asset owners’ ability to plan for future infrastructure needs. Further, the absence of accurate, real-time charging station availability means that pulling into a garage becomes a roll of the dice for drivers in need of a top off.

To address the opportunities and challenges facing garage operators, City Tech Collaborative (City Tech) collaborated with testbed host Millennium Garages , sensor manufacturer and Tier 1 automotive supplier Bosch USA , parking business intelligence provider Smarking , and EV charging equipment and service provider ChargePoint to build a connected, real-time occupancy monitoring system to improve EV charging space management and related operations.

As part of the Millennium Garages pilot, Bosch installed sensors on ten EV charging spots to determine space occupancy, duration, and whether / how long vehicles charged while parked. Smarking was able to then compile this data into a single dashboard and to help facilities operators to visualize, analyze, and understand real-time use of their chargers. By providing a consolidated view of charging activity across multiple chargers and equipment providers for the first time, this approach can take the guesswork out of operational decisions.

For Millennium Garages, the largest underground parking garage in the US spanning 3.8 million square feet beneath downtown Chicago, these insights can inform EV pricing, if/when to expand the number of EV parking spaces, and the return on investment for the current EV spaces. These insights are critical whether a facility has three EV spaces or 300.

Just three months since the project began, new EV charging analytics are already producing valuable insights that can guide future facility operations and investments. The Smarking dashboard revealed that there were customers charging overnight each night; the team hypothesized that the customers were using the stations to refill after a commute outside of the downtown area – a newly discovered usage pattern. With this new customer segment identified, there are opportunities to explore the market and rethink business models, customer acquisition strategies and pricing models. By identifying shared goals and aligning incentives across pilot partners, this project drove rapid integration and testing of industry-leading capabilities and revealed insights that may have been otherwise overlooked.

The approach and technology from this solution can be applied in several ways going forward. In addition to informing garage operations, this will help with sizing of charging infrastructure, facilitate capital planning, and identify additional opportunities (such as large-scale onsite energy storage) to enable expanded electrification of fleets and larger vehicles, while also incorporating related considerations and benefits (such as local electric grid stability, peak shaving, and demand response). Eventually, newly created occupancy data could be made visible to customers, parking search engines, and EV reservation systems.

Over the coming months, garage operators and other asset managers who are looking to expand EV capabilities can build a foundation for improved operational decisions in the future. Those who do will be able to respond nimbly to new information as EV usage grows. Those who don’t may be left with drivers passing them by.

About the Author: Tom McCoy manages the Solution Development process for City Tech. In this role, Tom oversees the development and management of pilot projects, including team formation, scoping, legal negotiation, execution, and evaluation/scaling. Tom has 10 years of experience leading teams to deliver innovative technology solutions in the Pharma, Retail and Consumer Technology industries. Most recently, Tom led a product development team at Nextdoor focused on helping locally owned businesses compete by strengthening their connections to their neighborhoods and local customers. Tom has a bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin.

About City Tech Collaborative (City Tech): City Tech is an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. City Tech’s work uses IoT sensing networks, advanced analytics, and urban design to create scalable, market ready solutions. Current initiatives address advanced mobility, healthy cities, connected infrastructure, and emerging growth opportunities. City Tech was born and raised in Chicago, and every city is a potential partner. Visit www.CityTech.org and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn .

Reaching New Heights: Drone Applications for Communications Infrastructure Monitoring and Maintenance

Mon, 28 Jun 2021 14:01:18 GMT

Drones enabled by artificial intelligence and machine learning are increasingly finding new applications across industries to improve or create new services. Many people are eagerly awaiting the day their latest online purchase or late-night pizza is delivered via drone. City Tech Collaborative (City Tech), Crown Castle, and our partners recently applied this technology to ensure that you’re able to place that order.

Crown Castle owns a comprehensive portfolio of shared communications infrastructure, providing people and communities with access to essential data, technology and wireless service. As technology advances, this infrastructure has grown to provide coverage across voice calls, cellular data, wireless broadband, television, and radio. Disruptions to this service extend beyond an inconvenience like waiting for your favorite show to buffer. There can be real human consequences for poor connectivity, such as dropped 9-1-1 calls or losing internet during a job interview.

Innovating with Drone Technology

City Tech and Crown Castle partnered with an ecosystem of experts to deploy a drone mission that demonstrated strategies for conducting remote infrastructure monitoring and maintenance. A drone equipped with precise geolocation can be equipped with edge-computing infrastructure to enable AI software so that users like Crown Castle can remotely inspect their facilities, understand where a problem is, and respond accordingly.

For this demonstration, the drone was deployed from a drone nest, enabled by Crown Castle space, power, and connectivity. Collocated with Vapor IO ’s Kinetic Edge platform, Vapor IO provided housing for the drone itself as well as the 5G low-latency compute and high-volume storage that are crucial for real-time data gathering and analysis.

From the site, the drone automatically followed a pre-programmed path to travel from the nest to the communications tower located over a half-mile away. In the future, technology such as Kinetic Edge could enable autonomous missions. A drone pilot was on standby for manual intervention as needed and an observer was present to keep the aircraft within constant visual-line-of-sight. This proved the potential for unmanned missions to be integrated within Crown Castle’s operations and procedures for future inspections, especially considering advancement in the FAA’s regulations for beyond-visual-line-of-sight missions.

During the mission, the drone orbited the communications tower to capture and process imagery to create a digital twin – a detailed three-dimensional visualization of an asset. Digital twins support the ability to virtually manipulate components and test certain scenarios without requiring anyone to climb the tower. The digital twin is a new resource for Crown Castle to gather the data on the asset to perform certain inspection and engineering tasks.

"Connected infrastructure can enable smart city technologies like automated drone-based data projects and digital twins,” said Crown Castle Business Development Manager Hannah Tarrien. "Connecting communities with technology will enable innovation and create new opportunities for cities. We were proud to partner with City Tech for this project and look forward to exploring more transformation technology applications.”

On a larger scale, this drone demonstration highlights the relationship cities are seeing between its physical assets, the services they provide or support, and evolving applications of data to strengthen our understanding and decision making. Cities are gradually, but at an increasingly faster pace, becoming a collection of connected infrastructure – a physical world informed by the digital. Drones are proving to be one of many links that can make our cities smarter and more efficient. City Tech is looking forward to exploring emerging use-cases with similar goals to better inspect and improve our infrastructure by using data. From roads and rails to bridges and skyscrapers, we’re taking solutions to new heights.

About the Author: Kate Calabra is the Partnership Development Manager at City Tech. Kate works to facilitate strategic partnerships and collaboration to build solutions for critical city challenges. Before joining City Tech, Kate managed corporate sponsorships and coordinated national, educational events as a Senior Associate at the American Planning Association. Previously, she was a Fellow at the Metropolitan Planning Council, a Chicago-based nonprofit that develops and promotes strategies for equitable, regional growth. Kate holds a bachelor’s in Public Policy with a concentration in Urban Studies as well as a bachelor’s in Community Psychology from DePaul University. Currently, Kate is a member of Women in Planning and Development. Kate also serves on the Associate Board of Housing Opportunities for Women as well as the Events Committee for Territory, a nonprofit focused on strengthening civic engagement and community involvement among Chicago’s youth.

How City Tech Prioritizes Data Privacy in Collaborative Solution Development

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 13:00:03 GMT

Do you want to share information with the developers to improve your experience?

The user hits accept and doesn’t think about it again – and probably never knows how those developers actually use their data to improve their products.

On the other side, companies have quite a bit to gain when you opt-in to sharing data from tech, apps, and websites. However, information-sharing between consumer and organization too often becomes a one-way street; it’s a light lift for the consumer to hit a checkbox and entrust companies with their personal data, but organizations have the unique opportunity to interact with stakeholders and explain the value returned to them through using their data – especially when there isn’t a clear opportunity to opt-in.

Data privacy , the area of data protection that concerns the proper handling of sensitive information, is a topic often viewed through the lens of risks to avoid when designing products that collect data. Given the recent history of technology companies and public organizations’ privacy missteps resulting in compromised stakeholder trust and unfavorable data privacy headlines, this is not surprising.

However, as the public gains a more nuanced understanding of the value of their data and the complex concepts involved in ‘data privacy,’ the role of privacy in technology solutions has been shifting from a constraint to work around into an opportunity to seize.

Increasingly, researchers and experts are urging product developers to build trust with stakeholders; in addition to improving relationships between developer and consumer, increased trust can kick off a virtuous cycle of faster solution development, better solutions and products, and lower transaction costs.

While the benefits of implementing and communicating privacy principles are clear and compelling, the lack of a comprehensive approach to applying privacy principles when designing technology is often holding teams and organizations back from realizing this value. Building this trust is particularly difficult when collecting data in public, urban settings where the stakeholder interactions are not intermediated by the technology, and the teams designing the solution often span organizations and sectors.

Data Privacy in Collaborative Solution Development

In many urban technology projects, there is not a direct interaction between the product or service and the customers. Unlike an app on your phone, there is not a control panel with detailed privacy options to communicate privacy concepts and allow for users to control which information they share. Building sustained trusting relationships requires clever design of a stakeholder experience and a communications plan that shares how data is being created and used to advance communities’ goals.

For example, in January 2021, City Tech interviewed members of our Civic User Testing Group (CUTGroup) to gain their input and understand interest on an air quality sensing platform . Strikingly, 95% of the residents we spoke with were very engaged in the space; however, many preferred to have more context available in the solution about the platform’s founders, purpose, and data privacy. As a result, the team developed specific solution requirements and privacy related communications to help community members understand privacy concepts and how they have been applied in this project.

Additionally, urban technology projects, often spanning various organizations, multiple sectors, and impacting numerous stakeholders are complex to execute. Even when a team has executed an impeccably designed privacy and stakeholder engagement plan in one city, the team will likely find that an implementation one city over will have to consider entirely different local privacy norms and regulations to design within.

While there are widely accepted privacy principles (I.e. FIPPs ), frameworks for applying them (i.e. Privacy by Design ) and privacy regulations to guide privacy decisions, they are general by design and often fall short of being prescriptive when designing a solution. In such a complex environment, how do you know if you are asking the right questions at the right time to ensure privacy principles are fully expressed in your solution?

Privacy in Action

City Tech has led dozens of cross-sector teams to successfully implement innovative urban technology solutions. Using our Solution Development Methodology, we ask critical privacy questions in each stage of urban technology projects. The four-stage process that guides our teams include 1) defining the problem statement, 2) aligning resources and objectives to a concrete work plan, 3) executing demonstrations in live test beds, and 4) providing the structure to enable partners to scale market tested solutions. Here are examples of the questions and activities that have led our project teams to privacy outcomes that build trust and propel solutions forward.

1. Opportunity Discovery:

As is the case in most projects, many of the most important questions to answer come at the very beginning, and privacy considerations are no exception. At the outset of the project, City Tech and our partners define privacy-specific goals and constraints and outline the ways that data will be used to achieve the overall objectives of the project. Establishing and maintaining the primacy of privacy goals within the overall project and organizationally is critical.

This is also the time to engage community stakeholders who stand to benefit from the solution being implemented to understand their expectations and desires for how data is collected and used for their communities. In practice, this can be achieved through research methods that are already core competencies for both public and private organizations.

Sample Questions at this Stage:

What data will be created within the scope of this pilot and how do we plan to use it?
What are the privacy goals and constraints for each organization participating in the project?
How will data audit, governance and management processes scale as data volume and uses scale?
Are the privacy concerns complex enough that a privacy expert should be consulted?
Do we understand the privacy related goals for the community and other civic stakeholders?

2. Solution Definition:

With the privacy goals and constraints defined, the next step is to select the technologies that will best meet the requirements for the project. The technology that is selected and/or developed will impact the privacy considerations within the project. While this may appear to be an obvious point, often privacy considerations are not re-visited once the technology approach is decided.

For example, let’s say a project team was tasked with selecting people counting technologies. Both video and lidar sensors are capable of counting people, however, each technology will collect different types of personal information. The technology that is ultimately selected to do the job will play an influential role in determining the data that can be collected, the supporting Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) that are required, and the content of the communications to stakeholders.

Sample Questions at this Stage:

How does the technology and supporting business model impact privacy goals?
What privacy related learnings do we want to gather while testing the solution? What privacy hypotheses should be tested?
What privacy KPIs do we need to define and track when the solution is tested?
How will we know if our privacy related communications were successful in building trust?
Are there Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) that should be considered as a part of the solution?
What agreements need to be in place to define data ownership, and how will data be managed, protected, and shared?

3. Solution Implementation:

Within City Tech projects, the opportunity to demonstrate technologies in a live testbed helps confirm the value of the solution and reveal additional opportunities or risks that may not have been obvious at the outset. While testing the solution, the project team will be able to compare the observed results to the developed privacy goals, KPIs, and hypotheses. Often, teams will re-engage community members to gather feedback to gain a better understanding of actual impact of the solution.

Sample Questions at this Stage:

Did we prove / disprove our privacy related hypotheses?
What is the attainment of privacy related goals?
Can we expect this these results to hold as we scale our solution?
To what extent are we realizing the benefits of our privacy implementation and communications plan?

4. Solution Scaling:

Finally, City Tech and our partners develop a plan for how the solution scales, putting in place the operational processes, governance, and audit structures necessary to ensure future uses for the data and the technology are following the same principles followed in the initial implementation. After a technology is implemented, organizations will aim to find more ways that it can be applied to use cases. At this point, how those future use cases are designed and deployed while staying true to the privacy principles of the project is the focus.

Sample Questions at this Stage:

What processes, stakeholder input, governance and audit structures do we need to put in place to scale this solution?
Are new stakeholders or privacy opportunities / pitfalls introduced as the solution scales?
By location
By volume of data
By use case

Conclusion

Developing technology-enabled solutions for cities isn’t easy, and with new technologies and use cases come new data privacy considerations. Instead of shying away and viewing these considerations as constraints, we must lean in and find new ways to benefit everyone. As the opportunities grow, the importance of asking the right privacy questions at the right time, particularly when working in a collaborative environment with diverse stakeholders, cannot be understated.

Project teams must focus on learning responsibly while trying new technology solutions and keep structures in place to evaluate new opportunities while remaining consistent to core privacy policy goals. Teams that successfully embed privacy principles at each stage of the process, think through the implications of their decisions all the way through scaling, and involve end users and partner organizations throughout will be rewarded with greater confidence from stakeholders – which over time translates into a virtuous cycle of improved services and expanded trust.

Making Space: City Tech Solution Demonstrates How to Better Allocate Curb Space for Multiple Mobility Modes

Wed, 16 Jun 2021 17:18:30 GMT

Clearing Up Curbside Chaos

Everyone wants a slice of the curb: while you circle for a parking space, a bicyclist swerves into traffic to avoid a delivery truck parked in the bike lane. Up ahead, a car is dropping off riders in the middle of a bus stop. Meanwhile, pedestrians weave between cars blocking the crosswalk. Add in a sprinkle of shared bikes and dockless scooters and you have a classic case of curbside congestion.

This space between streets and buildings has clearly never been more valuable. In considering how to resolve the competition between a growing number of actors, many conversations leave out a critical piece of the curb management puzzle: before we can “fix” the curb, we must first understand what’s actually happening there, why those activities matter, and who benefits from them.

City Tech Collaborative (City Tech), together with Bosch , HERE Technologies , Stantec , Teralytics , SpotHero , and CarrierDirect , launched the Curbside Management Solution to create a scalable model to enable coordinated, dynamic curbside operations. Combining new data on curb demand and economic value with emerging technology and pricing models, the team was able to understand just how much curb space is allocated to different users and how to best optimize space to clear up the chaos – thus transforming this inert infrastructure into dynamic and valuable nodes in our urban transportation systems.

Taking a Data-Driven Approach

As any transportation official knows, cities need a better approach and smarter tools for curb management. But many residents and policymakers may not recognize the opportunity right under our feet. Taking loading zones as an example, CarrierDirect found through focused interviews with large freight companies that under current conditions, the companies would rather pay citation tickets than spend extra time finding parking – and they have the budgets to act accordingly . Even saving 15 minutes a day in parking across all drivers would save millions of dollars in delivery fees and time for these freight companies. However, with the shift to the gig economy, individual vehicles owners are responsible for paying any citation fees; because of this, vehicle owners are less willing to take high risks and will spend more time looking for parking. All agreed that having access to high-demand curb spaces is worth the cost, and they would even pay up to $5 for a prime location to unload for just 15 to 30 minutes.

The primary goal of City Tech’s Curbside Management project was to demonstrate the ability to create a scalable model of curb use and economic value to inform improved curbside operations. Rather than designing a specific solution to a single stretch of curb space, the team took a holistic approach that encompasses a broad range of typical urban curb uses; this framework will allow any city to replicate the model’s analysis while accounting for local priorities and conditions. Using portions of Chicago’s central business district (the Loop) as a testbed, the team first identified a baseline of (pre-pandemic) curb usage to understand how people and companies were using the curb and its relative value. Using anonymized and aggregated data from Teralytics and SpotHero, HERE Technologies’ data science team then analyzed traffic and congestion activity to identify critical choke points, bottlenecks, and friction areas at specific geographic locations. This highlighted target areas where curb demand exceeded supply – or vice versa – and identified opportunities for more efficient curb utilization. Taking these findings, Stantec led the creation of a business model that identifies the curb’s economic value to different users at different times, creating a data-driven foundation for dynamic curb space management. As a leading global supplier of technology and services, Bosch provided guidance on the necessary hardware and software requirements to implement pilot learnings and support future curb management efforts.

Maximizing Access and Revenue for Everyone

The resulting model has laid a path for cities to make informed choices in implementing curb operation solutions; the model provides suggestions based on actual curbside demand, but it can model results for a variety of curbside access goals. This flexibility allows users to personalize the way a city chooses to allocate space based on their unique considerations.

For example, despite the broad shift to a variety of mobility modes, curbs in Chicago’s Loop remain dedicated to automobiles. In the area examined, car parking takes up 49% of all curb length (2,500 spaces), transit uses 24% (215 stops), and loading spaces occupy an additional 23% (800 zones). Taxis and Divvy bikes share under 1% of curb length with no dedicated areas for rideshare pick-up and drop-off.

With the interrelated goals of aligning curb demand with actual space use, increasing front door access, and understanding municipal revenue impacts, the Curbside Management team modeled a more efficient distribution of curb space to different types of users. In order to make space for everyone in the area examined, the ideal curb allocation includes a 75% reduction in loading zone spaces, the addition of 250 new off-street car parking spots, and the creation of 250+ taxi spaces, 500+ Divvy docks, and 300 rideshare spaces.

With this modeled curb layout, some travelers would shift from driving and parking to more economical modes of access – resulting in a slight reduction of overall driving demand. However, the higher parking pricing at certain times of the day needed to create availability for other modes at the curb results in a 50% increase in daily curbside revenues. While the model assumes a transactional charge for rideshare and freight access, traditional car parking remains the overwhelming source (over 75%) of curbside revenues.

Although this scenario is one potential suggestion of how curb access could be improved in Chicago’s Loop, different goals will result in an adjusted curb allocation. Looking beyond the Loop and beyond Chicago, the model provides a scalable tool to understand demand at the curb and meet communities’ unique considerations.

Next Steps

The Curbside Management team demonstrated how multiple, complex datasets can be integrated into a single, useful model that can generate specific recommendations for curb space allocation, pricing, and enforcement. A data-driven approach that considers both the demand for curb space and its relative value can bring more people to a space, maximize curb access for everyone, and potentially increase curbside revenues for cities. This capability can provide an important baseline for direct engagement with residents around community planning, provide an implementation path for broader mobility goals, and create new opportunities for products and services to better manage this congested space.

The team’s work has laid the foundation for multiple paths toward curbside management solutions in cities globally. The model can continue to improve with additional data, allowing it to reflect better knowledge of block-by-block on-street parking utilization and freight deliveries, improved understanding of rideshare double-parking conflicts, and localized observations of turnover and dwell times at the curb. The model also points to high-impact interventions that could be selectively implemented today, such as diversifying curb access in specific areas or moving other modes off-street. Finally, through strong partnerships with cities, the curbside management solution can be scaled and applied to other locations, taking into account each community’s unique goals and considerations.

As our transportation systems continue to become more dynamic and complex, we must ensure our infrastructure is keeping up with the latest trends. This data-informed, flexible model is a dynamic and responsive solution that any city can use to respond to changing demands over time – whether that is yearly, daily, or even hourly.

Behind the Scenes of Drive-thru Innovation

Mon, 31 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

How Millennium Garages is finding creative uses for parking facilities.

The past year and a half have presented the world with a breadth of challenges that impacted everyday life. Most industries saw economic impacts that were impossible to prepare for and devastating for many. For other businesses, COVID inspired creative, dynamic responses. The parking industry is no exception, and Millennium Parking Garages is emerging from the pandemic as a leader in innovation and adaptivity.

In 2019, Millennium Parking Garages partnered with City Tech to launch the Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab . The Lab focuses on collaborative innovation and strategic partnerships to integrate parking into urban transportation systems, to develop tech-enabled solutions for smart infrastructure management, and to cultivate value-added services and creative space uses.

The Lab is continuing to move forward with support from industry experts including SP+, Arrive, the National Parking Association, the International Parking & Mobility Institute, and the City of Chicago. As the mobility efforts continue to ramp up – including managing curbside demand , improving indoor mapping and wayfinding , and optimizing electric vehicle charging – much of the creative work is happening behind the scenes…quite literally.

While traditional theaters remained shuttered in compliance with social distancing requirements, Millennium Parking Garages recognized an opportunity to support Chicago’s arts and culture community by providing a new type of stage. Together, Millennium Parking Garages and the Lyric Opera of Chicago created a one-of-a-kind partnership to produce a drive-thru entertainment experience .

Twilight: Gods is an adaptation of the final chapter of Wagner’s Ring cycle, which was originally slated for the Lyric Opera’s 2020/2021 calendar. In response to COVID constraints, the Lyric Opera reimagined the production as a socially distanced, drive-through performance that ran from April 28th through May 2nd in the lower level of Millennium’s Lakeside Garage. The production included 6 stages through which attendees’ vehicles meandered (paced by a hearse!) while staying tuned-in to the live performances on a dedicated radio station. Tickets for the event sold out immediately , though, a wider audience will be able to share in the fun later this summer when a video version of the experience is released.

This partnership inspires further consideration into what kind of creative programming a parking garage can offer long-term. Will garages become consistent entertainment venues? Some garages integrated cloud-kitchens in the past year as food delivery demand as continued to rise. And, earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal shared a story of parking facilities serving as makeshift training sites for runners and other athletes.

As the world continues to shift around us, one thing is for certain: parking facilities are destined to be more than just a place to park your car. City Tech Collaborative is looking forward to expanding on these concepts and welcoming others to optimize Millennium Parking Garages, a unique asset in Chicago, that can set an example for proactive adaptation as the parking industry and cities’ needs continue to evolve.

About the Author: Kate Calabra is the Partnership Development Manager at City Tech. Kate works to facilitate strategic partnerships and collaboration to build solutions for critical city challenges. Before joining City Tech, Kate managed corporate sponsorships and coordinated national, educational events as a Senior Associate at the American Planning Association. Previously, she was a Fellow at the Metropolitan Planning Council, a Chicago-based nonprofit that develops and promotes strategies for equitable, regional growth. Kate holds a bachelor’s in Public Policy with a concentration in Urban Studies as well as a bachelor’s in Community Psychology from DePaul University. Currently, Kate is a member of Women in Planning and Development. Kate also serves on the Associate Board of Housing Opportunities for Women as well as the Events Committee for Territory, a nonprofit focused on strengthening civic engagement and community involvement among Chicago’s youth.

About City Tech Collaborative (City Tech): City Tech is an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. City Tech’s work uses IoT sensing networks, advanced analytics, and urban design to create scalable, market ready solutions. Current initiatives address advanced mobility, healthy cities, connected infrastructure, freight, and emerging growth opportunities. City Tech was born and raised in Chicago, and every city is a potential partner. Visit www.CityTech.org and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn .

About the Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab: The Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab is a groundbreaking partnership to shape the future of the parking industry and urban mobility. As a consortium of asset owners, parking and mobility operators, technology providers, policymakers, and other thought leaders, Lab participants work to integrate parking more fully into urban transportation systems, develop tech-enabled solutions for smart infrastructure management, and cultivate value-added services and space uses. The Lab is part of the Advanced Mobility Initiative at City Tech Collaborative , an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. Founding members and strategic partners of the Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab include Millennium Garages , SP+ , Arrive , the National Parking Association , the International Parking & Mobility Institute , and the City of Chicago . Learn more at www.CityTech.org/Parking-Innovation .

Video Recap- Transitioning Mobility Data into Partnership and Delivery Strategies for DOTs and Cities

Thu, 27 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Missed our presentation at Reuters Events' Smart Infrastructure & Energy Week? Watch the recording of the event below.

About the event:

City Tech joined Reuters Events' Smart Infrastructure & Energy Week on May 24-28, 2021.

As we move towards new mobility models and trying to reduce single car ownership the relationship between vehicle data and the cities and DOTs has never been more important. In this session we explore the evolving relationship between data and governments, and how they can shape our future mobility systems.

How connected vehicle data can shape a regional mobility strategy.
Examples of connected data at work
Bringing it all together – understanding the complexities, demands and requirements from cities, DOTs to optimize vehicle data.

Watch City Tech's session, "Transitioning Mobility Data into Partnership and Delivery Strategies for DOTs and Cities" below.

Executive Speakers:

Komal Doshi | Director Mobility Programs , Ann Arbor SPARK
Jason Yanni | Senior Director, Product Management & Innovation , Central Ohio Transit Authority
Jim Eaton | Solutions Engineer , Wejo
Dr. Alexander Hainen | Associate Professor, Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering , University of Alabama
Brenna Berman | Chief Executive Officer , City Tech Collaborative

Click here for all Reuters Events recordings.

Navy Pier Continues Phased Reopening on May 20, with Plans to Fully Reopen by Memorial Day Weekend

Tue, 18 May 2021 22:02:40 GMT

City Tech's Capacity Management Solution Continues to Support Reopenings

This press release was originally published on Navy Pier's website . It was also shared on Chicago Defender , Yahoo! Finance , and Stockhouse .

Navy Pier will move into the next phase of its reopening plans on Thursday, May 20, restoring public access to indoor spaces and continuing the gradual reopening of select businesses—with the goal of being fully open by Memorial Day Weekend. The Pier will also launch its annual slate of free summer arts and cultural programs over the holiday weekend with ample public health and safety measures in place.

As part of the second phase, the following will be open and accessible to the public: Fifth Third Bank Family Pavilion, Peoples Energy Welcome Pavilion, Polk Bros Park, North and South Docks, Pier Park (including all rides and attractions), East End Plaza, tour boats and cruises, the new Sable hotel, some retail shops and select restaurants and parking garages. More businesses will gradually come online over the coming week as the Pier looks to resume full operations by Memorial Day Weekend.

Starting Friday, May 28, hours of operation will transition to the following extended summer hours through Labor Day: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. from Sunday to Thursday and 10 a.m. to midnight on Friday and Saturday (hours may vary per establishment). Navy Pier parking garage rates will also change from the current flat rate of $29 to tiered hourly rates. Discounted parking is also available at nearby parking garages, including City Front Place, Grand Plaza, Ogden Plaza and Millennium Park. Discounts range from $13 to $15 based on the garage and with validation at Navy Pier Guest Services.

“As our community continues to make progress in recovery from the pandemic, we are thrilled to continue welcoming guests back to the lakefront safely,” said Navy Pier President and CEO Marilynn Gardner. “As tourism also begins to resume, we encourage local and regional travelers to consider a visit and overnight stay to take advantage of our vast open spaces, dining, retail, attractions, arts and culture and new hotel.”

Navy Pier’s popular summer programs are set to return to the lakefront—free and open to the public, thanks to ongoing philanthropic support of the Pier’s nonprofit mission. On Friday, May 28, the season kicks off with the popular outdoor Neighborhood Artisan Markets Presented by PNC Bank, featuring unique local artisans and small business owners from across Chicago. On Saturday, May 29, programming continues with the return of four classic weekly series: Wave Wall Moves, Wave Wall Wax, Live on the Lake! and Summer Fireworks. These series will serve as launch to more than a dozen individual and ongoing programs that will be offered throughout the summer.

All programs will be held with prioritized public health and safety measures. For events taking place on the Polk Bros Park Performance Lawns, the Pier will outline social distancing circles in the grass to allow guests to enjoy programs comfortably with those within their party, while maintaining at least six feet of distance from others. In addition, face masks will be required on site and Navy Pier’s social distancing ambassadors will be on hand to help ensure a safe, comfortable and enjoyable experience for all.

All events are subject to change. For more detailed information on each program, visit the Navy Pier website .

As Navy Pier continues to reopen, guests can expect the same level of heightened public health and safety measures as last summer. In addition, Navy Pier has gone above and beyond to ensure that its safety practices are of the highest standard. The organization recently earned the GBAC STAR Facility Accreditation , the cleaning industry’s gold standard accreditation for outbreak prevention, response and recovery, from the Global Biorisk Advisory Council, a division of ISSA—The Worldwide Cleaning Industry Association. The accreditation involved a comprehensive 20-element review process and thorough evaluation of the Pier’s facilities, cleaning procedures, staff training practices and more. Navy Pier has also partnered with NTT Corporation, City Tech Collaborative and a consortium of other leading technology and design partners to implement a Smart Solutions pilot program, which will allow the organization to carefully monitor guest volume and traffic across high-traffic zones on the Pier and alert staff members when a particular space or area is reaching its zone capacity. Click here for a full overview of the Pier’s COVID-19 safety measures. Given the fluidity and nature of the situation, the Pier is prepared to modify procedures as necessary.

Navy Pier was able to initiate its phased reopening thanks to the generous support of its dedicated board of directors and key individual, foundation, and corporate donors. As an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Navy Pier relies on philanthropic contributions to advance its mission as a world-class public place that celebrates and showcases the vitality of Chicago and provides for the enjoyment of locals and guests year-round. While this early philanthropic support funded the Pier’s reopening efforts, continued support from the donor community is critical to ensure Navy Pier remains a transformative cultural and community resource for residents, guests, local artists, fellow nonprofit organizations and Chicago businesses.

Navy Pier was temporarily closed to the public from September 8, 2020 to April 30, 2021 to limit the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the nonprofit organization and the small and local businesses it houses. A top-attended civic space and nonprofit institution in Chicago, Navy Pier is home to nearly 70 independent businesses, several pop-up neighborhood markets, hundreds of annual events and many local artists who regularly showcase their work at the Pier, enriching the lives of Chicago residents and visitors, alike. Collectively, the on-site restaurants, retailers, attractions and nonprofit partners typically employ more than 3,000 people annually and contribute to the Pier’s reputation as one of the largest first employers for diverse young individuals in the city.

In addition, the Pier typically hosts more than 250 free public arts and cultural programs annually to educate, inspire and connect communities across the city and globe. With the undertaking of its critical nonprofit mission, Navy Pier recognizes its responsibility to the greater Chicagoland community and is committed to restoring the vitality of the Pier, its partners and the local economy as the city works to recover from the pandemic and its harrowing impact.

For more information, visit the www.navypier.org .

Read this article at Navy Pier's website , on Chicago Defender , Yahoo! Finance , or Stockhouse .

Chicago Health Atlas Joins University of Illinois Chicago

Thu, 13 May 2021 13:54:41 GMT

City Tech’s Award-Winning Public Health Data Portal Enhanced with New Platform, Analytics Capabilities

On May 13, the Chicago Health Atlas ( www.ChicagoHealthAtlas.org ) will move from its current home at City Tech Collaborative to the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) School of Public Health, which will further extend the Chicago Health Atlas’ reach and impact.

The Chicago Health Atlas – which is managed through a partnership between UIC’s School of Public Health , Metopio , and the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) – is a free community health data resource that residents, community organizations, and public health stakeholders can use to easily search, analyze, and download neighborhood-level health data for Chicago’s 77 community areas. For nearly 10 years, the Chicago Health Atlas has created opportunities for learning and action on more than 160 public health indicators and datasets from more than 30 participating healthcare, community, and research partners, including CDPH, MAPSCorps, and the Sinai Urban Health Institute.

To date, Chicago Health Atlas datasets have been accessed by more than 150,000 new users since the website’s launch in 2013.

“Since its creation, the Chicago Health Atlas has empowered individuals and organizations to understand and take action on the many interrelated factors that influence our communities’ health and wellness as well as the health disparities affecting residents,” said Brenna Berman, CEO of City Tech Collaborative. “I am confident that the UIC School of Public Health is the best organization to carry this mission forward and put information directly in the hands of those who need it most.”

“UIC is proud to serve Chicago, its communities and its public health students, researchers, advocates and policymakers by taking on the Atlas and expanding its capabilities and reach,” said Dr. Wayne Giles, dean of the UIC School of Public Health. “Policies that impact public health are only as good as data that informs them, and the Chicago Health Atlas is among our greatest assets in Chicago for understanding the needs of our communities.”

The transition of the Chicago Health Atlas to UIC coincides with its move to a new platform and launch of advanced capabilities that will provide more tools for users. The School of Public Health’s recently launched Population Health Analytics, Metrics, and Evaluation, or PHAME, Center, spearheaded the updates and will oversee the Atlas going forward alongside the CDPH Office of Epidemiology. Updates will include increased community engagement opportunities as well as advanced analytics capabilities and enhanced data visualizations. The new interface, which is powered by Metopio, will make it even easier for anyone to use data to understand health disparities and drive real change regardless of their data science experience.

The PHAME Center was established in 2020 with an award from the Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute to support the Chicago Health Atlas, CDPH’s Healthy Chicago initiatives, and similar efforts to make health and wellness data useful to all. The PHAME Center is co-led by Sage Kim, UIC associate professor of health policy and administration, and Sanjib Basu, the UIC Paul Levy and Virginia F. Tomasek Professor of Biostatistics. Prior to joining the PHAME Center, the Chicago Health Atlas was initially developed in 2012 by the Smart Chicago Collaborative and the Chicago Department of Public Health with funding from the Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute; following the 2017 merger of Smart Chicago Collaborative and City Digital to create City Tech Collaborative, the Atlas has continued to reach new audiences and expand its abilities.

James Alexander, executive director of The Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute, notes the board’s commitment to public health programs. “Since The Institute’s initial grant to the Chicago Department of Public Health in early 2000, the Chicago Health Atlas has continuously evolved. It has been enriched by each successive manager. In 2012, the Smart Chicago Collaborative provided important new dimensions. Since 2017 their work was enhanced by the City Tech Collaborative team. With the creation of the PHAME Center in 2020 and their stewardship of the Atlas, The Institute is optimistic that the multi-disciplinary skills of campus faculty, students and researchers will make the Atlas an ever-more useful resource.”

The Chicago Health Atlas has grown to include critical health and wellness information such as available affordable housing units, grocery store density, Department of Family and Support Services resources, and air quality data . A key source in understanding complex health issues and how they affect different communities, the Atlas provides information on the opioid epidemic , and, more recently, the latest COVID-19 data including testing locations, data on underlying conditions tied to the virus, and a map of essential businesses by zip code. The Chicago Innovation Awards recognized these efforts in 2020 by naming City Tech Collaborative one of 23 winners out of 272 nominees.

“The Chicago Health Atlas continues to be a key resource to aggregate, understand, and share critical health information for Chicago residents and communities,” said CDPH Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady. “As we have seen so clearly during the COVID-19 pandemic, open data resources are vital not only for public health officials, but also for the grassroots organizations and individuals responding to immediate and long-term health issues in their communities. With the PHAME Center, we are excited to channel the public’s enthusiasm for data toward broader efforts to improve the city’s health.”

To learn more about the Chicago Health Atlas visit www.ChicagoHealthAtlas.org .

Click here to download the press release [PDF].

About City Tech Collaborative
City Tech Collaborative (City Tech) is an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. City Tech’s work uses IoT sensing networks, advanced analytics, and urban design to create scalable, market ready solutions. Current initiatives address mobility, healthy cities, connected infrastructure, and emerging growth opportunities. City Tech was born and raised in Chicago, and every city is a potential partner. Visit www.CityTech.org for more information and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn .

About the Chicago Health Atlas
The Chicago Health Atlas is a community health data resource that residents, community organizations, and public health stakeholders can easily search, analyze, and download neighborhood-level health data for the City of Chicago. A City Tech solution, the Chicago Health Atlas was initially developed in 2012 by the Smart Chicago Collaborative and the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) with funding from the Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute. Explore the Chicago Health Atlas by visiting www.ChicagoHealthAtlas.org .

About the University of Illinois Chicago
The University of Illinois Chicago is Chicago's largest university and only public research institution. Its 16 academic colleges serve more than 33,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional students. UIC is recognized as one of the most ethnically rich and culturally diverse campuses in the nation, a leader in providing access for underrepresented students. With seven health sciences colleges, UIC is the state’s principal educator of health professionals and a major health care provider to underserved communities.

About the Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute
The Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute is a Chicago-based independent grantmaker founded in 1911. Guided by an all-volunteer Board, The Institute seeks innovative ways to respond to public health issues while implementing the founder’s stated mission: the investigation of the cause of disease and the prevention and relief of human suffering in the City of Chicago. Learn more at www.spragueinstitute.org .

About the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH)
CDPH is the health authority for the City of Chicago, representing nearly 2.7 million residents. The department is nationally recognized for its equity-focused community health improvement plans, including the recently launched Healthy Chicago 2025 plan to close the city’s racial life expectancy gap. Through its Office of Epidemiology, CDPH leads innovative efforts to collect, analyze, and disseminate population health data. In addition to its co-management of the Chicago Health Atlas, CDPH leads the annual Healthy Chicago Survey and Chicago’s COVID Dashboard .

Partner Perspectives: The future of “smart” cities starts with people, not technology

Wed, 12 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

City Tech's Board Member Jeremy M. Goldberg Shares His Perspective

This article was originally published on Microsoft's blog .

I love cities. I’ve been fortunate to live, learn, and work in some of the best in the world. Cities are hubs of cutting-edge technology and human productivity. But they also have rich histories, beautiful architecture, and complex cultures. Cities are places where the old constantly meets the new. For me, the creative energy that comes from cities is inspiring and exciting.

Still, over the past decade, we have seen some ambitious “smart cities” projects fail. Sometimes technology is treated like a science project, rather than being tied to a specific problem. And sometimes cities aren’t set up to support these projects because they do not have the right people or processes in place. In my experience, data must be at the center of the conversation. Too often it is a secondary consideration.

Read the full article at Microsoft's blog and download the insights from the conversation between Bogota and London.

Video Recap- Integrating Public Transport into Mobility as a Service: Regulation, Data, and Scalability

Sat, 01 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Missed our presentation at Reuters Events' Ridership Week? Watch the recording of the event below.

About the event:

City Tech joined Reuters Events' Ridership Week on March 29 - April 2, 2021.

Evolving ridership behaviours demand greater interoperability between public and private mobility providers. In this briefing we explore the governance framework and long-term financial planning for the integration of ticketing and payment systems, alongside implications for the collection, management and use of data.

Integrating mobility services and platforms across public transit to respond to evolving demands to create flexible, open access, and shared service solutions.
How to scale regional open access platforms into state and nation-wide programs.
The role of connected data in forecasting travel demands and equitable service requirements.
Identifying mobility solutions that compliment public transport provision and provide flexibility to new working, living and travel behaviours.

Watch City Tech's session, " Integrating Public Transport into Mobility as a Service: Regulation, Data, and Scalability " below.

Moderator:
Jamie Ponce | Director of Strategic Partnerships, City Tech Collaborative

Executive Speakers:
Alexander Pischon | Chief Executive Officer, Karlsruhe Public Transport (KVV)
Michael Rüffer | Chief Technology Officer, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt (VGF)
Molly Poppe | Chief Innovation Officer, Chicago Transit Authority

Click here for all Reuters Events recordings.

Navy Pier Begins Phased Reopening on April 30.

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT

This article was originally published at Chicago Defender .

Navy Pier, Chicago’s iconic lakefront destination and nonprofit institution, will begin its phased reopening on Friday, April 30, restoring public access to select outdoor spaces and attractions and cautiously resuming partial operations with public health and safety at the forefront.

As part of this initial phase, the following will be open and accessible to the public: Navy Pier parking garages, Polk Bros Park , Peoples Energy Welcome Pavilion , North and South Docks, Pier Park (including select rides and attractions), East End Plaza, tour boats and cruises, the new Sable hotel, and select restaurants at limited capacity (per government guidelines). Hours of operation will be from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. from Sunday to Thursday and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday during this phase, although hours may vary per establishment. Navy Pier has been temporarily closed to the public since Labor Day to limit the financial impact and implications of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic on the nonprofit organization and the nearly 70 small and local businesses it houses.

“Following Navy Pier’s longest closure in recent history, we are anxious to reopen our spaces and safely welcome guests back to the Pier,” said Navy Pier President and CEO Marilynn Gardner. “We recognize the critical role Navy Pier, as a key economic driver and cultural anchor for the city and state, plays in leading our community out of the devastation from the pandemic. With mass vaccination rollouts now underway, we are eager to help guests safely reconnect to Chicago and its most treasured experiences, and remain committed to helping revive the city and region.”

Navy Pier is able to initiate this phased reopening thanks to the generous support of its dedicated board of directors and key individual, private foundation and corporate donors. As an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Navy Pier relies on philanthropic contributions to advance its mission as a world-class public place that celebrates and showcases the vitality of Chicago and provides for the enjoyment of local residents and guests year-round. While this early philanthropic support funded the Pier’s reopening efforts, continued support from the donor community will be critical to ensure Navy Pier remains a transformative cultural and community resource for residents and guests, local artists, fellow nonprofit organizations and Chicago businesses.

To celebrate its reopening, the Pier will host a special 10-minute fireworks show every Saturday in May at 9 p.m. until Memorial Day Weekend. The first fireworks presentation on Saturday, May 1 will be dedicated to healthcare professionals and frontline workers in honor of their hard work, sacrifice, and dedication to helping our community navigate the ongoing pandemic. Guests are welcome to enjoy the display from the Pier’s open areas.

Restaurants and attractions that will be open as part of the initial reopening phase include Billy Goat Tavern, Giordano’s, Harry Caray’s Tavern, Margaritaville, Odyssey, Offshore Rooftop and Bar, Shoreline Sightseeing, Seadog and more. In addition, Sable at Navy Pier—the new 223-room, Hilton-operated hotel on the Pier—and its Latin-inspired restaurant, Lirica, opened in March and will continue to accept reservations. Pier Park will also resume operations on select rides and attractions, including the iconic Centennial Wheel , Pepsi Wave Swinger and Carousel. The opening of new rides will follow in the coming weeks. Both of Navy Pier’s parking garages will also resume operations at a $29 flat rate until Memorial Day Weekend. The rest of the Pier, including interior spaces, food experience, retail shops and other select attractions will reopen sometime in May, along with Navy Pier’s free community programs. The full reopening date is to be determined based on state and city guidance.

Upon reopening, guests can expect the same level of heightened public health and safety measures as last summer. In addition, Navy Pier has gone above and beyond to ensure that its safety practices are of the highest standard. The organization recently earned the GBAC STAR Facility Accreditation, the cleaning industry’s gold standard accreditation for outbreak prevention, response and recovery, from the Global Biorisk Advisory Council, a division of ISSA—The Worldwide Cleaning Industry Association. The accreditation involved a comprehensive 20-element review process and thorough evaluation of the Pier’s facilities, cleaning procedures, staff training practices and more.

Navy Pier has also partnered with NTT Corporation, City Tech Collaborative and a consortium of other leading technology and design partners to implement a Smart Solutions pilot program, which will leverage a data-driven approach to enhance Navy Pier’s guest experience and existing safety measures. This innovative capacity intelligence program will allow the organization to carefully monitor guest volume and traffic across high-traffic zones on the Pier and alert staff members when a particular space or area is reaching its zone capacity. At that point, Navy Pier employees would make necessary adjustments to ensure social distancing practices and other safety protocols are maintained.

In addition to these new safety measures, returning practices and protocols include, but are not limited to:

Standard CDC and Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) guidelines: Guests must wear a face mask at all times while visiting Navy Pier and try to maintain six feet of distance between individuals who are not from the same party. Guests should also wash hands regularly and/or utilize the 90+ hand sanitizer dispensers available throughout the Pier. Those who are sick, have COVID-19 symptoms or diagnosis, or have been exposed to someone with symptoms or diagnosis should stay home or seek medical attention.
Physical distancing practices: Navy Pier has designated Social Distancing Ambassadors, who will be circulating the Pier to cordially remind guests to practice physical distancing. Signs marking appropriate amount of space are placed throughout the Pier for guidance. The volume of people at Navy Pier’s public programs, events and within indoor and outdoor spaces at a given time will be limited to a number that is proportional and conducive to physical distancing for that space. Gathering of large groups of more than 10 people are strictly prohibited. Guests in violation of these practices will be subject to removal from the premises.
Employee training and expectations: Face masks or coverings will be required for employees while in public spaces. Temperature screenings will be conducted prior to each shift. Cleaning and disinfecting supplies will be provided to staff. Employees have also been equipped with guidance on individual health and safety measures and will receive ongoing training as new information becomes available from the CDC and CDPH.
Multiple layers of stringent cleaning and disinfecting: Navy Pier is utilizing electrostatic anti-microbial spray treatments on all rides and sanitizing high-touch surfaces, common areas and Pier-wide attractions after each use with a disinfectant that is of the same quality found in healthcare facilities. In addition, more than 90 hand sanitizer dispensers have been installed and made available for guest use.
Pier Park measures: All Pier Park rides and attractions will operate at a limited capacity and be cleaned after each use. Digital ticketing kiosk screens will also be sanitized frequently. Centennial Wheel riders will only be placed in gondolas with those within their party; gondolas and surfaces will be cleaned after each use.
Parking garage measures: Parking personnel have been trained on physical distancing practices, proper handwashing, glove usage, disinfection protocol and other best practices for infection control. Navy Pier offers the following touchless, self-parking payment options: o Apple Pay and Tap features at pay stations and in-lane equipment. Online parking reservations through the Navy Pier website, ParkWhiz and SpotHero

The cleaning and safety measures outlined above will apply indefinitely until further notice. Given the fluidity and nature of the situation, Navy Pier is prepared to modify procedures as necessary. Click here for a full overview of the Pier’s COVID-19 safety measures.

A top civic space and nonprofit institution in Chicago, Navy Pier is home to nearly 70 independent businesses, several pop-up neighborhood markets, hundreds of annual events and many local artists who regularly showcase their work at the Pier, enriching the lives of Chicago residents and visitors, alike. Collectively, the on-site restaurants, retailers, attractions and nonprofit partners typically employ more than 3,000 people annually and contribute to the Pier’s reputation as one of the largest first employers for diverse young individuals in the city. In addition, the Pier typically hosts more than 250 free public arts and cultural programs annually to educate, inspire and connect communities across the city and globe. With the undertaking of its critical nonprofit mission, Navy Pier recognizes its responsibility to the greater Chicagoland community and is committed to restoring the vitality of the Pier, its partners and the local economy as the city works to recover from the pandemic and its harrowing impact.

For more information, visit the www.navypier.org .

Read the article at Chicago Defender .

Navy Pier To Reopen To Public On April 30

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Closed since Labor Day, one of Chicago's most-visited tourist attractions is ready for the first phase of reopening.

This article was originally published at Patch .

CHICAGO — Navy Pier will reopen to the public April 30 after remaining shuttered to the public for nearly eight months. Special 10-minute fireworks shows are planned for 9:30 p.m. on Saturday in May to celebrate the reopening.

The reopening includes all outdoor areas, cruises and some rides and attractions, including the Ferris wheel, rotating swing and carousel. The pier's interior spaces, food court, retail shops and other locations will resume sometime in May, along with free community programs, pier representatives announces.

"Following Navy Pier's longest closure in recent history, we are anxious to reopen our spaces and safely welcome guests back to the Pier," said Marilynn Gardner, president and chief executive officer of Navy Pier Inc., the nonprofit entity that operates the public tourism attraction.

Amid the emergence of the coronavirus in Illinois, the pier closed for 12 weeks last spring. Pier representatives said attendance was down by more than 80 percent when it reopened.

In mid-August, the pier closed for the winter with hopes of a spring reopening. Last month, AMC officials confirmed the shuttered IMAX theater had permanently closed.

"As a key economic driver and cultural anchor for the city and state, we recognize the critical role Navy Pier plays in leading our community out of the devastation from the pandemic," Gardner said in a statement. "With mass vaccination rollouts now underway, we are eager to help guests safely reconnect to Chicago and its most treasured experiences, and remain committed to helping revive the city and region."

While Navy Pier received $2.5 million from the Paycheck Protection Program last year, pier representatives projected a $20 million deficit for 2020, citing restrictions associated with the coronavirus and the cancellations of large events. As a result, top executives took pay cuts of 33 percent, with its CEO's $541,000-a-year salary reduced by 44 percent.

In March, a new 223-room hotel operated by Hilton opened on the Pier. Its restaurant, along with Billy Goat Tavern, Giordano's, Harry Caray's Tavern, Margaritaville and Offshore Rooftop and Bar will all be open as part of the first phase of reopening.

Hours will be 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday to Thursday and until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

Pier representatives promised extensive cleaning and other safety measures to limit the potential spread of the coronavirus.

Among them: a partnership with NTT Corporation, City Tech Collaborative and other unspecified companies to pilot a "capacity intelligence" program called Smart Solutions, according to the statement . The technology alerts staff when a particular high-traffic zone reaches its capacity.

The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the state-created agency that manages Navy Pier and McCormick Place, granted a 15-year, $1-per-year lease to the nonprofit entity Navy Pier Inc. in 2011.

The agency gave Navy Pier $115 million for upgrades, over $60 million in operating funds, $2.5 million worth of cars and equipment and loaned it $5 million for start-up expenses.

Since 2014, Navy Pier has been engaged in a legal battle to keep its business records secret, arguing it is exempt from the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.

A Cook County circuit court judge, in March 2018, and a unanimous three-judge Illinois appellate panel, in November 2020, both rejected arguments from pier attorneys that its records should be private.

But last month, the Illinois Supreme Court sent the case back to the circuit court to conduct a fact-specific inquiry about whether the documents in question directly relate to a governmental function. It will have to be a new judge this time, since the Cook County circuit judge who previously ruled against the pier has since retired.

State Sen. Bill Cunningham, D-Chicago, introduced legislation in February to explicitly cover Navy Pier Inc. under the FOIA, but no other senators have signed on.

After last month's Supreme Court order, 36th Ward Chicago Ald. Gilbert Villegas called for hearings to determine how taxpayer money is being spent at the pier, telling Politico Illinois "the city has a right to see if it is losing economic opportunities because of a lack of public information."

As of three years ago, the legal battle to keep Navy Pier's records from the public had cost taxpayers $670,000 , according to Better Government Association President David Greising. It's not clear how much money the nonprofit entity has spent fighting the case since then.

Navy Pier was first envisioned by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham as a " people's pier ." It opened in 1916 at a cost of $5 million in taxpayer dollars, which is the equivalent of nearly $119 million today. It served as a U.S. Navy training center in World War II and later served as a campus for the University of Illinois at Chicago before being redesigned as a tourist destination in 1995.

Read this article at Patch .

Chicago’s Navy Pier taps smart tourism tech for safe reopening

Thu, 01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT

This article was originally published at Cities Today .

Chicago’s Navy Pier is piloting advanced technology for a data-driven approach to safety and customer experience as it prepares to reopen to visitors.

One of the Midwest’s most highly attended leisure and cultural destinations, Navy Pier typically welcomes around nine million visitors a year. Like many places, the venue had to temporarily close in September 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In preparation for its reopening this spring, Navy Pier is working with NTT alongside govtech accelerator City Tech Collaborative on new measures to ensure guest safety and confidence, and increase resilience against future disruptions.

Using optical sensors and other devices, combined with data analytics, NTT will provide real-time insights on the number of people near and within Navy Pier, including space occupancy statistics and usage patterns for outdoor areas and facilities.

The initial phase will see NTT’s Smart Solutions deployed in three locations to enable Navy Pier to manage capacity, implement physical and operational design changes and set the foundation for a trip planning tool.

“Navy Pier is a top destination for culture, entertainment, education, and community among Chicago residents and guests from all over the world,” said Mark Thompson, Vice President of Data, Analytics & Strategic Marketing for Navy Pier. “As a non-profit organisation, Navy Pier is especially grateful for partnerships with NTT, City Tech, and other leading partners that are helping ensure that the Pier will bounce back from COVID-19 stronger than ever.”

Tried-and-tested technology

NTT’s suite of Smart Solutions is designed to calibrate and curate data to reveal trends, insights and predictive analytics that can drive better business decisions for city leaders and venue managers.

They have previously been used to support public safety and park management in Las Vegas and elsewhere, for kerb management at the University of California, Berkeley, and to improve fan experience by IndyCar.

Following COVID-19, transit agencies are increasingly adopting the tools to help bring passengers back to public transport safely.

Tim Conway, Group President of Public Sector, NTT DATA Services, said: “It is important for citizens to have safe access to public spaces, especially in this challenging environment. NTT is applying cutting-edge technologies and investments in innovation as well as drawing from its significant commercial sector experience to help governments deliver vital services to citizens.”

Working with partners such as City Tech Collaborative, NTT is building a scalable solution that can be applied to venues across the US and beyond.

As well as contributing to Chicago’s recovery from COVID-19, the Navy Pier pilot will also help NTT further develop its ‘ Back to Work’ solutions which support organisations worldwide to address the new challenges they face in the wake of the pandemic.

Read the article at Cities Today .

City Tech Spring Update 2021: Getting Real About Reopening

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 14:34:57 GMT

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Cities’ Post-COVID Agenda

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 13:09:47 GMT

Coronavirus Exposed Opportunities for Radical Urban Innovation and Inclusive Resident Engagement – Will We Make Good on Them?

Cities are beginning to break COVID-19’s year-long grip on urban life. Though herd immunity remains elusive and viral variants pose uncertain risks, this spring offers hope after a long, dark winter.

We’re only beginning to understand, mourn, and cope with the human, social, and economic losses COVID-19 has wrought. But today’s recovery decisions and investments will decide whether and how cities will regroup after a year of tragedy and disruption.

Getting back to normal will require coordinated efforts among local, national, and global partners – which is challenging under the very best circumstances. But the last 12 months have showed us, often painfully, that “normal” just isn’t what it used to be. COVID-19 (and other social, economic, and environmental upheavals) exposed deep rifts and blind spots, and it also opened our eyes to hidden sources of inspiration and resilience. The coronavirus shined a harsh light on historical inequities and urban shortcomings, but it also showcased people’s capacity for profound change and innovation.

If only we could harness these positive forces without the loss and anxiety of a deadly pandemic, we’d have a fighting chance to develop the partnerships and solutions that cities need and deserve. As centers of commerce, culture, and innovation, cities have a unique responsibility to embrace a post-COVID urban agenda that welcomes all residents back to public life and that strives to make our cities stronger and more resilient to future catastrophes.

2020 revealed the terrible cost of obliviousness. COVID became a focusing lens on new priorities as well as longstanding challenges that seemed too big or complicated for immediate action. Cities can’t afford to lose that focus as vaccines begin to flow.

As a Chicago-based urban solutions accelerator, City Tech is developing practical solutions to support safe reopening of public transportation and shared urban spaces, and we’ve had a unique vantage point on COVID-era innovations with long-term potential to strengthen our cities. But together, we can do more.

Local governments acted valiantly to respond to the challenges of 2020. But reactive governance has clear limits. COVID underscored the need to know what’s happening within our cities and communities in as close to real-time as possible. COVID caught us unaware, and cities struggled to gather and share the data that ultimately informed our response.

Through some combination of willful denial, benign neglect, and blissful ignorance, many civic leaders and residents discovered that they didn’t really understand local issues of inequity that have resulted from years of systemic racism, bias, and underinvestment. COVID forced all of us to face the brittleness of urban health care, education, and transportation systems, even as it showcased the fragility of municipal budgets.

And coronavirus wasn’t the only disaster lurking in the shadows. The decay of urban infrastructure, pervasive housing shortages and homelessness, and climate change – among other looming crises – pose similar threats to cities’ vitality. The breadth of urban activity and operations make it hard to know what’s important – until a global pandemic forces children from school, empties out business districts, and disproportionately cripples our most vulnerable residents and communities. Going forward, local leaders need to get out of their own heads and begin to function as the brains and nerve centers of the communities they serve. Deeply and directly connected municipal governments are better able understand, anticipate, and prevent catastrophes.

Cities must invest in physical and digital networks to understand physical, social, and economic conditions, while protecting privacy and guarding against unintended bias. Though mask and shutdown mandates played a critical role, cities ultimately aren’t commanding-and-controlling their way out of COVID. PPE, testing, and hospital overflow centers couldn’t do much good without 21st century data collection, analysis, and public transparency. Continuing to develop these critical capabilities will fuel the innovation needed to address the next crisis, whatever it may be.

Innovation comes in as many flavors and varieties as the ice cream delivery options that carried some of us through the pandemic. Cities often innovate incrementally , by adopting technology that’s been proven and adopted by the private sector or by making local adjustments or relatively minor upgrades to programs and policies that have been implemented elsewhere. This happens with good reason, as budget and election cycles reward short-term improvement.

But COVID showed us another way to transform cities by breaking old habits and smashing the status quo. Incremental improvement is important, but cities must also foster radical innovation in response to the jolt we’ve all just experienced. In a Harvard Business Review article from 2018 ( link ), Christian Hopp, David Antons, Jermain Kaminski, and Torsten Salge analyzed 40 years of business research to define radical innovation as stemming “from the creation of new knowledge and the commercialization of completely novel ideas or products.”

Radical innovation often begins with visionary individuals and organizations that see the world differently and take bold action to drive dramatic change. A government driven solely by radical innovation could quickly become unstable and unsettling to residents and businesses. Following the (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime experience of 2020, it would be a missed opportunity for cities not to rethink certain aspects of urban life.

Cities couldn’t (and can’t) solve COVID at residents. We’re witnessing the ongoing need for residents to be active participants in meaningful solutions. It doesn’t matter how quickly we sequenced COVID’s genome or developed new vaccines; people’s behavior made the difference between resilience and disaster. That same dynamic applies to other urban innovations, from urban planning and public space priorities, to community health, to universal broadband connectivity, improving environmental quality, education, housing, and more.

In her autobiography “My Beloved World,” US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor asserts that “there are uses to adversity, and they don’t reveal themselves until tested… difficulty can tap unsuspected strengths.” The strength of cities runs deep, and so does the power of collaborative innovation among public officials, residents, corporations, and civic institutions.

Though we can’t drop our guard against COVID-19 in the coming months, it’s time for cities to recognize and lock in the learning and experience that are bringing us through the current pandemic and can help carry us forward to happier, healthier, and more productive days ahead.

About the Authors:

Brenna Berman serves as CEO & Executive Director of City Tech Collaborative, an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. Prior to joining City Tech, Brenna served in Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration, which she joined in 2011. She served as the Chief Information Officer for the City and Commissioner for the Department of Innovation & Technology (DoIT) from 2012 to 2017. During her tenure as CIO, Brenna delivered on the Mayor’s commitment to a robust open data program, integrated advanced analytics into many city departments, drove IoT innovation for the City through unique partnerships at City Tech and the founding of the Midwest IoT Council, and, in partnership with the University of Chicago, realized the vision of urban-scale sensing with the Array of Things. Prior to joining the Emanuel Administration, Brenna built a career promoting government innovation over 10 years at IBM, where she worked closely with government agencies in cities and countries across the world to leverage technology and analytics to improve the services they provide to their residents. Brenna earned her bachelor's degree and master's degree in Public Policy from the University of Chicago.

Jamie Ponce is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at City Tech Collaborative where he works to drive breakthrough solutions to critical city challenges using technology, data analytics, and collaboration. He previously served as Director of Innovation with the Environmental Law & Policy Center, a public interest and environmental advocacy group focused on clean energy, transportation, air, and water throughout the US Midwest. From 2012-16, Jamie was the Chicago Director of Energy and Climate Innovation with the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, where he led initiatives on energy efficiency, sustainable development, food, and climate in the office of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and across a network of global megacities. Prior to these roles, Jamie spent 10 years with global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney, specializing in corporate strategy, economic development, and resource efficiency. Jamie holds a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University, a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

OSF HealthCare and City Tech Address Community Health Needs through New Partnership

Mon, 22 Mar 2021 13:29:21 GMT

City Tech is thrilled to welcome OSF HealthCare as a partner and expand our ecosystem to include even more organizations that focus on the holistic wellbeing of communities. OSF and City Tech share the belief that thoughtful technology innovation can address the challenges of everyday life; the better we understand those challenges from the perspective of those we serve, the more likely we are to succeed in solving them. To achieve these goals and increase the impact of its health and wellness services, OSF HealthCare is partnering with City Tech Collaborative to engage local partners and residents and inform new models for outreach and community care for residents of Chicago’s Auburn Gresham and surrounding neighborhoods.

City residents’ health and wellness is a result of countless interrelated factors and variables, and needs can vary greatly among neighborhoods. OSF Little Company of Mary Medical Center (formerly known as Little Company of Mary Hospital and Health Care) recently joined the OSF HealthCare system; as a vital resource to the Auburn Gresham community area of Chicago, the OSF team is working to have a comprehensive understanding of how to best serve its constituents. City Tech will bring together cross-sector stakeholders including healthcare providers, community and religious organizations, government and civic representatives, and local activists to help the OSF team better understand the unique needs of Auburn Gresham’s 45,000+ residents and the surrounding communities. These connections will be critical in helping OSF and these partners establish collaborative, inclusive, and aligned efforts.

Nothing, however, is more valuable than the first-hand experience of residents. Through a combination of surveys, focus groups, and interviews, City Tech will gather feedback on residents’ health and wellness needs, challenges, and experiences with Little Company of Mary Medical Center and its services. Engaging members of Chicago’s 1,600+ Civic User Testing group (CUTgroup), residents will be able to directly share their input while also providing critical feedback to the OSF team.

According to City Tech CEO Brenna Berman, “I couldn’t be more excited that City Tech is partnering with OSF. Shaping our work with the input of residents and community organizations will directly increase the likelihood that any future projects will have positive, lasting impact.”

To learn more about City Tech Collaborative visit www.CityTech.org .

About City Tech Collaborative: City Tech Collaborative (City Tech) is an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. City Tech’s work uses IoT sensing networks, advanced analytics, and urban design to create scalable, market ready solutions. Current initiatives address mobility, healthy cities, connected infrastructure, and emerging growth opportunities. City Tech was born and raised in Chicago, and every city is a potential partner. Visit www.CityTech.org for more information and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn .

About CUTgroup: City Tech's Civic User Testing group (CUTgroup) is a 1,600+ member civic engagement program that invites Chicago residents to contribute to emerging technology while providing public, private, and social sector partners with feedback to improve product design and deployment. Learn more at www.CityTech.org/CUTgroup .

About OSF HealthCare: OSF HealthCare is an integrated health system owned and operated by The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis in Peoria, Illinois. OSF Little Company of Mary Medical Center, formerly known as Little Company of Mary Hospital and Health Care, joined OSF HealthCare on February 1, 2020. Learn more at www.osfhealthcare.org .

Two Years In, City Tech’s Advanced Mobility Initiative Continues to Drive Collaborative Innovation

Fri, 19 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Over 70 Partners Have Engaged on 16 Solutions to Improve Urban Mobility Efficiency and Accessibility

Our cities’ transportation systems are in a state of disruption. We have multiple modes to choose from – trains, buses, cars, rideshare, bikes, and even scooters – and an increased need to more easily navigate between these systems. Electrification feels just around the corner with the rise of personal, freight, and fleet electric vehicles, raising questions about the infrastructure needed to support them. Meanwhile, next-day and next-hour deliveries are becoming a consumer expectation, causing congestion, increased costs, and pollution. These critical transportation challenges call for coordinated, collaborative action and forward-looking solutions that transform our mobility systems.

Two years ago, City Tech Collaborative (City Tech) launched a new Advanced Mobility Initiative and embarked on a multi-year journey to create more seamless, connected, accessible, and far-reaching urban transportation systems for people and goods. Since 2019, the effort has developed 16 projects and engaged over 70 partners to address mobility challenges affecting cities across the globe.

Tackling a Complex Challenge

If we ignore today’s evolving mobility challenges, we can expect a future of increased congestion, longer travel times, and exacerbated transit inequity. Strategy and insights partner McKinsey & Company ’s research has shown that without coordinated efforts to mitigate population changes, emerging technologies, and shifting transit trends, by 2030 Chicago residents can expect 25% more passenger miles traveled, a 50% decline in commutes using mass transit, a 16% increase in commute time, and a 15% increase in congestion from today. Cities everywhere face similar challenges, and municipalities, businesses, and residents are calling for targeted, practical solutions to change this grim trajectory.

Urban freight and mobility challenges span sectors, jurisdictions, industries, and residents, and local conditions and priorities determine whether solutions will or will not work for any given community. City Tech creates the structure necessary for collaborative innovation through our solution development methodology; working with cross-sector partners, we bring multiple perspectives to the table to discover opportunities, define and implement new solutions, and scale to new markets. This approach helps our solutions thrive where other collaborations fall short.

Led by Founding Members Bosch , HERE Technologies , and Microsoft , City Tech’s Advanced Mobility Initiative is integrating leading research, emerging technology, and cities’ transportation priorities to develop comprehensive solutions. With leadership and input from national and international partners – including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, London, and more than 25 industry and civic partners – City Tech developed an urban transportation innovation roadmap that guides our efforts to solve today’s most pressing mobility challenges.

System-Level Impact

With this framework in place, the Advanced Mobility Initiative has developed activities related to multimodal connectivity , public transit access , freight , smart infrastructure management , electric mobility , and AV/drone adoption . Solutions have ranged from managing congestion at city curbs to providing real-time insights on bus occupancy . The Initiative has also worked to integrate the parking industry more fully into broader mobility systems through the Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab . Anchored at the largest underground public parking system in North America, the Innovation Lab’s Founding Members Millennium Garages , SP+ , and Arrive are leading the effort to expand the Initiative’s reach through additional solutions to optimize electric vehicle charging, improve indoor mapping and wayfinding, and position parking facilities as urban freight and mobility hubs.

In parallel with technology integration and deployment, the Advanced Mobility Initiative is also working to ensure that the solutions we create are inclusive, accessible, and scalable across urban markets. City Tech’s thought leadership programming and publications amplify Advanced Mobility Initiative participants’ work through roundtables, workshops, conferences, and virtual events that have reached hundreds of national subject experts and city leaders. City Tech’s resident engagement program solicits direct resident input on challenges and solutions that affect their communities. As part of our solution development methodology, City Tech projects follow a racial equity and inclusion process and toolkit established to ensure that the need for and impact of new solutions are understood by collaborative partners. These tools ensure that we are evaluating racial equity and inclusion throughout the course of all of our projects, as well as across the larger portfolio. Together, these efforts inform, validate, and assess our work as it relates to the Advance Mobility Initiative’s vision of seamless and frictionless transportation systems.

Key Learnings

At its outset, the Advanced Mobility Initiative sought to address the most important transportation issues facing our cities, but no one could have anticipated exactly how these last two years would unfold. City Tech and our partners have adapted our approach in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and industry-shaping trends, incorporating several key learnings along the way.

1.) Expanding Roles, Responsibilities, and Opportunities: Cities’ mobility systems are a complex web of tech companies, public and private transit providers, asset owners and operators, and government agencies that make our trips possible every day. The Advanced Mobility Initiative provides a framework for these stakeholders to work together to integrate services, focus on residents’ needs, and improve their customers’ experience. Our future seamless transportation system will not be governed by a single provider; we must create and expand roles, responsibilities, and opportunities for each of these groups, together.

2.) Seizing New Opportunities to Shape Transportation Demand: Historically, transportation service providers have sought to keep up with demand by adding more vehicles, routes, or services. Predictive modeling tools help reduce uncertainty, but they still cast service providers in a reactive role. In addition to improving supply-side intelligence, City Tech and our partners are embracing opportunities to proactively shape demand through data sharing and incentives. Demand shaping can take the form of sharing previously inaccessible information with customers and partners , nudging public transit commuters to adjust their travel plans , or using data and dynamic pricing to manage curb space . By learning from other sectors such as consumer products and energy that have invited their customers to take an active part in product or solution development, urban transportation can deliver better user experiences and reduce operating cost. Achieving this elusive goal, however, demands new capabilities, tools, policies, and partnerships to put information and physical assets to their highest and best use.

3.) Applying Fundamental Tech Capabilities to Specific Transportation Challenges : Recent breakthroughs in fundamental technologies – including connected sensors, big data management, edge compute, 5G, artificial intelligence, and machine learning – are finally finding their way into urban transportation. Large technology companies have invested heavily in these transformational capabilities, but it’s up to local governments, fleet and freight operators, and urban residents to help ensure that new tools are deployed in ways that are useful, relevant, and respectful of unique community needs and expectations. As cities and their partners move from single solutions to building broader innovation portfolios with diverse use cases, focusing on these foundational technology layers can create efficiencies and support broader partnerships at scale. Raw tech may get us 80% of the way to game-changing solutions, but customizing fundamental capabilities to fit local conditions is the cultural and intellectual “last mile” of transportation innovation.

4.) Scaling Beyond the Pilot: A successful pilot is encouraging. Now how do we take it to the next level? We must design solutions for scalability from the very beginning – and include the right partners to achieve it. In addition to tech and data partners, it is critical we include organizations with expertise or specific capabilities to take a solution to market and scale to other cities. With a focus on enterprise implementation, this solution team member can best scope, define, and evaluate metrics, successes, and shortcomings relative to future implementation. We must also identify subsequent funding and/or investment sources who are able to finalize post-pilot product development and customization required for enterprise implementation. Engaging the right partners, focusing on broader applications, and priming markets and future customers allow solutions to thrive far beyond an initial pilot.

5.) Focusing on the End Users: Successful public-facing technologies rely upon direct resident engagement and community-focused design. The Advanced Mobility Initiative drove specific efforts such as our partnership with the University of Illinois at Chicago Innovation Center to define public transit needs and potential solutions. Students took a user-centered approach to understand the pains and gains of using public transit; by speaking with residents, understanding the experiences of different types of users, and taking a cross-disciplinary approach, students were able to discover inequities and identify solutions for specific demographics and marginalized customers. Prioritizing equity, accessibility, and meeting gaps for users will always lead to a stronger and more impactful solutions.

Looking Forward

Despite all that the Advanced Mobility Initiative has achieved, there is still so much to do. We will identify the partnerships and technologies that can support innovative funding models for shared, efficient mobility options that reduce our climate impact. Consistent with our work to date, we will be exploring opportunities to reveal the use and demand for transportation – opening a dialogue around how these data and tools can be used to guide the planning, investment, and operations of our shared infrastructure to meet our community goals.

The last two years have ushered dramatic changes in how people and goods move about cities, placing new demands on service providers, infrastructure, and regulators. As post-COVID activity resumes, that pace of change will only increase. Vehicle electrification is reaching a long-awaited tipping point. Though full automation may still be years away, connected vehicles will begin to share and receive an unprecedented volume of information with each other and their surroundings. Increasing competition for urban streets and curbs will force cities to rethink pricing, management, and integration of public and private spaces. All of these trends (and more) will ensure plenty of need for continued innovation, collaboration, new market development, community engagement, and thoughtful deployment.

Urban mobility systems are already complicated, and collaboration is difficult. But City Tech’s Advanced Mobility Initiative proves that when we work together, committed partners can build lasting, dynamic solutions with greater impact than anyone could accomplish alone.

For more information about City Tech’s Advanced Mobility Initiative, visit https://www.citytech.org/mobility or contact City Tech at Collaborate@CityTech.org to get involved.

City Tech to provide CTA occupancy insights

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Microsoft Azure tool will support data creation and analytics activities

This article was originally published at ITS International .

City Tech Collaborative , Genetec, Intel and Microsoft are developing tools to provide real-time insights on Chicago Transit Authority’s (CTA) occupancy across multiple vehicles.

City Tech says a pilot implementation on CTA’s 79th street bus line will allow the authority to proactively meet route ridership demand, reduce passenger crowding and wait times and provide a socially distanced rider experience.

According to City Tech, combining onboard capacity data with projection models will allow CTA to make service decisions even more quickly, such as adding or holding vehicles on a route or not picking up additional passengers once a vehicle reaches maximum capacity.

Molly Poppe, chief innovation officer at CTA, says: “Though many public transit agencies reduced routes amid the pandemic, the CTA made no changes to scheduled service in order to continue to provide essential transit service to those who rely on it. Despite Covid-19, CTA still serves an average of 400,000 riders each and every weekday.”

Poppe believes partnering with City Tech will help CTA integrate “technology and analytics to serve our customers better”.

The partners will measure the efficacy of various passenger-counting technologies. Existing data sources, including automated passenger counting and ticketing/tap data will be joined into a single dashboard alongside data from lidar, video, and a count of devices seeking Wi-Fi networks connections.

City Tech emphasises no individually identifiable information will be stored or shared, and data collected during the pilot will remain private.

Other factors including weather, time of day, and events will inform the developed model to project ridership.

In the long-term, City Tech points out this solution will allow CTA to understand the accuracy of these technologies, and guide data publishing for public use such as sharing projected crowding figures per bus at each stop on a route.

The Microsoft Azure solution will support data creation, management, storage and analytics activities. Genetec will create the projection models to support proactive demand management, while Intel will support the integration of video and sensor feeds into the operational dashboard through edge computing.

Sameer Sharma, general manager of smart city and intelligent transportation at Intel, says: “This solution relies on ingesting complex data from multiple sources. Edge computing using Intel Core, Xeon and Atom processors will aggregate and interpret this information quickly to enable CTA to understand current conditions as well as be proactive in their responses.”

This project is part of City Tech’s Advanced Mobility Initiative, an effort led by Here Technologies and Microsoft to create a more frictionless transportation system with increased accessibility and reach for urban residents.

Read the article at ITS International .

London mayor: Here's what we have in common with Chicago as we recover

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Now’s the time for international cooperation and for global cities to work together to tackle issues of social justice and economic fairness post-pandemic.

This article was originally published in Crain's Chicago Business .

The world is facing a momentous challenge. The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed stark inequalities in economic fairness and social justice and had a significant impact on our businesses and livelihoods.

As the vaccine roll-out gathers momentum, there has never been a more important time for international cooperation and for cities like London and Chicago to work together to tackle a host of global issues. We are two like-minded, global cities, united in our shared values of openness, pluralism and progressive thinking.

The truth is, we cannot just "move on" from this crisis, or return to business as usual once it’s over. There are lessons we must learn. And these lessons are already guiding London’s plans for recovery as we put the values of equality, diversity and inclusion at the heart of our policymaking for the future.

Today I’m joining elected leaders from around the world at Chicago’s Pritzker Forum on Global Cities to discuss how London, and other cities, can ensure women, disabled people, people of color and all of our communities can benefit from our economic recovery. If we reach beyond our political and geographic boundaries, we can set a trajectory that leads to more inclusive and sustainable economies, and a higher quality of life.

Of course, pursuing a more equitable future isn’t easy. It will be hard work and it will take time. But we owe it to our communities who have suffered and sacrificed so much over the last year to give it everything we’ve got.

I share Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s conviction that the better futures we envision for our cities require more than agreement among politicians. We need businesses, entrepreneurs, investors and researchers to take practical action to tackle shared challenges like the climate crisis, standing up to structural racism and the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Over the past year many have recognized the moral and commercial imperatives they have to do so. I’m committed to supporting them as they play their part in this generational mission.

As two of the world’s leading tech hubs, London and Chicago are hotbeds for creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. There is a clear opportunity for global tech cities to share insights and knowledge to advance inclusive growth across our communities and to strive for a global tech sector that benefits our societies.

In London, one in three residents was born in another country, and 300 languages are spoken on our streets. To our 55 ‘unicorns’ and other fast-growing companies, this is a talent pool and a wealth of experience to serve customers and help solve social, economic and environmental challenges.

That’s why I have recently launched the £1m Resilience Fund, calling on London’s innovators to drive forward the city’s recovery and supporting businesses to respond to some of our key challenges. It is crucial that we act now to help our cities emerge stronger from Covid-19, and to ensure we are more resilient to major shocks in the future.

Both Mayor Lightfoot and I are committed to more equitable neighborhoods and services. Chicago’s Invest South/West initiative— catalyzing new development in disinvested neighbourhoods—has clear echoes of The London Plan 2021, a framework I’ve just launched to guide London’s spatial development and my vision for Good Growth.

But not only must our recovery be inclusive, it must also be sustainable. London and Chicago are committed to being carbon-neutral cities. And through joint initiatives such as the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, both of us are working hand in hand with other major cities to deliver on the promise of the Paris Agreement and to promote the uptake of green technology and renewable energy.

The London-Chicago Data Alliance is also bridging innovation between Transport for London and Chicago’s City Tech Collaborative by sharing lessons from pilot projects, such as repurposing infrastructure to increase access to electric vehicle charging.

Ahead of the U.N. climate negotiations in the U.K. later this year, we’ve set a bold target of making London zero-carbon by 2030, supported by some of the most ambitious policies of any global city.

However, no one city can solve the climate emergency in isolation. It will require record investment and coordinated action from everyone—cities, businesses, national governments and communities—to truly address this existential threat.

I am confident that, by working together, global cities like London and Chicago can lead the charge in pursuing our common goal of a future where no one is left behind, where racial justice and gender equality are secured, and where our cities are truly able to flourish and thrive.

Read the article at Crain's Chicago Business .

Navy Pier hotel to open Thursday, as the popular Chicago attraction prepares for crowds to return

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

This article was originally published at the Chicago Tribune.

A 223-room hotel at Navy Pier, delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, opens Thursday despite the rest of the lakefront attraction remaining closed.

The Sable Hotel had been scheduled to open Nov. 1, but days beforehand its developer, Robert Habeeb, told the Tribune the opening would be postponed until this month “because of the relentless nature of COVID and the market is in the doldrums.”

Despite few visitors staying in Chicago hotels and a lack of activity at Navy Pier, Habeeb, CEO of Maverick Hotels and Restaurants, said he was optimistic about the hotel’s future as COVID-19 vaccinations ramp up and Gov. J.B Pritzker prepares to introduce an incremental reopening plan for the state.

“After 14 months of being under lock and key, everybody is excited about starting to think about normal life again,” he said. “And we think that’s going to be the case.”

For the week ended March 13, hotel occupancy in Chicago was 37.9%, according to hotel industry market research firm STR. During the same week two years ago, which predates pandemic restrictions, occupancy was 67.4%.

Navy Pier plans to open in the spring but no date has been set, said spokesman Payal Patel.

The hotel will operate under the Curio Collection by Hilton umbrella. At least 15 rooms had been booked for the hotel’s opening day and 75 for Saturday. “We tell people, it’s probably the only time in history you’ll have Navy Pier to yourself,” Habeeb said.

Efforts are underway to prepare for the return of crowds to the venue, which is one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions. Navy Pier has partnered with several technology companies to monitor the number of people in and around the site.

One of those companies, Tokyo-based NTT, said Wednesday it will use optical sensors and other means to collect data to monitor the occupancy levels of various areas.

In a news release, the company said the pilot program would “set the foundation for a trip planning tool to share critical information empowering visitors to make the best decisions based on their goals, concerns and plans.” NTT said it will not retain the data.

Navy Pier has designated 25 zones that each have their own capacity limit. The pilot program will focus on parts of the Fifth Third Bank Family Pavilion, including the food court seating area near McDonald’s and nearby walkways, and one of the main entrance areas on the east end of the pier.

If a zone nears capacity, pier staff will encourage visitors to disperse, Patel said. The pier is also looking to continue using the technology after the pandemic, she said.

Before Navy Pier closed in September, staff used a different technology based on cellphone signals to track crowd sizes, Patel said. That had been in place before the pandemic, and pier staff will continue to use it with the new pilot program, she said.

NTT did not respond to a request for additional information.

Navy Pier temporarily closed in September to limit losses caused by lack of attendance. The pier, which had reopened in the summer after a previous shutdown, was anticipating its revenue would fall $20 million short of projections.

Read the article at the Chicago Tribune.

City Tech Launches Solution Pilot to Support Reopening of Chicago's Navy Pier

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 13:57:03 GMT

Navy Pier, NTT, SDI Presence, SOM, and Intel Integrate Technology and Design to Enhance Safety and Visitor Experience

COVID-19 vaccinations, declining infection rates, and warmer weather are raising hopes for a swift and safe return to public life. Even as excitement builds for post-COVID reopenings, the threats of viral variants and delayed immunity calls for continued vigilance and innovation to keep businesses running smoothly and residents safe.

For complex public and semi-public spaces, reopening poses unique challenges and elevated expectations. Restaurants, museums, conference venues, and tourist attractions, for example, must provide enjoyable experiences without compromising visitor safety. Technology-enabled design, monitoring and management of our favorite shared spaces can facilitate safe returns, improve visitor experiences, and build long-term resilience to future disruptions.

City Tech Collaborative has partnered with NTT, SDI Presence, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Intel, and Chicago’s Navy Pier to develop new capacity and visitor management solutions for shared urban spaces. Combining high-tech with existing systems and a data-driven approach, the team seeks to increase the accuracy of attendance counts, institute on-site wayfinding guidance, implement easy-to-navigate design changes, and share real-time capacity and trip planning information with guests prior to their arrival and during their visit.

“Navy Pier represents the full range of opportunities and challenges facing shared spaces as we emerge from COVID hibernation,” said Brenna Berman, CEO of City Tech Collaborative. “As a self-contained urban entertainment district and popular nonprofit cultural destination, Navy Pier can become a model for post-COVID space management…while offering a much-needed return to fun!”

Prior to COVID, Navy Pier welcomed nearly 9 million people annually, making it one of the Midwest’s most visited nonprofit institutions. Combining multiple convention spaces, attractions, restaurants, shopping, and a hotel, Navy Pier boasts 50 acres of multi-use space, more than 250 free public programs, and nearly 70 independent businesses and nonprofits for guests to explore. After closing temporarily in September 2020 amid COVID-19 precautions, the Pier is preparing to reopen this spring.

“We look forward to working with City Tech and the other leading partners to improve short-term operations while still planning far beyond the immediate needs and challenges presented by the ongoing pandemic,” said Mark Thompson, Vice President of Data, Analytics & Strategic Marketing for Navy Pier. “As a popular destination for Chicago residents and visitors from all over the world, we’re excited to reopen and add to the many ways Navy Pier focuses on the health, safety and experience of its guests.”

Building on Navy Pier’s existing coronavirus precautions, City Tech and partners are looking beyond single locations or points in time to account for movement across multiple spaces prior to and during a guest’s visit. Global technology and business solutions provider NTT will assess and analyze the existing data and technologies at Navy Pier as well as integrate new data and analytics.

“This project is a great example of how the magnitude of data available and advanced analytics can help businesses understand a space as complex as Navy Pier,” said Bill Baver, Vice President of the NTT SMART World team. “We are thrilled to be a part of this collaboration and help businesses and residents reopen safely.”

Design firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) will lead the development of physical design solutions based on analytics and modeling. Changes to be investigated include direct visual communication and short-term and flexible reconfigurations to steer people to less densely occupied routes and spaces. Subtle cues that influence people’s behavior can also help to manage capacity and density while reinforcing the Pier’s commitment to providing a safe, fun experience.

“Navy Pier’s diversity of spaces and visitors raises fascinating questions about design, function, and human behavior,” said Chris Hall, Urban Strategy Leader of SOM. “Data will help us understand how people interact with their environment, which solutions are best suited for each type of space, and how to help people move between those spaces.”

IT consultancy and Managed Services Provider SDI Presence will serve as project manager as well as integrate the technology needed to implement those physical and operational changes. According to Peter Sotos, SDI Presence’s Delivery Executive, “SDI is delivering end-to-end planning and IT services to help our facilities clients make a thoughtful transition to return to work and play. The Navy Pier pilot is an innovative and scalable step forward and lays the foundation for a safer and more interactive visitor experience.”

Sharing information on Navy Pier’s current capacity with guests before arrival can empower them to better plan their visits. In addition to integrating technology and implementing physical changes, the collaboration is developing a set of high-level requirements for trip planning. By incorporating and sharing transparent capacity data, these requirements will provide the framework needed to make real-time changes and actively communicate with visitors prior to their arrival.

Leveraging their expertise in hardware and system architecture and comprehensive partner ecosystem, Intel will enable advanced analytics at Navy Pier. Intel’s support is critical to collect, analyze, and model data at scale and inform the tools developed by the collaboration.

Although COVID-19 has raised the stakes for managing shared spaces amid cities’ reopenings, the importance of proactive capacity management predates the coronavirus and is certain to outlive it. Capacity management and trip-planning tools can help answer these questions long after the immediate health concerns dissipate.

To learn more about this collaboration, visit www.CityTech.org/Capacity-Management .

Click here to download the announcement [PDF].

NTT Helps Chicago’s Navy Pier and City Tech Collaborative Deliver ‘Smart’ Visitor Experience

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

This press release was originally published by NTT and featured in Business Wire .

Chicago, Illinois – March 16, 2021 – Chicago’s Navy Pier and NTT (NTT Corporation, NTTDATA Corporation, NTT Ltd.) in partnership with City Tech Collaborative and a consortium of other leading technology and design partners, today announced a Smart Solutions pilot. This pilot will leverage a data-driven approach to enhance Navy Pier’s visitor experience and existing safety measures while increasing its business resilience against future disruptions.

Navy Pier, one of the Midwest’s top attended leisure and cultural destinations, which typically welcomes nearly 9 million visitors annually, closed temporarily in September 2020 due to the Covid-19 outbreak. In preparation for its reopening in Spring 2021, Navy Pier is implementing new measures to ensure guest safety, maintain consumer confidence, and utilize state-of-the-art technology to strengthen operations.

By leveraging NTT Smart Solutions following the initial phase which will be focused on three initial locations, Navy Pier will be able to manage capacity, implement physical and operational design changes and set the foundation for a trip planning tool to share critical information with visitors empowering them to make better decisions aligned with their goals, concerns and plans. The solution deployed does not retain the collected data which remains at the edge only for the time-cycle required in compliance with data privacy and data retention policies.

“Navy Pier is a top destination for culture, entertainment, education, and community among Chicago residents and guests from all over the world,” said Mark Thompson, Vice President of Data, Analytics & Strategic Marketing for Navy Pier. “As a nonprofit organization, Navy Pier is especially grateful for partnerships with NTT, City Tech, and other leading partners that are helping ensure that the Pier will bounce back from COVID stronger than ever.”

Thanks to optical sensors and other devices combined with data analytics, NTT will collect data on the number of people near and within Navy Pier, including space occupancy statistics and usage patterns of outdoor areas and facilities to increase situational awareness and real-time intelligence.

“We are delighted to work with Chicago’s Navy Pier on this project. It is a great example of how data and analytics help organizations focus on citizens’ health and wellbeing and plan for reopening urban spaces and facilities that have remained closed or empty in the last months,” said Akira Shimada, Senior Executive Vice President, NTT.

According to Brenna Berman, CEO of City Tech Collaborative, “Navy Pier and other shared recreational spaces play a crucial role in rebooting global cities following COVID closures. With world-class partners like NTT, City Tech deploys new tech to improve the visitor experience and health and safety, now and after the pandemic subsides. In doing so, we’re building a scalable solution that can be applied to similar venues across the US and beyond.”

Tim Conway, President of Public Sector, NTT DATA Services added, “It is important that constituents receive world-class services from its public spaces. NTT is more than a pure-play government contractor; we can also draw from significant commercial experience to help our government clients. As technology changes rapidly, NTT makes sure to view emerging technology advancement through the lens of its clients to deliver leading-edge solutions”.

NTT will deploy its Smart Solutions which are designed to calibrate and curate data to reveal trends, discover powerful insights and generate predictive analytics that can drive better business decisions for city leaders, venue managers and other stakeholders in both public and private sectors. Through the collaboration with Navy Pier, NTT contributes to the city’s recovery from COVID-19 while expanding its “Back to Work” solutions.

NTT Smart Solutions were initially conceived to enhance public safety in the City of Las Vegas in 2018. Since then, they have also adapted to track usage and occupancy in parks and beyond and with implementations by other clients in several industries – including the University of California, Berkeley for curb management, IndyCar for improved fan experience and transit agencies for passenger safety. NTT is planning to continue to move forward in occupancy and transportation capabilities and address new challenges facing organizations worldwide.

About NTT: NTT believes in resolving social issues through our business operations by applying technology for good. We help clients accelerate growth and innovate for current and new business models. Our services include digital business consulting, technology and managed services for cybersecurity, applications, workplace, cloud, datacenter and networks all supported by our deep industry expertise and innovation. As a top 5 global technology and business solutions provider, our diverse teams operate in 80+ countries and regions and deliver services to over 190 of them. We serve over 80% of Fortune Global 100 companies and thousands of other clients and communities around the world. For more information on NTT, visit www.global.ntt/ .

Read the press release at NTT's website or on Business Wire .

NTT helps Chicago's Navy Pier deliver 'smart' visitor experience

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

This article was originally published at telecompaper .

Chicago’s Navy Pier leisure destination and Japan's NTT in partnership with City Tech Collaborative and a consortium of other technology and design partners announced a Smart Solutions pilot. This pilot will leverage a data-driven approach to enhance Navy Pier’s visitor experience and existing safety measures while increasing its business resilience against future disruptions.

In preparation for its reopening in spring 2021, Navy Pier will use NTT Smart Solutions to implement new measures to ensure guest safety, maintain consumer confidence, and use technology to strengthen operations, NTT said.

By leveraging NTT Smart Solutions following the initial phase which will be focused on three initial locations, Navy Pier will be able to manage capacity, implement physical and operational design changes and set the foundation for a trip planning tool to share critical information with visitors empowering them to make better decisions aligned with their goals, concerns and plans. The platform deployed does not retain the collected data which remains at the edge only for the time-cycle required in compliance with data privacy and data retention policies.

Thanks to optical sensors and other devices combined with data analytics, NTT will collect data on the number of people near and within Navy Pier, including space occupancy statistics and usage patterns of outdoor areas and facilities to increase situational awareness and real-time intelligence.

NTT Smart Solutions are designed to calibrate and curate data to reveal trends, discover insights and generate predictive analytics that can drive better business decisions for city leaders, venue managers and other stakeholders in both public and private sectors. NTT Smart Solutions were initially conceived to enhance public safety in the city of Las Vegas in 2018.

Read the article at telecompaper .

In Pursuit of Breathable Cities

Wed, 10 Mar 2021 21:13:42 GMT

Technology, Community Engagement, & Action to Improve Urban Air Quality

Nothing is more fundamental to human health and wellbeing than the air we breathe. Yet the World Health Organization finds that more than 9 in 10 people globally live in places with high pollutant levels, and air pollution causes 7 million premature deaths annually. The record-breaking 2020 US wildfire season raised an acute sense of urgency about air quality, as 52,113 wildfires burned 9 million acres and caused historic levels of pollution in cities up and down America’s west coast.

As centers of commerce, production, and transportation, cities face especially high stakes for air quality due to higher density and human exposure. Because harmful pollutants aren’t always visible, however, urban dwellers and public officials aren’t necessarily aware of air quality risks and how to address them.

Air quality monitoring isn’t new, but traditional data collection and public engagement have fallen short of generating the level of awareness and resolve that are needed for meaningful action. For decades, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has measured air quality in cities, but expensive research-grade equipment is best suited to measuring long-term regional pollution levels. Data gaps have impeded air quality analysis over time (in Illinois, for example, lab errors invalidated particulate matter data from 2011-2014 and made it impossible to measure compliance with National Ambient Air Quality Standards), and existing regional sensors don’t necessarily capture neighborhood-level conditions (which can vary greatly from block-to-block). Although EPA’s data are available to the public , it’s unclear how accessible and relevant those data are for people outside of research and regulation. Under the Trump Administration, the federal government failed to update Clean Air Act standards despite widespread recognition that air quality disproportionately affects the health, educational, and economic prospects of low-income residents and communities of color . All of these factors complicate local efforts to understand air quality risks and work together to address them.

Chicago has a unique opportunity to lead on urban air quality monitoring while also serving as a model for other cities. Chicago is not without air quality challenges , but local leaders and residents are increasingly aware of the need for action. In absolute terms, air quality in Chicago has improved over time, but the region has risen in recent American Lung Association (ALA) rankings of America’s most polluted cities. ALA’s 2020 State of the Air report gave Chicago an “F” for ozone pollution . In the summer of 2020, the City of Chicago released a new Air Quality & Health Report , Index , and Reform Agenda to improve health and support equitable economic growth. Chicago also as an engaged civic stakeholder community and a compelling history of air quality monitoring and advocacy – including Air Quality Chicago (a coalition of 20+ local organizations that have conducted block-by-block monitoring using mobile handheld sensors) and Shared Air / Shared Action (a 4-year EPA-funded project to investigate community-led air quality research).

A new generation of lower cost, more readily deployable air quality sensors (including AirBeam , PurpleAir , and Microsoft’s Project Eclipse ) holds great potential to reduce air quality blindspots and equip cities to better understand and address air pollution. But technology alone can’t solve this problem. Accurate, localized data are essential but not sufficient to transform concerned residents and public officials into empowered problem solvers; for these new solutions to be effective, both stakeholders and residents must be included in the design, development, and deployment.

Accurate, localized data are essential but not sufficient to transform concerned residents and public officials into empowered problem solvers; for these new solutions to be effective, both stakeholders and residents must be included in the design, development, and deployment.

In December 2020, City Tech Collaborative convened a virtual Breathable Cities Roundtable with government leaders, environmental advocates, and corporate leaders with the goal of connecting Chicago-area air quality efforts and coordinating new air quality sensor deployment. City Tech’s Healthy Cities Initiative seeks to use data and analytics to strengthen cities’ capacity to meet resident needs and improve community health outcomes. Chicago has been a leader in urban air quality monitoring and advocacy, but COVID-19 has taken a toll on environmental collaboration among cross-sector stakeholders.

The roundtable highlighted opportunities to connect related projects, share data, engage residents, and coordinate air quality advocacy to drive better insights, reduce air pollution, and improve public health in Chicago, while providing an actionable model to other cities. Discussion also made a strong case for broadening air quality discussions to include residents and community organizations and for grassroots-level funding to support these efforts, validating City Tech’s belief that successful public-facing solutions rely upon direct resident engagement and community-focused design.

In parallel with the Roundtable, City Tech worked with a team interested in deploying a more hyperlocal, accessible, and public-facing air quality sensing platform and related website to view the collected data. In January 2021, City Tech utilized our resident engagement program to provide input on the efforts; the program utilizes Civic User Testing best practices to offer guidance, convenes residents, and conducts specialized user testing to support the development and roll-out of digital tools, websites, technology plans, and civic programs.

To better understand resident interest in air quality and provide input on the sensing platform, City Tech engaged members of our ~1,600 member Civic User Testing group (CUTgroup) , a diverse civic engagement program that invites residents to contribute to emerging technology, to provide input on air quality sensing platform and related efforts. Strikingly, 95% of the residents we spoke with were very engaged in the space, stating that they were concerned about air quality in their environment; however, many did not know how to find information about their concerns, underscoring the importance of these local data and a site to access them in real time.

Along with the sensing platform, the team wanted to develop a website where users could view and understand the data collected from the sensors as well as report their own feedback about the air quality in the area. Residents were excited about the these efforts, with 85% of testers reporting they were interested in using the website. In addition, many residents also found the opportunity to contribute their own air quality data a reason to engage and recommend the site to others. Testers valued the data access, which was not surprising given their interest in air quality, but many preferred to have more context available on the site such about the platform’s founders, purpose, and data privacy, as well as direction on how to use the data to make more informed choices in their daily environmental habits and goals. Prioritizing these additional details would allow platform users to feel better connected with air quality data and enable them to take actionable next steps towards improving the environment.

As reflected by local and national efforts as well as City Tech’s recent roundtable and resident engagement activities, cities and their residents are ready to take action to improve the quality of the air we breathe. As we develop new tech-enabled, public-facing solutions, it is imperative to remember who they will serve; engaging all stakeholders throughout the process – governmental officials, community organizations, tech- and subject-matter experts, and residents – creates more accessible and user-friendly final products. We shouldn’t just create solutions and hope they succeed. We must empower our residents and public officials to understand and utilize air quality information to take lasting action.

About the Authors:

Jamie Ponce is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at City Tech Collaborative where he works to drive breakthrough solutions to critical city challenges using technology, data analytics, and collaboration. He previously served as Director of Innovation with the Environmental Law & Policy Center, a public interest and environmental advocacy group focused on clean energy, transportation, air, and water throughout the US Midwest. From 2012-16, Jamie was the Chicago Director of Energy and Climate Innovation with the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, where he led initiatives on energy efficiency, sustainable development, food, and climate in the office of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and across a network of global megacities. Prior to these roles, Jamie spent 10 years with global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney, specializing in corporate strategy, economic development, and resource efficiency. Jamie holds a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University, a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Meera Raja is the Senior Manager of Solution Design & Program Development at City Tech Collaborative. In this role, Meera works as a member of the City Solutions team to design and execute new programs and services. Meera also leads City Tech's 1,600+ member Civic User Testing Group (CUTgroup) in Chicago and coordinates expansion of the CUTgroup model to additional cities across North America. Prior to joining the City Tech team, Meera was the Associate Director of Research Innovation at University of Chicago, where she developed strategies to advance nascent and complex research. Meera was previously a consultant for ZS Associates, working on data-driven solutions for the pharmaceutical space. Meera completed her Ph.D. and Postdoc in Chemistry from Northwestern University and received her undergraduate degree in the same field from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

About City Tech Collaborative (City Tech): City Tech is an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. City Tech’s work uses IoT sensing networks, advanced analytics, and urban design to create scalable, market ready solutions. Current initiatives address advanced mobility, healthy cities, connected infrastructure, and emerging growth opportunities. City Tech was born and raised in Chicago, and every city is a potential partner. Visit www.CityTech.org and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn .

About CUTgroup: City Tech's Civic User Testing group (CUTgroup) is a 1,600+ member civic engagement program that invites Chicago residents to contribute to emerging technology while providing public, private, and social sector partners with feedback to improve product design and deployment. Learn more at www.CityTech.org/CUTgroup .

Collaborative to aid CTA with predictive occupancy information

Wed, 10 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

A pilot project between CTA, City Tech Collaborative, Genetec, Intel and Microsoft will develop predictive capacity models for improved trip planning and operations.

This article was originally published at Mass Transit .

A pilot project on the Chicago Transit Authority’s (CTA) 79th Street bus line is looking to answer a complex question: How might public transit be different if system operators and riders had accurate, real-time capacity information?

City Tech Collaborative, Genetec, Intel and Microsoft are working with CTA to develop new tools to provide real-time insights on CTA occupancy across multiple vehicles. The partners explain the 79th Street bus line pilot will allow CTA to proactively meet route ridership demand, reduce both passenger crowding and wait times and provide a safe, socially distanced rider experience.

Communicating transit vehicle occupancy levels has been generating a lot of interest among riders, as well as transit providers. Occupancy levels are typically provided through crowdsourced information, come from predictions based on historical data or provided in real-time.

The collaboration with CTA will measure the efficacy of various passenger-counting technologies. City Tech explains existing data sources, including automated passenger counting and ticketing/tap data, will be joined into a single dashboard alongside data from emerging technology being tested such as lidar, video and a count of devices seeking Wi-Fi network connections.

Additional factors including weather, time of day and events will aid the model in projecting ridership. However, the partners state no individually identifiable information will be stored or shared and data collected during the pilot will remain private.

City Tech notes the developed solution will allow CTA to understand the accuracy of various technologies, make improved operational decisions around bus and train deployment and guide data publishing for public use such as sharing projected crowding figures per bus at each stop on a route.

“Public transit is the circulatory system of our cities; it’s necessary to get us where we need to be and keep our businesses, economy and our lives in motion,” said Brenna Berman, CEO of City Tech Collaborative. “Bringing together this team’s capabilities to create a scalable solution is just one piece of increasing our cities’ resilience beyond COVID.”

CTA’s 79th Street bus line was selected as it has experienced the smallest drop in ridership across Chicago with only a 29.5 percent decrease in average daily ridership since the beginning of the pandemic.

“Though many public transit agencies reduced routes amid the pandemic, the CTA made no changes to scheduled service in order to continue to provide essential transit service to those who rely on it,” said Molly Poppe, CTA chief innovation officer. “Despite COVID-19, CTA still serves an average of 400,000 riders each and every weekday. Partnering with City Tech on this project will help CTA integrate state-of-the art technology and analytics to serve our customers even better.”

City Tech says combining onboard capacity data with projection models will allow CTA to make service decisions even more quickly, such as adding or holding vehicles on a route or not picking up additional passengers once a vehicle reaches maximum capacity. These approaches will help agencies respond to unpredictable ridership promptly – whether due to the pandemic or other unexpected events – while continuing to operate as efficiently as possible.

The project is part of City Tech’s Advanced Mobility Initiative, which carries a mission to drive urban mobility innovation. Data creation, management, storage and analytics activities will be supported by Microsoft. Genetec will create the prediction models to support demand management and Intel will support the integration of video and sensor feeds into the operational dashboard through edge computing.

“New applications that help government and transit agencies to be more responsive to the needs of people are an imperative, especially during COVID-19. Redirecting capacity, where and when it’s needed, providing accurate up-to-the-minute schedules is difficult without the right systems and data in place,” said Jeremy Goldberg, Microsoft WWPS director of Critical Infrastructure. “Access to these insights will make government services and transportation work better for people.”

According to Christian Chenard-Lemire, director of the Cities Application Group of Genetec, “Using demand, historical and real-time data to create a real-time and projected picture of bus occupancy will allow the CTA, and other public transit agencies, to provide flexible transit operations, health-focused responses and an improved customer experience to its passengers.”

“This solution relies on ingesting complex data from multiple sources,” said Sameer Sharma, general manager of Smart City and Intelligent Transportation at of Intel. “Edge computing using Intel Core, Xeon and Atom processors will aggregate and interpret this information quickly to enable CTA to understand current conditions as well as be proactive in their responses.”

Read the article at Mass Transit .

Chicago Transit Authority, Genetec, Intel and Microsoft Partner to Improve Transit Safety

Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Team to Create Predictive Capacity Models to Inform System Operations and Improve Trip Planning

This article was originally published at Security Systems News .

CHICAGO—Building on the Chicago Transit Authority’s (CTA’s) existing measures to keep bus and train service timely, efficient and safe, City Tech Collaborative (City Tech), Genetec, Intel and Microsoft are developing new tools to provide real-time insights on CTA occupancy across multiple vehicles.

A pilot implementation on CTA’s 79th street bus line will allow CTA to proactively meet route ridership demand, reduce both passenger crowding and wait times, and provide a safe, socially distanced rider experience.

CTA has made heroic efforts to continue transit service despite the shock of COVID-19. Public health guided vehicle capacity limits, combined with unpredictability of ridership as cities close and reopen, have made it difficult to anticipate demand until now. Combining onboard capacity data with projection models will allow CTA to make service decisions even more quickly, such as adding or holding vehicles on a route or not picking up additional passengers once a vehicle reaches maximum capacity. These approaches will help agencies respond to unpredictable ridership promptly – whether due to the pandemic or other unexpected events – while continuing to operate as efficiently as possible.

“Though many public transit agencies reduced routes amid the pandemic, the CTA made no changes to scheduled service in order to continue to provide essential transit service to those who rely on it,” Molly Poppe, Chief Innovation Officer of the Chicago Transit Authority, said in the City Tech Collaborative announcement. “Despite COVID-19, CTA still serves an average of 400,000 riders each and every weekday. Partnering with City Tech on this project will help CTA integrate state-of-the art technology and analytics to serve our customers even better.”

With 1,864 buses that operate on 129 routes and across 1,536 route miles, CTA buses makes 19,237 trips a day to serve 10,768 stops. City Tech and partners will use the Chicago Transit Authority’s 79th Street bus route to test the new occupancy management solutions; with only a 29.5% decrease in average daily ridership since the beginning of the pandemic, the 79th Street bus has experienced the smallest dip in ridership across Chicago.

Providing 1.6 million rides on an average weekday (pre-COVID), the Chicago Transit Authority is the U.S.’s second largest transportation agency; joining City Tech and other technology leaders, the team will demonstrate how integrating existing assets and advanced technologies can improve short-term transit operations while also building a foundation for continued innovation.

“Public transit is the circulatory system of our cities; it’s necessary to get us where we need to be and keep our businesses, economy, and our lives in motion,” said Brenna Berman, CEO of City Tech Collaborative. “Bringing together this team’s capabilities to create a scalable solution is just one piece of increasing our cities’ resilience beyond COVID.”

Key Collaboration

The collaboration will measure the efficacy of various passenger-counting technologies. Existing data sources including automated passenger counting and ticketing/tap data will be joined into a single dashboard alongside data from emerging technology being tested such as lidar, video, and a count of devices seeking Wi-Fi networks connections. No individually identifiable information will be stored or shared, and data collected during the pilot will remain private. In addition, other factors including weather, time of day, and events will inform the developed model to project ridership. Long-term, this comprehensive solution will allow CTA to understand the accuracy of these technologies, make improved operational decisions around bus and train deployment, and guide data publishing for public use such as sharing projected crowding figures per bus at each stop on a route.

Joining City Tech and CTA, Microsoft will support data creation, management, storage, and analytics activities using Microsoft Azure. Genetec, a provider of public safety, operations, and business intelligence solutions, will create the projection models to support proactive demand management, and Intel will support the integration of video and sensor feeds into the operational dashboard through edge computing.

“New applications that help government and transit agencies to be more responsive to the needs of people are an imperative, especially during COVID-19. Redirecting capacity, where and when it’s needed, providing accurate up-to-the-minute schedules is difficult without the right systems and data in place,” said Jeremy Goldberg, Microsoft WWPS director of Critical Infrastructure. “Access to these insights will make government services and transportation work better for people.”

According to Christian Chenard-Lemire, Director of the Cities Application Group of Genetec, “Using demand, historical and real-time data to create a real-time and projected picture of bus occupancy will allow the CTA, and other public transit agencies, to provide flexible transit operations, health-focused responses, and an improved customer experience to its passengers.”

“This solution relies on ingesting complex data from multiple sources,” said Sameer Sharma, General Manager of Smart City and Intelligent Transportation at of Intel. “Edge computing using Intel Core, Xeon and Atom processors will aggregate and interpret this information quickly to enable CTA to understand current conditions as well as be proactive in their responses.”

This project is part of City Tech’s Advanced Mobility Initiative, an effort led by Bosch, HERE Technologies, and Microsoft to create a more seamless and frictionless transportation system with increased accessibility and reach for urban residents. The Initiative includes six impact areas that City Tech will address through solution development, thought leadership, and resident engagement. Learn more about the Advanced Mobility Initiative and this work at www.CityTech.org/Mobility .

City Tech Collaborative is an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. City Tech’s work uses IoT sensing networks, advanced analytics, and urban design to create scalable, market ready solutions. Current initiatives address mobility, healthy cities, connected infrastructure, and emerging growth opportunities. City Tech was born and raised in Chicago, and every city is a potential partner. Visit www.CityTech.org for more information.

Read the article at Security Systems News .

City Tech Pilots New Tools to Enhance Transit Operations, Safety, and Rider Experience

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 15:34:07 GMT

Chicago Transit Authority, Genetec, Intel, and Microsoft Create Predictive Capacity Models to Inform System Operations and Improve Trip Planning

Chicago – Has a city bus ever passed right by as you stood waiting at your stop? Have you ever arrived at a crowded train platform and realized (too late) that you’d walked right into a peak rush? Have you avoided public transit due to COVID concerns, without really knowing whether there’s room for social distancing?

How might public transit be different if system operators and riders had accurate, real-time capacity information?

Building on the Chicago Transit Authority’s (CTA’s) existing measures to keep bus and train service timely, efficient, and safe, City Tech Collaborative (City Tech), Genetec, Intel, and Microsoft are developing new tools to provide real-time insights on CTA occupancy across multiple vehicles. A pilot implementation on CTA’s 79th street bus line will allow CTA to proactively meet route ridership demand, reduce both passenger crowding and wait times, and provide a safe, socially distanced rider experience.

CTA has made heroic efforts to continue transit service despite the shock of COVID-19. Public health guided vehicle capacity limits, combined with unpredictability of ridership as cities close and reopen, have made it difficult to anticipate demand until now. Combining onboard capacity data with projection models will allow CTA to make service decisions even more quickly, such as adding or holding vehicles on a route or not picking up additional passengers once a vehicle reaches maximum capacity. These approaches will help agencies respond to unpredictable ridership promptly – whether due to the pandemic or other unexpected events – while continuing to operate as efficiently as possible.

“Though many public transit agencies reduced routes amid the pandemic, the CTA made no changes to scheduled service in order to continue to provide essential transit service to those who rely on it,” said Molly Poppe, Chief Innovation Officer of the Chicago Transit Authority. “Despite COVID-19, CTA still serves an average of 400,000 riders each and every weekday. Partnering with City Tech on this project will help CTA integrate state-of-the art technology and analytics to serve our customers even better.”

With 1,864 buses that operate on 129 routes and across 1,536 route miles, CTA buses makes 19,237 trips a day to serve 10,768 stops. City Tech and partners will use the Chicago Transit Authority’s 79th Street bus route to test the new occupancy management solutions; with only a 29.5% decrease in average daily ridership since the beginning of the pandemic, the 79th Street bus has experienced the smallest dip in ridership across Chicago.

Providing 1.6 million rides on an average weekday (pre-COVID), the Chicago Transit Authority is the U.S.’s second largest transportation agency; joining City Tech and other technology leaders, the team will demonstrate how integrating existing assets and advanced technologies can improve short-term transit operations while also building a foundation for continued innovation.

“Public transit is the circulatory system of our cities; it’s necessary to get us where we need to be and keep our businesses, economy, and our lives in motion,” said Brenna Berman, CEO of City Tech Collaborative. “Bringing together this team’s capabilities to create a scalable solution is just one piece of increasing our cities’ resilience beyond COVID.”

The collaboration will measure the efficacy of various passenger-counting technologies. Existing data sources including automated passenger counting and ticketing/tap data will be joined into a single dashboard alongside data from emerging technology being tested such as lidar, video, and a count of devices seeking Wi-Fi networks connections. No individually identifiable information will be stored or shared, and data collected during the pilot will remain private. In addition, other factors including weather, time of day, and events will inform the developed model to project ridership. Long-term, this comprehensive solution will allow CTA to understand the accuracy of these technologies, make improved operational decisions around bus and train deployment, and guide data publishing for public use such as sharing projected crowding figures per bus at each stop on a route.

Joining City Tech and CTA, Microsoft will support data creation, management, storage, and analytics activities using Microsoft Azure. Genetec, a provider of public safety, operations, and business intelligence solutions, will create the projection models to support proactive demand management, and Intel will support the integration of video and sensor feeds into the operational dashboard through edge computing.

“New applications that help government and transit agencies to be more responsive to the needs of people are an imperative, especially during COVID-19. Redirecting capacity, where and when it’s needed, providing accurate up-to-the-minute schedules is difficult without the right systems and data in place,” said Jeremy Goldberg, Microsoft WWPS director of Critical Infrastructure. “Access to these insights will make government services and transportation work better for people.”

According to Christian Chenard-Lemire, Director of the Cities Application Group of Genetec, “Using demand, historical and real-time data to create a real-time and projected picture of bus occupancy will allow the CTA, and other public transit agencies, to provide flexible transit operations, health-focused responses, and an improved customer experience to its passengers.”

“This solution relies on ingesting complex data from multiple sources,” said Sameer Sharma, General Manager of Smart City and Intelligent Transportation at of Intel. “Edge computing using Intel Core, Xeon and Atom processors will aggregate and interpret this information quickly to enable CTA to understand current conditions as well as be proactive in their responses.”

This project is part of City Tech’s Advanced Mobility Initiative, an effort led by Bosch, HERE Technologies, and Microsoft to create a more seamless and frictionless transportation system with increased accessibility and reach for urban residents. The Initiative includes six impact areas that City Tech will address through solution development, thought leadership, and resident engagement. Learn more about the Advanced Mobility Initiative and this work at www.CityTech.org/Mobility .

Click here to download press release [PDF].

"Streets of the Future" in Architectural Record

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

This article was originally published at Architectural Record.

Do you think you have the answer to why the chicken crossed the road? As city dwellers worldwide will now tell you, it wasn’t simply to get to the other side. No—that chicken crossed the road because the sidewalk wasn’t wide enough for social distancing in a pandemic . Geographer Daniel Rotsztain demonstrated that last spring in his viral video of collaborator Bobby Gadda trying to navigate in their home city with a 6-foot-radius hoop slung over his shoulders.

The current crisis has highlighted long-standing issues around the livability, safety, equity, and sustainability of streets, while placing new demands on residents, workers, and businesses as they tried to adapt to the spatial implications of the contagion. Cities around the globe responded with a speed unprecedented in peacetime, rolling out a range of adaptive measures. These include reallocating road lanes to extend the width of sidewalks and to provide bike and public-transit routes; improving the safety of crossings by using vertical elements and surface markings (as emptier streets have led to higher speeds, driving up pedestrian fatality rates); and increasing connectivity and mobility options with slow or shared street programs (where vehicle access is limited to local traffic at reduced speeds, and priority given to pedestrians and cyclists). Streets have been opened as space for physical activity, play, and distanced socializing; as outdoor classrooms, health-check zones, and drop-off areas for schools; and as expanded gathering space for cultural, religious, and civic institutions. Businesses have been permitted to use street space for outdoor dining, pickup and delivery, and markets. And special-event provisions have supported the exercise of fundamental civil rights, such as voting and protest.

Underlying these changes is a growing recognition that the street is not just a way of moving traffic around: it is the most significant publicly owned land asset that municipalities have for achieving civic goals. “We need to rethink for what and for whom our streets are put in service,” says Gia Biagi, transportation commissioner for the City of Chicago. “This pandemic has made it possible for Chicagoans to see that more clearly.”

Based on public outreach to better understand neighborhood needs, Chicago has implemented 125 blocks of shared streets and an outdoor dining program in which about 500 establishments are participating at 250 locations across the city. A focus on mobility justice has resulted in pop-up bus-only lanes, which have doubled transit service for some 20,000 essential workers, while also reducing fares. It has brought wider service on what is now the most geographically expansive bike-share program in the country, with the addition of e-bikes for longer distances, and an e-scooter pilot program in priority areas, based on equity, where high numbers of essential workers have faced mobility and connectivity challenges. “It’s a practice-oriented way of working that Covid has enabled, an open-mindedness to testing things,” says Biagi. “It’s local knowledge and local know-how that makes projects work and makes them stick.”

Urbanists see the coronavirus emergency as an extraordinary opportunity for the long-term transformation of streets in cities around the world. Examples from Toronto, New York, and Chicago address key themes that the pandemic has highlighted—including quality of life, mobility justice, and equity of access to public space. They demonstrate solutions that respond to local specifics, and illustrate changes that many city dwellers hope will be made permanent.

In Toronto’s core, one of the biggest issues is the lack of public open space. By the measure of the World Health Organization, green space per person falls far short of the minimum recommended 9 square meters—never mind the ideal of 50. During the short summer, thousands of Torontonians who wanted to be outside gathered unsafely in the downtown’s few small parks. With land for new ones scarce, “if city living is going to be relevant, competitive, and attractive post-Covid,” says Adam Nicklin, a principal at the local urban-design and landscape-architecture firm PUBLIC WORK, “you have to rethink the role of streets.”

PUBLIC WORK has made a bold proposal, with sponsorship from the Michael Young Family Foundation and the urban-sustainability nonprofit Evergreen, to re-envision University Avenue, one of Toronto’s major north–south thoroughfares, as a civic promenade. The plan would consolidate six to eight lanes of vehicular traffic into four lanes on the western side, convert the eastern lanes to bike and pedestrian paths, and use ecological landscaping to link isolated patches of public green space along the route. The concept means taking just 9.5 acres of city-owned asphalt to create a 90-acre linear park. At its north end, the new University Park would connect the provincial parliament, the University of Toronto, and significant cultural institutions. Continuing south through the city’s hospital district, with much-needed places of green respite, it would pass the law courts and adjacent city hall, and finish at the shore of Lake Ontario.

The proposal also calls for the installation of green infrastructure to help mitigate the city’s increasingly severe flooding, and for the acknowledgement of indigenous landscape elements, such as a buried creek, in counterpoint to the colonial memorials that now dot the boulevard.

In addition to improving the quality of life in Toronto’s vertical neighborhoods, the project acknowledges the significance of University Avenue as the site for public protest and demonstration. “In this past year, more than ever before, we have realized the need for gathering places where people can raise their voice,” says Nina Pesavento, project lead for the Young foundation. With the provincial parliament and city hall, University Avenue is the street most symbolic of democracy in Toronto, Nicklin notes. Transforming it into a welcoming public space at the heart of the city, open to all, acknowledges the importance of street space in an equitable society.

The proposal has attracted significant public and planning interest, and the mayor has recently convened a panel to study its feasibility. At a projected cost of just $215 million, and buildable in an estimated five years, in coordination with infrastructure upgrades scheduled to tear up the pavement in 2024 anyway, the project goes after low-hanging fruit, says Nicklin. “Instead of fragmented and disparate little pockets of unrelated land, you have—yes, a street—but also a massive civic park, a ceremonial space, a gathering place, a health district,” he says. “And it doesn’t have any magic tricks up its sleeve, other than just taking what you have and changing the way it works.”

A similar approach underlies a grand vision for Manhattan based on the superblock concept that Barcelona has been pioneering to wide acclaim. Not to be confused with the disconnected and monolithic superblocks of the mid-20th century that Jane Jacobs decried in The Death and Life of Great American Cities , the Barcelona model creates nine-block squares of traffic-calmed and shared streets, with transit connections and through-traffic at the perimeters. In 2016, WXY Architecture + Urban Design floated an idea for how the concept might be adapted for 30 or so blocks in New York’s financial district; in 2018, designers at Perkins Eastman made a case for applying the idea to the Manhattan grid more broadly. Most recently, WXY’s extrapolations from the city’s swiftly implemented pandemic programs, such as Open Streets and Open Restaurants, have led them to consider longer-term objectives—including climate response, equity, and traffic safety, as well as public health—and reintroduce the superblock concept.

Taking the Manhattan core as a starting point, and referencing planning initiatives such as New York’s 2019 Streets Master Plan legislation, as well as analyzing existing and planned pedestrian, cycling, and transit networks, the proposal envisions a network of superblock modules, each consisting of eight Manhattan blocks. As in Barcelona, through-traffic is held to the perimeter, where dedicated bus- and bikeways enhance connectivity. Interior streets are designed as slow streets where vehicle access is limited to local traffic, with the central interior roadway becoming a pedestrian zone that serves as more of a front yard, similar to the Dutch woonerf , or living street. “The superblock model is attractive both for transportation and for creating a community within the grid,” says David Vega-Barachowitz, director of urban design at WXY. He sees the proposal as setting the table for the city administration to think big over the next decade about reallocating street space for more diverse uses, and turning the piecemeal, bottom-up initiatives of the summer of 2020 into a coherent transformation that advances the city’s long-standing goals.

Experience with unrelated temporary street modifications during the pandemic can help inform the phased rollout of a more comprehensive plan. One of the most significant insights to emerge from a WXY initiative—to create a series of parklets, curbside activations, and covered structures along the sidewalk of Strivers Row in Harlem—pertains to the process of designing, constructing, and operating a project that’s relevant and meaningful to the community, says Vega-Barachowitz. “Neighborhood partners play a critical role, not just in creating a design vision and an ideal spatial hierarchy, but in creating the place,” he says. While that experience shows that success depends on strong local organizations to helm the process and follow through, it raises the need to ensure that a lack of such organizational capacity to maintain public space does not become a barrier to equitable distribution of such desirable new spaces throughout the city.

WXY is continuing to develop the superblock proposal in collaboration with Sam Schwartz Engineering, and is working with advocacy partners to disseminate the vision to stakeholders across the city. With a new Department of Transportation (DOT) commissioner for the municipality and strong New York representation at the federal DOT, Vega-Barachowitz says the group sees a strategic opportunity to accelerate this kind of vision and to realize pilots and capital projects that will further its goals.

One of the central challenges of transforming a streetscape entails balancing the needs of multiple users and functions in a limited road-width. Designing for the ability to serve different uses at different times can help optimize streets and enhance their value to the community. For example, a curbside lane might serve as a dedicated busway during morning rush hours, become a midday greenway (with adjacent rain or community gardens) to facilitate neighborhood connections to parks or waterfronts via bike and other micro-mobility modes, and combine with adjacent lanes in the evenings or on weekends to allow for outdoor eating, recreation, or festivals.

An emerging concept supporting this type of flexibility is the modular lane, says Francesco Cerroni, mobility leader at Buro Happold, where the idea is being developed. Modular lanes use low-tech solutions like pavement markings and colored paint, along with medium-tech tactics including pavement-embedded lighting and hydraulic bollards. Innovations such as internet-connected sensors and smart curbs (where technology can enhance the varied and efficient use of in-demand zones) can also contribute. Such designation and information strategies, all of which now exist in various stages of use, allow modular lanes to be activated on demand, and modified with the season, day, or hour. “With good management of these elements,” says Cerroni, “we can create a successful story for redistributing and reusing the street space.”

As the technology of transportation advances, experts widely agree that it should be employed to facilitate good design rather than vice versa. SOM and the technology-based innovation nonprofit City Tech Collaborative recently teamed up to develop a set of ideas, with input from multiple stakeholders, on how streets in Chicago could evolve over the next 10 to 30 years. Design concepts, modeled on that city’s typical street types, take account of new technologies such as access to real-time information on personal devices about transit service and on-demand cars; innovations in equipment, like autonomous vehicles and faster telecommunications; mobility trends, including electrification and the rise of micro-transit; and functional priorities: freight and logistics, public transit, personal vehicles, cycling, and walking. Arising from these considerations come a set of predictions, strategies, components, and case studies for tailoring solutions to neighborhood conditions. While the study doesn’t take Covid into account explicitly, “resilience depends on flexibility and adaptability, which are relevant to a pandemic as well as other stressors,” says Christopher Hall, urban-strategy leader in SOM’s City Design Practice.

Besides the future function of Chicago’s streets, SOM is also considering the city as a whole. Looking at mapping and overlays of the greenways and boulevards that were part of Daniel Burnham’s influential 1909 Plan of Chicago (which was only partially implemented), “you start to see a green weave emerge that could put everyone in Chicago within a five- to ten-minute bike ride of a park,” says Doug Voigt, head of SOM’s City Design Practice. Using the city’s boulevards and abandoned rail lines this way could quickly mitigate Chicago’s inequities around access to green space and build on the city’s pandemic responses by adding connections to its centralized, radial mobility network. The “green weave” would also incorporate stormwater management and improved habitat, adding further value to the public realm.

These ideas are influencing government decisions regarding ongoing city-led rail and trail initiatives, as well as the use and quality of streets as public spaces in response to the pandemic, Hall and Voigt say. The research is also expected to inform discussions about how anticipated federal infrastructure funding could be used to develop Chicago’s streets.

During Covid-19, street changes have happened fast, and they’ve provided momentum for long-term change. Significant proposals like the ones from Toronto, New York, and Chicago are raising awareness of fresh possibilities and priorities for underserved neighborhoods. “The pandemic has brought to the fore the appreciation and understanding of how important our streets are to the livability of our communities,” says Hall. All of which makes this an exciting time in the history of streets—and for anyone with a reason for crossing them.

See City Tech + Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's design exploration, "Streets of the Future."

Read the article at Architectural Record.

Non-Profit Boards Have Imperative Need to Change

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

City Tech's Angela E.L. Barnes Shares Her Experience in the Non-Profit World

This article was originally published on Center on Halsted's blog . Angela E.L. Barnes serves as Center on Halsted Board Chair.

Aly Kassam-Remtulla’s January 29, 2021 Chicago Tribune editorial, “Nonprofits need to catch up on diversifying their boards,” poignantly validated what I’ve personally experienced — the nonprofit world has struggled to change in the past 27 years. In it, Mr. Kassam-Remtulla states: “A 2017 survey of 1,500 U.S.-based nonprofits showed that 84% of board members and 90% of board chairs were white. According to the reports, racial diversity on corporate boards had increased from 12.8% in 2010 to 16.1% in 2018. However, the 2017 figures in the nonprofit sector were nearly identical to 1994 bench marks.” Chicago Tribune

I was asked to serve on charitable boards very early in my professional career. Thus, I have spent the better part of the last 25 years serving on nonprofit boards and advisory committees in the city of Chicago. Invariably, these boards have been comprised of significantly more senior, wealthier and, predominately, white members. As a corporate attorney, I leveraged my professional experience and knowledge to create a comfort level for myself. I understood the legal obligations and governance expectations of board service and with this expertise, I knew that I added value beyond being Black and a woman. Much later in my years of service, I hit the diversity trifecta by also being openly gay.

My brown skin magnetically attracted the approving gaze of other board members who applauded the miniscule movement toward unstated racial, gender, and ethnic goals. The statement of “more” was often used as a barometer of success. As in, we now have more women, more minorities, and therefore, more time to effect change . Unfortunately, “more” often meant two or three Black or Latinx board members out of twenty-five. My mostly silent ruminations focused on the paucity of board members who could genuinely speak to the needs of the communities served. Every boardroom utterance of “they” was triggering and made me long for “they” to be at the table as we discussed policy and strategic direction. After several years of listening and learning, I finally asked the correct question: “Why aren’t “they” here?” Why is it an acceptable paradigm to establish a criterion for board membership that has a clearly disparate impact on the racial diversity of board membership and eliminates any significant income diversity? Who designed this paradigm? “Rather than waiting for external pressure to catalyze change, nonprofit boards can take steps to dismantle institutional racism.” — Kassam-Remtulla

In my experience, razor focus has always been on the individual giving capacity of board members. Read money. Money and the capacity to give is a sensitive topic. Historically, I have encouraged nonprofit boards to reexamine exceedingly high giving requirements. Requiring board members to contribute $10,000 or more for the privilege of sitting on a charitable board is clearly out of reach for most Americans. It is completely out of reach for many residents of the communities these organizations serve. Unsurprisingly, my suggestion was frequently dismissed by white board members; however, it was also met with resistance from minority board consultants who were hired to assist the organization in meeting board diversity goals. For many years I did not understand this reaction. So, what was I missing? It turns out I was missing a nuance that I am now committed to acknowledging.

While there are a handful of black unicorns, the uber wealthy African Americans, who can give significant amounts to various charities and who are, laughably, asked to sit on every charitable board (large or small); other African American (inclusive of the greater Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) community) give in different ways. It is challenging to ask a philanthropic Black person to give $10,000 or more to an organization predominately run by white people and governed by a predominately white board when that individual already contributes a significant amount of money, resources, and time to their church and to the various organizations in their community that may be small but are making significant differences that can be observed daily (e.g., food pantries, women’s shelters, after school programs). Given historic inequities that have critically hampered intergenerational wealth and continuing systemic racism that impacts access to capital for BIPOC communities, many people of color need to factor in financial reserves for family members that may need a little help meeting rent, car payments, or even capital to sustain businesses when lenders are unwilling.

On August 31, 2021, Chicago Foundation for Women hosted “Why People Give: A Focus on Black Philanthropy” ( CFW-Panel Discussion ). This panel discussion gave eloquent words to what many BIPOC communities already know. Many African Americans have the resources to give; they give generously to support their communities on a regular basis; and any suggestion that they do not is rightfully met with immediate scorn.

This may all sound as if a formidable rain cloud has hovered over the entirety of my charitable board service. To be clear, overwhelmingly, my board appointments have allowed me to serve the most remarkable organizations. I have been honored to help in any way possible to advance the critical missions of these organizations. The executive directors have been tremendous warriors, providing services and hope to many Chicago communities. I have learned life lessons from incredibly committed people, some of whom I am honored to call my friends. That being said, my observations of tokenism and glacial efforts by nonprofit boards to reflect the communities they served have solidified my current opinion on the deliberate steps nonprofit boards must take to advance racial equity and inclusion.

If your nonprofit board is not comprised of a majority of members from the communities it serves, it probably is not serving those communities as effectively as it could. Like it or not, boards heavily influence the strategic direction of an organization. Generally, executive directors strategize and prioritize based on the implicit biases of board members.

How should nonprofits diversify their boards? Just do it! Do it aggressively, authentically, and honestly. Seriously, if there are no current board members that can identify a pipeline of talented, caring, philanthropic, BIPOC individuals willing to give their time and treasure (in various forms) to an organization supporting the needs of underserved communities, then think about immediately reconstituting your board. The composition of those who sit around the table reflects the values of the organization. The criteria established to fill those board seats matter. Organizations should apply their racial equity and inclusion tool to the methods used to fill board seats.

At Center on Halsted, where I am honored to currently serve as Chair of the board of directors, our BIPOC board membership increased by 105% from fiscal year 2019 to current fiscal year 2021. This increase reflects representation from the Black, Latinx, and Asian communities. But we have much more to do. The entire organization has been working to better reflect the geographic, cultural, racial and gender diversity of the LGBTQ community and not only reflect white cisgender gay men. A board cannot genuinely ask its chief executive officer to make racial equity and inclusion a priority if the board itself is not committed to racial equity and inclusion.

Therein lies the rub — nonprofit boards will never be sufficiently diverse and inclusive until they stop their hollow handwringing. Challenge the paradigm of board service that has been accepted. Ask talented and committed members of BIPOC communities to join your boards and be honest about why you are asking. In parallel, make the systemic changes necessary to be authentically diverse and inclusive. “If nonprofits hope to make progress on addressing institutional racism, their boards will have to take a leadership role on diversity. This will require concrete and realistic goals, accountability for progress, and a shift in who sits around the board table. Our democracy will not be able to thrive until its very building blocks — which include nonprofit organizations — are thoroughly transformed”. — Kassam-Remtulla.

Communities that depend on the leadership of nonprofit boards to guide the delivery of goods and services effectively, efficiently, and empathetically into their communities do not have another 27 years to patiently wait for nonprofit boards to change.

Read this article at Center on Halsted's blog.

About the Author: Angela E.L. Barnes serves as General Counsel and Director of Legal Affairs & Growth Initiatives for City Tech Collaborative and Center on Halsted's Board Chair. Angela is a corporate lawyer, risk management and compliance professional, and a life-long southside Chicagoan. She is a passionate advocate for providing services and resources to underserved geographic and demographic communities. Angela has proudly served on the board of directors for numerous Chicago area charitable organizations and is a member of the Racial Justice Diversity Committee for the Northern District of Illinois.

Fork in the Road

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

In Chicago, Illinois, USA, the City Tech Collaborative urban solutions accelerator launched the Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab, a publicprivate partnership where teams help reconsider the future of the parking lot. The first challenge: 353,031 square meters (3.8 million square feet) of underground parking garages beneath the city’s Millennium Park.

“With 85 years remaining on a long-term operating agreement, Millennium Garages has a vested interest in the future of parking,” says Jamie Ponce, who leads strategic partnerships for the Lab. “Together with other parking facilities, leading management companies, technology providers, policymakers and other urban innovators, Millennium Garages and the Innovation Lab are working to integrate parking into broader transportation systems, improve customer experience, strengthen operations and explore new space uses.”

Read the full article at Project Management Institute .

Video Recap- Curbside Management: Understanding Disruption & Demand-Based Responses

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Missed our presentation at IPMI's Mobility & Innovation Summit? Watch the recording of the event below.

About the event:

City Tech joined the International Parking & Mobility Institute 's 2021 Mobility & Innovation Summit on February 24-25, 2021

The space between city sidewalks and streets has become a battle ground for the future of urban mobility. Curbs are increasingly essential to emerging mobility and logistics business models, yet antiquated curb management practices are holding back exciting new industries. Traditional uses of curb space in cities–including buses, taxis, freight deliveries, bike lanes, and parking–now compete with ride-share, same-day deliveries, dockless vehicles, and other new transportation modes and services. This competition creates bottlenecks at and around the curb as well as safety concerns for pedestrians and drivers trying to navigate crowded streets. A lack of curb space translates to a lack of parking and/or loading zones, which disrupts nearby business by complicating the customer experience and limiting the efficiency of commercial deliveries and general operations. Modern needs and opportunities stand to transform curbs from inert infrastructure into dynamic and valuable nodes in our urban transportation systems.

This panel presentation gathered mobility, data and analytics, modeling, and infrastructure experts to explore solutions to help cities and their constituents understand, allocate, and manage curbside space more effectively.

Watch City Tech's session, "Curbside Management: Understanding Disruption & Demand-Based Responses" below.

Moderator:
Meera Raja | Senior Manager, Solution Design & Program Management, City Tech Collaborative

Panelists:
Jason Schrieber | Senior Principal, Stantec
Ann Lin | Product Owner, Teralytics
Gerhard Boiciuc | Global Product Manager, HERE Technologies

Click here for all IPMI Mobility & Innovation recordings.

About City Tech Collaborative (City Tech): City Tech is an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. City Tech’s work uses IoT sensing networks, advanced analytics, and urban design to create scalable, market ready solutions. Current initiatives address advanced mobility, healthy cities, connected infrastructure, and emerging growth opportunities. City Tech was born and raised in Chicago, and every city is a potential partner. Visit www.CityTech.org and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn .

Video Recap- Rising Together: The Story of Chicago's Innovation Ecosystem

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Missed us present at Chicago Innovation's panel event? Check out the video below!

About the event:

City Tech's CEO Brenna Berman joins Chicago Innovation 's panel event on February 11, 2021. "Rising Together: The Story of Chicago's Innovation Ecosystem" explores world-changing innovations, unexpected collaborations, big risks, big exits, and big imaginations. Featuring panelists who have led innovation in Chicago, this event dives into the narrative of the formation, growth and potential future of the Chicago Innovation Ecosystem.

Watch the panel discussion below.

Speakers:

Brenna Berman | CEO, City Tech Collaborative
Hardik Bhatt | GM of Digital Governance, VCs and Startups at Amazon Web Services
Matt McCall | Partner at Pritzker Group Venture Capital.
Maria Wynne | CEO of Leadership Greater Chicago, and
Sam Yagan | CEO, ShopRunner
Andrea Zopp | Managing Director, Cleveland Avenue

Curb Appeal: Data to Understand and Manage These Valuable Assets

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 20:08:41 GMT

The space between streets and sidewalks has become the hottest new real estate. The competition for curbside space is fierce; from delivery to drop-off and all the modes and activity in between, everyone wants a piece of the curb.

Traditional street parking and freight space are battling an influx of new mobility modes, resulting in curbside disruption. Now more than ever, cities need to responsively manage these spaces to balance the competing objectives of communities, business needs, and local transportation priorities. The right intervention can rationalize and optimize this valuable asset to prevent congestion and achieve equity and environmental goals, all with a potential for new revenue opportunities for cities.

Cities have multiple paths to manage curbs, but a key piece has continued to be missing from this discussion: understanding real-time demand at the curb.

Before building out proposed interventions, we need to understand activity at the curb: what specific curb space is currently designed to do and the actual demand for each space. Understanding this mismatch by modeling curbside activities can enable new tools for curb management; data and solutions on time- and location-specific demands will inform how to best allocate and monetize the space.

This exercise can also inform a dynamic management business model that accounts for proportional use and value. With a demand-driven model as a foundation, cities can actively test and implement tools that dynamically manage curb spaces, relieve curbside pressures, and create efficiencies for users. As activity and demand continue to shift due to either intentional interventions or mobility modes and trends that arise, refreshing data and models will be key to creating dynamic tools that allow for flexibility.

With this type of approach of first modeling activity and value and then piloting an intervention, cities can build robust data-driven plans to deploy flexible management, dynamic pricing, and forward-looking urban design solutions.

Meera Raja is senior manager of solution design & program development at City Tech Collaborative. She will present on this topic during IPMI’s 2021 Mobility & Innovation Summit online, February 24-25– click here for details and to register.

Read this article on IPMI's blog.

About the Author: Meera Raja is the Manager of Solution Design & Program Development at City Tech Collaborative. In this role, Meera works as a member of the City Solutions team to design and execute new programs and services. Meera also leads City Tech's 1,600+ member Civic User Testing Group (CUTgroup) in Chicago and coordinates expansion of the CUTgroup model to additional cities across North America.

Prior to joining the City Tech team, Meera was the Associate Director of Research Innovation at University of Chicago, where she developed strategies to advance nascent and complex research. Meera was previously a consultant for ZS Associates, working on data-driven solutions for the pharmaceutical space.

Meera completed her Ph.D. and Postdoc in Chemistry from Northwestern University and received her undergraduate degree in the same field from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

City Tech Winter Update 2020: Working through the Wait

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 14:20:19 GMT

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You Have (Almost) Arrived at Your Destination: Continuing the Map from Outdoor to Indoor Spaces

Wed, 16 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Maps – whether etched in clay, paper, or the digital versions we pull up on our phones – have been tools across empires, civilizations, and cities to make sense of the world. While most roads, sidewalks, and trails have been mapped repeatedly for users to navigate and chart their paths, maps have historically ended abruptly once entering an indoor space. This phenomenon treats indoor spaces as destinations or landmarks rather than a continuation of one’s journey. In reality, travelers often need to navigate numerous entrances and exits, stairs and elevator banks, and multiple floors to reach their final destination.

Mapping indoor spaces, such as buildings and other enclosed structures, can link the outdoor and indoor worlds and make our journeys much easier to navigate. This effort also lays the groundwork for many new robotic and autonomous technologies to use the seamless transition between the natural and physical built environments for training AI, augmented and virtual reality, and other innovative technologies down the road.

The most immediate impact of indoor mapping is solving common wayfinding issues. There’s perhaps no greater example of a complex indoor space in North America than the Millennium Garages in downtown Chicago, which also happens to be the testbed for City Tech Collaborative’s Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab . Stretched across 3.8 million square feet (roughly 660 football fields!) and providing access to the heart of Chicago’s commercial and cultural center, the number one challenge garage users face is being able to navigate to and from Millennium Garages’ 36 gated entries/exits and hundreds of pedestrian access points across four interconnected garages to the many neighboring destinations.

“Visitors choose Millennium Garages because we are located right in downtown Chicago and connect to businesses, tourist destinations, and local shopping,” said Issac Riggs, COO of Millennium Garages. “However, with an expansive and connected underground network such as the Garages, traditional signage can only go so far to point people in the right direction. We’re looking forward to solving this challenge with City Tech.”

Mapping garage networks not only solves wayfinding obstacles for visitors, but it also sets the stage for the Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab’s other goals of transforming parking facilities into multi-modal hubs, finding creative uses for large indoor spaces, and to test and validate parking technology solutions that can be scaled.

This is where HERE Technologies steps in. As a worldwide leader in connected location services, HERE is bridging the outdoor and indoor worlds through a single mapping platform. HERE has already helped thousands of building owners across 90 countries to map their indoor spaces. Example building types include shopping malls, airports, corporate campuses, industrial plants and complex parking garages. Equipped with HERE Indoor Maps, building owners can optimize space usage, manage and track assets and offer wayfinding solutions that seamlessly connect the outdoor and indoor worlds. Given the capabilities of HERE, City Tech partnered with Millennium Garages and HERE to create a digital indoor map of the Millennium Garages’ Lakeside Garage as a foundational effort for City Tech’s Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab. These maps were created with the intent to solve wayfinding challenges of today and push the needle towards advanced applications for the maps, including incorporation into future parking and mobility solutions.

"The maps created provide a true end-to-end, location enabled, personal user experience throughout the journey,” said Gerhard Boiciuc, Senior Product Manager at HERE Technologies. “They also serve as the location fabric to create enhanced wayfinding and functions as integrated car parking and EV charging recommendations.”

Millennium Garages’ complexity provides examples of wayfinding challenges experienced in cities globally; with its size and central location, Millennium Garages serves multiple user groups including tourists, nearby residents, and downtown employees. Any solutions to wayfinding in the garages – and any large indoor space – also need to take into consideration the user-specific wayfinding challenges facing each of these groups such as non-native English speakers and people with disabilities. To address these challenges in Millennium Garages and consider scalable opportunities for indoor wayfinding, City Tech hosted a roundtable of parking and mobility experts along with community and disability advocates in November 2020 to incorporate user-centered design feedback into the development process for the indoor maps.

Cities must be accessible for everyone; therefore, it is critical that the disability community have a voice and be reflected in accessible wayfinding. Representatives from Access Living, a Center for Independent Living, noted the challenges facing Chicagoans with disabilities, specifically mentioned accessibility features and providing real-time service updates for elevator and escalator closures for those that need to plan their journeys in advance.

“As a blind woman, wayfinding in general can be really challenging,” said Ashley Eisenmenger, Public Relations Coordinator at Access Living. “Having the ability to receive real-time updates and information would make the process of getting from point A to point B much smoother.”

The Grant Park Advisory Council gave insights on the need to direct garage users to the parking spots that are closest to their intended destination. In the case of a special event, these parking recommendations could help ease traffic in and out of the garage. Choose Chicago echoed the need for further knowledge sharing, specifically between tourists and the sites they plan to visit.

Looking beyond parking, we also anticipate changes to the way we interact within indoor spaces in a pandemic and post-pandemic world ; this necessitates an even more urgent need for our collective understanding of how to navigate indoor spaces and create a baseline for technology to aid these customer-focused responses.

City Tech Collaborative will use insights from the roundtable and the created maps in future solutions within the Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab to improve visitors’ journeys, set the stage for additional solutions, and better integrate the parking industry as an expansion of mobility systems in cities worldwide. Parking facilities have infinite potential – whether serving as flexible business space, freight and logistics centers, or multi-modal transit hubs, mapping indoor spaces lays a foundation for new solutions to connect parking facilities to the outdoor world.

Join the Millennium Gateway Innovation Lab to shape the future of the parking industry and urban mobility. We’re integrating parking more fully into urban transportation systems, developing tech-enabled solutions for smart infrastructure management, and cultivating value-added services and space uses. Reach out to Collaborate@CityTech.org to learn more and build upon our existing work.

Racial Equity & Inclusion in Solution Development: City Tech’s Method to Meaningful Work

Tue, 15 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Accelerating City Tech’s Racial Equity & Inclusion Work

We love cities for many reasons, but their complexity and diversity keep us interested most of all. City Tech’s mission is to accelerate technology-enabled solutions to make cities happier, healthier, and more productive. “Healthier” and “productive” seem clear, such as providing health data through the Chicago Health Atlas or making construction sites more efficient; but “happier” is not as obvious of a metric as the others. Cities are more than just buildings and industries; cities are made up of people all from different backgrounds with diverse experiences, and none of us can thrive – reach happiness, healthiness, and productivity – while racial, social, and economic inequity prevent everyone from contributing to and benefitting from a city’s success.

Through our solution development , City Tech reimagines cities as places where technology fuels equitable innovation, inclusion, and engagement. But we want to hold ourselves accountable to this belief.

Bringing together cross-sector partners and taking multiple views into account is our specialty; we include all stakeholders in the process of developing solutions to complex urban problems. Racial equity and inclusion are critical when developing these solutions for cities, but it can be challenging to formally and authentically incorporate in solution development.

To tackle this challenge, City Tech adopted a racial equity and inclusion curriculum for our team, as well as developed a process and tool to strengthen racial equity throughout our work.

COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on communities of color coupled with summer 2020’s spotlight on racial unrest urged us to accelerate and expand our existing racial equity and inclusion work and implement a formal process. We knew that standard diversity training was not going to be enough; we had to create a structure that helped us understand and evaluate our work. As Ben Hecht, CEO of Living Cities, wrote for the Harvard Business Review , “It’s clear that the suite of diversity and inclusion tools and practices that went mainstream in the ‘90s are grossly insufficient for racial equity work. Instead of driving fundamental changes in organizations, they largely focus on ‘velcro-ing’ new guidelines, practices, or programs onto the existing structures and culture of the workplace in an attempt to help employees of color better ‘fit in’ and succeed.”

We understand that many organizations may be in a similar situation: wanting to act, but unsure how to move from learning to action. Our goal was to create an actionable and sustainable process to make our work equitable and inclusive, and we hope our experience can provide an example for others.

Understanding Racism

Our team benefits from various backgrounds ranging from city government to urban planning to mental health, but that is not enough to make us experts in racial equity and inclusion. To effectively incorporate racial equity and inclusion into our solution development process, our team first set out to have a comprehensive understanding of the issues and develop a shared language.

Pooling our knowledge, researching examples, and leveraging existing tools, we created an interactive team curriculum to set our baseline understanding of race and racism. We recognize that everyone has different lived experiences and various comfort levels, so we emphasized creating a neutral space to introduce topics, encourage dialogue, and allow room for authentic conversations. Rather than call someone “out” for saying something problematic, we made it a priority to call others “in” and promote conversation. These expectations allowed the team to read and openly discuss publications about race as well as develop a more thorough understanding of our country’s history, present-day racism, and racism’s continuing impact. The team’s commitment to learning meant that each person was available, present, and participatory in every conversation.

Creating a Racial Equity Tool

With this baseline set, City Tech began translating this understanding of racial equity and inclusion to using levers – strategic elements of an organization that, when leveraged, build momentum towards a Race Equity Culture – that are tailored to be more relevant to our organization’s work and culture. This led to the development of a tool that allows us to review our work through a racial equity and inclusion lens.

Adapted from the Government Alliance on Race & Equity ’s Racial Equity Toolkit , City Tech’s racial equity tool is comprised of tailored checklists that can be deployed throughout our solution development process; although simple to use, it has deeper impact in that it helps us consider the opportunities, community impact, and accountability to assess that each project is equitable and inclusive. This tool allows us to review our solutions from development to closeout and create a racial equity plan tailored to each solution. The project can be reevaluated at any point as the work progresses or new concerns arise. Following project completion, the tool contains a section to evaluate and communicate the results as well as internal scoring so we can continue to review City Tech’s portfolio and incorporate racial equity and inclusion as a core aspect throughout all of our work.

Taking Action

Incorporation of this training and tool is not a novel concept. We, however, felt it was important to create a structure to move from ideation to understanding to action.

While racial equity and inclusion training took place over four multi-hour sessions attended by the entire team, our work has just begun. Racial equity and inclusion work is more than a training; it is creating a culture that allows our team to ask hard questions, call each other in, and understand that we each go through life with different struggles.

Through our curriculum, we have developed a shared language and understanding of race and racism, as well as evaluated opportunities to improve the equitability and inclusivity of our work. Our process will be critical in keeping us consistent and bring us closer to our mission of making cities happier, healthier, and more productive.

Additional Reading

City Tech staff read a curated list of materials that speak to racial equity and inclusion generally, as well as specific pieces that help narrow on the topic within workplaces and cities, respectively. We recommend the following readings as just the tip of the iceberg:

America Wasn’t a Democracy, Until Black Americans Made It One [ New York Times ]
Awake to Work to Work [ Equity in the Center ]
Between the World and Me [ Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic ]
The Birth of the New American Aristocracy [ The Atlantic ]
The Coronavirus and the Cities We Need [ New York Times ]
How Segregation Caused Your Traffic Jam [ New York Times ]
Moving Beyond Diversity Toward Racial Equity [ Harvard Business Review ]
Racial Equity Toolkit [ Government Alliance on Race & Equity ]
Removing Barriers to Healthy Cities [ City Tech Collaborative ]
U.S. Businesses Must Take Meaningful Action Against Racism [ Harvard Business Review ]
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack [ Peggy McIntosh ]
White Fragility [ Robin DiAngelo ]

About the Authors:
Angela E.L. Barnes serves as the General Counsel and Director of Legal Affairs & Growth Initiatives for City Tech Collaborative. She handles all legal matters and provides strategic leadership for the company’s growth. Angela is co-lead development of City Tech’s racial equity and inclusion framework and she is also spearheading City Tech’s Healthy Cities Initiative which will address multidimensional barriers facing communities that struggle to achieve positive health outcomes, ultimately producing and deploying a data analytics tool accessible to community organizations, governments, and other community health stakeholders.

Angela is a passionate advocate for providing services and resources to underserved geographic and demographic communities has extensive. Her non-profit board service includes, current Board Chair for the Center on Halsted, former Board Chair for SGA Youth & Family Services, immediate past Board Chair for Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (current Executive Committee member).

Angela was awarded her Juris Doctor from Columbia University and Bachelor of Arts from Wellesley College. She is a Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional (CCEP) and a member of the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE).

Meera Raja is the Senior Manager of Solution Design and Program Development at City Tech Collaborative. In this role, Meera works as a member of the City Solutions team to design and execute new programs and services. Meera also leads City Tech's 1,600+ -member Civic User Testing Group (CUTgroup) in Chicago and coordinates expansion of the CUTgroup model to additional cities across North America. Prior to joining the City Tech team, Meera was the Associate Director of Research Innovation at University of Chicago, where she developed strategies to advance nascent and complex research. Meera was previously a consultant for ZS Associates, working on data-driven solutions for the pharmaceutical space. Meera completed her Ph.D. and Postdoc in Chemistry from Northwestern University and received her undergraduate degree in the same field from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

Laura Vecchetti Laura Vecchetti is the Communications and Grants Associate at City Tech Collaborative. As a member of the Partnerships and Communications Team, Laura works to connect City Tech with the community. Prior to joining the team, Laura was the Development and Communications Coordinator at Nexus Onarga Academy, a national nonprofit providing specialized mental health services for children, youth, and families, where she helped secure funding for therapeutic programs. In all her roles, Laura enjoys elevating nonprofits’ missions through connection and storytelling. Laura holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Relations from Bradley University.

About City Tech Collaborative (City Tech): City Tech is an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. City Tech’s work uses IoT sensing networks, advanced analytics, and urban design to create scalable, market ready solutions. Current initiatives address advanced mobility, healthy cities, connected infrastructure, and emerging growth opportunities. City Tech was born and raised in Chicago, and every city is a potential partner. Visit www.CityTech.org and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn .

Finding a Space of Your Own…Together

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

New Tech Solutions Help Manage Shared Urban Spaces During COVID and Beyond

“The people that I liked and had not met went to the big cafes because they were lost in them and no one noticed them and they could be alone in them and be together.” ― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Would you decide to visit a different park if you knew your favorite picnic spots were taken? Or take a different bus route to get a seat on your way to work? As a business owner, would you change the layout of your store to provide a better experience for your customers?

COVID-19 has raised the stakes for managing shared spaces, but the importance – and value – of proactive capacity management predates the coronavirus and is certain to outlive it.

Even before fluctuating lockdowns and restrictions on public gatherings, it was difficult to predict just how busy shared spaces might be. From public transit, to parks, to entertainment venues and public buildings, facility operators must manage a delicate balance of safety, compliance, comfort, and visitor experience. Public and semi-public spaces face the complex task of monitoring real-time occupancy and using visitor behavior to inform facility design, management, and operations. In the case of public transportation, service changes and fluctuating rider schedules pose unique risks and operational challenges.

Successfully reopening the public realm calls for technology, design, and policy solutions as well as strong communications and engagement to enable informed, responsible choices.

Fortunately, existing technology offers the raw capabilities to inform smarter facility management and user behaviors; integrating these with lower-cost, lower-tech capabilities will create more comprehensive solutions to manage capacity. Many spaces already have the necessary foundation to build these solutions.

Automated monitoring and analytics such as sensors and cameras can help identify crowding and other potential health risks
Facility design and operations can provide tactical physical and operational design strategies that are low-cost and low-tech to control access to and crowding within public spaces
Actionable information-sharing can inform decision making, encourage healthy behaviors, and improve user experience through real-time communication prior to and upon arrival at a space

These tools can help cities manage capacity to improve the health and experience of visitors no matter the size or type of space.

Building on these tools, we are tackling capacity management challenges in shared complex spaces, outdoor spaces, and on transit through scalable solutions and creative collaboration.

City Tech and our partners are approaching capacity management through four interrelated strategies to integrate existing assets and advanced technologies to improve short-term operations while building a foundation for continued innovation:

1. Data Collection & Analytics

First, we must have the tools to create, manage, and analyze capacity data. Creating a real-time and predicted picture of space capacity and, more importantly, density, allows for improved, dynamic operations as well as health-focused customer engagement. Using data to understand how people move through space sets the baseline for additional solutions.

2. Flexible Trip Planning

Equipped with this data, organizations can create communications, data-sharing, and privacy guidelines to help visitors better plan their trips and make decisions before they arrive. Although this data will be most immediately useful in addressing social distancing, these same tools can help us answer the questions we had before the pandemic: will I get a seat on the train this morning? Is there enough space on the bus for my baby stroller? Is the beach too crowded, and is there another less-crowded option nearby?

Thus far, we have relied on businesses and space managers to minimize capacity and density; flexible trip planning apps and communications empower individuals to participate in this process before they even leave their homes. As we noted in an earlier roundtable on managing transit congestion , however, this shift must be a large-scale behavior change.

3. Physical & Operational Design Changes

Once people have arrived, space managers need a way to provide cues to better manage the capacity and flow of visitors in any given space; this becomes especially important in complex indoor spaces. After analyzing patterns, managers might decide to change the physical space of an area, such as limiting entry options or changing the direction of foot traffic; perhaps a grocery store changes an aisle layout to avoid bottle necks. This data can also inform non-design behavioral cues; is one museum exhibit gathering too many people? Timing the opening of another room may help move people along. Taking feedback from these changes can help predict behavior and more proactively manage visitor flow and safety without sacrificing the quality of the experience.

For transit operators, predictive data and proactive demand modeling will help transit agencies make service decisions quickly – such as adding or holding vehicles on a route, or only dropping off passengers once they have reached capacity – thus providing a better and safer experience for riders.

4. Civic Engagement

Data collection, new trip planning options, and physical and operational design changes will all have a direct impact the public. Public-facing technology must serve all residents and be as accessible and as user-friendly as possible. City Tech deploys a broad resident engagement strategy to gather feedback on the design, development, and deployment of new technologies, which will be especially critical as we transition from COVID-specific capacity responses to long-term innovation.

Looking Forward

Although coronavirus is to blame for many of our concerns about capacity in indoor spaces, outdoor spaces, and on transit, it has also encouraged innovation to long-term concerns. Building on cities’ current assets and implementing new solutions will not only manage space capacity and density to address health concerns, but they will also solve lingering problems and provide a better experience for visitors overall. Some might take a big shift – such as planning and adjusting your trip based on crowdedness – while others behavioral cues you might not even notice.

Read more about City Tech's capacity management work here .

About the Author: Laura Vecchetti is the Communications and Grants Associate at City Tech Collaborative. As a member of the Partnerships and Communications Team, Laura works to connect City Tech with the community. Prior to joining the team, Laura was the Development and Communications Coordinator at Nexus Onarga Academy, a national nonprofit providing specialized mental health services for children, youth, and families, where she helped secure funding for therapeutic programs. In all her roles, Laura enjoys elevating nonprofits’ missions through connection and storytelling. Laura holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Relations from Bradley University.

About City Tech Collaborative (City Tech): City Tech is an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. City Tech’s work uses IoT sensing networks, advanced analytics, and urban design to create scalable, market ready solutions. Current initiatives address advanced mobility, healthy cities, connected infrastructure, and emerging growth opportunities. City Tech was born and raised in Chicago, and every city is a potential partner. Visit www.CityTech.org and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn .

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