Big Data and Urban Informatics at UIC

I am in Chicago to attend the NSF sponsored Workshop on Big Data and Urban Informatics. I will chair the Crisis and Emergency Informatics track and will present the following paper. ‘Big’ Data + ‘Open’ Data + ‘Mobile’ Data: Urban Informatics I take the view of a city as a platform. As a platform, a city has infrastructure, […]

Smart Cities Financing Guide – Smart Cities Council

In collaboration with my colleagues, David Swindell, Jonathan GS Koppell, and Kendra L. Smith, I authored the Smart Cities Financing Guide for the Smart Cities Council. This guide highlights 28 of the most promising financial tools — including alternatives to the traditional funding mechanisms municipalities have used for decades. It also includes: Detailed analyses of each option based […]

Our Fragile Emerging Megacities: A Focus on Resilience

I recently authored an article for Planetizen. Unless you have been hibernating, you have heard about urbanization trends and have spent time reflecting on what this might hold for the future of communities, cities, nations, and the planet as a whole. The world’s total urban area is expected to triple between 2000 and 2030—urban populations are […]

Conference on Economic Resilience, Braga, Portugal

I am heading to Portugal for the Conference on Economic Resilience. I co-organized this event along with two colleagues, Isabel Ramos (University of Minho) and James R. Martin, II (Clemson University). The conference will be held at Largo do Paço – Rectorate. Attendees at the event include: Norio Okada, Director of Disaster Recovery Governance Research Institute, […]

Designing, Planning, and Managing Resilient Cities

To what disruptions must cities be resilient? How can cities, as complex systems, be resilient? Building a capacity for resilience might be a daunting task when one considers the multitude of components, processes, and interactions that take place within and beyond a city’s physical, logical (e.g. legal), and virtual (cyberspace) boundaries. Planning for resilience to […]

Getting Serious About Resilience in Planning – in Planetizen

I co-authored an article for Planetizen with three students (Trevor Flanery, Jaimy Alex, and Eric Park) who were working at the Metropolitan Institute this summer. Resilience is a term much bandied about these days in the planning and development professions. Buildings, plans, economies and even cities are expected to be resilient to unforeseen externalities in a world of […]

Designing Resilient Cities

This diagram was prepared for a paper on designing resilient cities. Got thoughts? Please send me an email.