Category: Metropolitan Institute

TechniCity – MOOC – A Vision for Smart Cities

While at Ohio State University, I recorded lectures for the TechniCity MOOC. This course is being offered by two of my colleagues, Jennifer Evans-Cowley, Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Administration, City and Regional Planning Section, Ohio State University and Tom Sanchez, Professor, Urban Affairs and Planning, Virginia Tech. Check it out!

Designing and Planning for Smart(er) Cities – Practicing Planner

You can find my article on smart cities in the current issue of Practicing Planner. Abstract: Within the past 24 months the concept of smart (and intelligent) cities has been become popular in the media. For instance, Scientific American ran a special issue on smart cities (September 2011). Industry players such as IBM and Siemens have specific […]

Conference on Community Resilience – Davos, Switzerland

I am headed to Davos for the 3rd Annual Conference on Community Resilience. I am co-chairing the conference along with John R. Harrald and Jim Bohland, both from Virginia Tech. This conference was organized while I was a Director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. I will chair a session on Citizen Engagement & […]

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. 

What is a Smart City?

Within the past 18 months the concept of smart (and intelligent) cities has been become popular in the media. For instance, Scientific American ran a special issue on smart cities. Industry players (e.g. IBM, Siemens, etc) have specific programs and practices dedicated to advancing the cause of building smart cities. Government agencies are dedicating resources […]

Presenting at the NSF Workshop on Participatory Challenge Platforms with a Public Intent

I had a wonderful time exchanging ideas with policy makers, researchers, practitioners, and even students at the NSF Workshop on Participatory Challenge Platforms with a Public Intent put on by the Center for Policy Informatics at Arizona State University. My formal remarks during the workshop drew on research results from our study of Challenge.gov. Since […]

Local Sustainability Planning and Harnessing the Power of Information Technologies

Information technologies have a critical role to play in advancing sustainability of our organizations, communities, cities, and nations. In the recent issue of PM Magazine (Vol. 94, No. 5, June 2012), Joe Schilling, Associate Director of the Metropolitan Institute, have a piece that looks at how local sustainability planning and the creative use of information technologies to build […]