Projects - Sustainable cities and communities

ESRC Digital Good Network

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the)

Building a research community focused on what a good digital society should look like and how we get there.

Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative

Harvard Kennedy School, John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA, USA

Research and resources for city leaders to expand their problem-solving capacity, build effective city hall organizations, and improve outcomes for residents around the world

Academic programs

Humankind

Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Agency For Urban Change

Smart Columbus

Columbus, OH, USA

Smart Cities and sensors

Hey Neighbour Collective (HNC) is a collective impact project that brings together housing providers, researchers, local and regional governments, housing associations and health authorities to experiment with and learn about ways of effectively building community, social connectedness and resilience in B.C.’s fast-growing vertical communities.

Deep learning for social services for the Barcelona City Council

Barcelona, Spain

With the collaboration of Universidad Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona), Eticas carried out an audit of the natural language processing (NLP) system from the Social Services area from the Barcelona City Council.

Acessibilidade Digital Challenge

Rua de Santa Marta no. 55

O Acessibilidade Digital Challenge visa capacitar as equipas técnicas dos municípios portugueses a obterem a Declaração de Acessibilidade para os seus sítios web

Congestion Pricing Tracker

Brown University

Curious whether Congestion Pricing is having an impact on commutes in NYC? Take a look to compare traffic data before and after Congestion Pricing

Fondation Botnar

Basel, Switzerland

Fondation Botnar works with and for young people towards a world that fulfils their rights and supports their wellbeing.

UNDP Panama Accelerator Lab

Panama City, Panama

Panama’s Accelerator Lab is working to understand how strengthening solid waste management practices in rural municipalities can help create pathways to optimize national recycling strategies and work towards a circular economy.

Innovation teams and labs

OpenCouncil

Greece (Ellas, Ellada)

Demystify local government and enable citizen participation

Laboratorio de Ciudad

Asunción, Paraguay

Descubrimos a grupos ciudadanos comprometidos con sus comunidades

UrbanistAI

Europe

The platform to reimagine the future of our cities.

Local Infrastructure Hub

United States of America (the)

The Local Infrastructure Hub is a national program designed to connect cities and towns with the resources and expert advice they need to access federal infrastructure funding in order to drive local progress, improve communities, and deliver results for residents.

More and Better! Diversifying electronic participation mechanisms and improving the online services offered by Portuguese municipalities

Guimarães, Portugal

The 2023 edition of the “IPIC – Portuguese Municipal Councils’ Online Presence Index” series of studies presents the results of the evaluation of Portuguese municipal councils’ websites.

Localret

Barcelona, Spain

Localret és el consorci local format per les administracions locals de Catalunya per acompanyar els municipis en la seva transformació digital

第三屆 Tainan City Council Observation Station

Tainan City

台南市議會觀測站

Tainan Sprout

Tainan City

CartoDEBAT

Saint-Etienne, France

Argument and transparency in public debate

Baseline vulnerable road user injury risk in multiple U.S. dense urban driving environments

Waymo partnered with dashcam company Nexar to analyze 500 million miles of driving, including 335 crashes, to create the 'largest ever’ dataset of pedestrian and cyclist injuries

Diagonal Works

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the)

We strive to support the development of more equitable and inclusive places through our belief in open, collaborative and data informed urbanism.

Landlord Mapper

Chicago, IL

Landlord database & interactive map to promote property ownership transparency in rental markets

SAGA Smart Machinaka Project

Saga, Japan

The SAGA Smart Machinaka Project is a demonstration project that aims to improve the convenience of the city center of Saga City through the use of technologies such as AI and IoT, and to create a city that is easy to live in.

Localwatch

Athens

Civic tech participatory platform focusing on local level (municipalities). Kάνε ερωτήσεις και προτάσεις στο Δημοτικό Συμβούλιο, οργάνωσε εθελοντικές δράσεις , συνδιαμόρφωσε τον προϋπολογισμό του Δήμου και πάρε μέρος στις διαβουλεύσεις και στην αξιολόγησή του

Google Heat Resilience Tool

Google Research is applying AI to satellite and aerial imagery to build a Heat Resilience tool, helping cities understand how to reduce surface temperatures through planting trees or using highly-reflective surfaces, like cool roofs.

Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University

The Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University drives innovation in local government by marrying cutting-edge practice with world-class research.

Cali Cómo Vamos

Cali

Cali Cómo Vamos es un programa de seguimiento y evaluación de la calidad de vida en la ciudad, tiene como referencia el Programa “Bogotá Cómo Vamos”, adelantado desde 1998 por iniciativa de la Casa Editorial El Tiempo, la Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá y la Fundación Corona.

Datos que hacen ciudad

Cali

El programa Cali Cómo Vamos, el laboratorio ciudadano Mi Cali Contrata Bien, la Unidad de Acción Vallecaucana y el observatorio Cali Visible, ponen a disposición una ruta de obtención de datos referidos a indicadores de bienestar y gestión pública de la ciudad.

Metroverse

Metroverse, an interactive tool built by Harvard’s Growth Lab, makes it possible to understand your city’s economy and compare it to others.

Chicago Truck Count

Counting trucks for environmental justice

Co-City

South Africa (South Africa, Afrika-Borwa, Suid-Afrika)

Citizens have a critical role to play in advancing transparency, accountability and effectiveness in the delivery of municipal services.

Traffic Cam Photobooth

New York City

Take selfies with surveillance!

Atlas of Sustainable City Transportation

The Atlas contains measurements of nine indicators for cities all around the world.

Tech for Forests

In the period between the beginning of 2021 and the middle of 2022, we investigated open-source digital infrastructures used by communities that are under the constant threat of violation of civil and environmental rights.

Dreamspace Academy

Batticaloa, Sri Lanka

DreamSpace Academy is a social enterprise tackling local socio-economic and environmental challenges through challenge-based learning, grassroots innovation and impact venture building.

When 'doing ethics' meets public procurement of smart city technology – an Amsterdam case study

Amsterdam

[A] multi-stakeholder co-design project – including a citizen panel – is an integral part of the process in which the service is designed and realized

Brooklyn Navy Yard

Brooklyn Navy Yard, Flushing Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, USA

The Brooklyn Navy Yard is the center of urban manufacturing and innovation.

Falling Fruit

Boulder, CO

Falling Fruit is a massive, collaborative map of the urban harvest.

The Atlas of Urban Tech

Cornell Tech

A global atlas of case studies of tech-enabled urban districts and municipal digital masterplans.

Design Trust for Public Space

New York City

Unlocking the potential of New York’s public spaces.

Design

AI Intersections Database

Mozilla, East Evelyn Avenue, Mountain View, CA, USA

This database by Mozilla Foundation maps intersections between the key social justice and human rights areas of our time and documented AI impacts and their manifestations in society.

Primary Land Use Tax Lot Output (PLUTO)

New York City

Extensive land use and geographic data at the tax lot level in comma–separated values (CSV) file format. The PLUTO files contain more than seventy fields derived from data maintained by city agencies.

Open government data

Riding Forward: Overhauling Citi Bike’s Contract for Better, More Equitable Service

New York City Council, Broadway, New York, NY, USA

This report reviews Citi Bike’s performance to-date and recommends a comprehensive contract overhaul to ensure more reliable and equitable service, with a strategic mix of performance standards, attention to equitable service, and incentives to enable Citi Bike to thrive as a key element of the transportation network – whether under Lyft or a new operator.