In the spirited cultural debate over the possibilities and risks of artificial intelligence, the imagined pros and cons have tended toward the sensational. There’s been little mainstream attention paid to the technology’s potential impact on the everyday tasks that keep our cities humming—things like construction permit reviews, development application processes, and planning code compliance enforcement. But the needs in those areas are quite real, and experiments to apply newer AI breakthroughs to these kinds of operations are already well underway. Municipalities large and small, from Florida to New England, and Canada to Australia, have announced AI-related pilots and other exploratory efforts.

While the approaches vary, the challenges are practically universal. Determining whether proposed construction or development projects meet all land and building codes is a detail-intensive, often slow process: It can be confusing for applicants and require extensive back-end work for municipalities and other authorities. The hope is that AI can help make that process—or “the tedious parts of city planning,” as the publication Government Technology bluntly put it—speedier and more efficient, as well as more accurate and comprehensible. Ideally, it would even allow planning departments to streamline and reallocate resources.

But as city officials working with the new technology make clear, there’s a long way to go to get to that point. And given that some of AI’s most publicized moments to date involve embarrassing failures (such as Google’s AI search tool advising users on the benefits of eating rocks and adding glue to pizza), they are proceeding with caution.

There’s often a “hype cycle” between a new technology’s early promise and its eventual reality, cautions Andreas Boehm, the intelligent cities manager for Kelowna, British Columbia, a city of about 145,000. His team is specifically charged with seeking new opportunities to leverage tech innovations for the city and its residents. Despite a lot of chatter, we still haven’t seen many “concrete, tangible examples” of AI as a “transformative” force in planning systems, Boehm says. But we may start to see real results soon.

Canada is experiencing a housing shortage, Boehm notes, and moving faster on new construction could help. The permitting pipeline is clogged with inquiries from current property owners about zoning and code issues for more routine projects. For a few years, Kelowna has been using a chatbot to answer common questions, Boehm says. That has helped, but the more recent “generative” version of AI can handle a much broader range of inquiries, phrased in natural language, with precise and specific responses. So Kelowna began working with Microsoft to build a new and much more sophisticated version of the tool incorporating Microsoft’s Copilot AI functionality, which they now use to aid permit applicants.

Boehm says the Intelligent Cities team and its consultants worked with a range of residents (including those with no permitting knowledge) as well as experienced builders to develop the tool; it can give high-level responses or point to specific code provisions. It has notably streamlined, and sped up, the application process. “It frees up our staff time” because fewer questions need to be addressed by staff early in the process, Boehm says. “So now they can focus on processing applications that are coming in. And often these applications are much better quality because people are using these AI tools as they’re putting these applications together, and getting all the information they need.”

On the other side of Canada, the city of Burlington, Ontario, near Toronto, has been developing generative AI tools in collaboration with Australian property and tech firm Archistar. Chad MacDonald, Burlington’s chief information officer (and previously executive director of digital service), says Burlington, population 200,000, also faces a housing crunch. With little space available for single-family housing construction, the city’s focus is on improving the process of handling larger projects, including industrial and commercial proposals, with an eye toward creating a single platform that would work for all kinds of projects. The system the city is developing aims to integrate not only local zoning and bylaws, but also the Ontario Building Code, which affects all structures in the province.

Testing this system involves checking whether it correctly assesses previously submitted plans whose outcome is known. This process also trains the AI. “Every time we correct an inaccuracy in the algorithm, it actually makes it smarter,” MacDonald explains. “So the next time it gets more and more accurate.” And if the proposed solution to one permit problem could create two more problems in the application, the system is designed to point that out immediately, avoiding a lengthy resubmission process. An “extremely successful” round of testing was completed in May, MacDonald says, and he expects the city’s use of the technology to expand.

MacDonald envisions the technology advancing to the point of creating code-compliant designs. But won’t that put engineers and architects out of business? He counters that it’s vital to keep humans in the loop. “This is about speeding up these really mundane processes,” he says, “and then allowing these very highly educated and specialized experts to focus on the things they really need to focus on.”

In Honolulu, expanding the use of AI tools is part of a more sweeping tech-plan upgrade to address a significant permitting backlog—in 2021, the city’s mayor declared the process “broken” and committed to an overhaul. In 2022, a permit prescreen process involved “an intolerable six-month wait” to reach a reviewer, says Dawn Takeuchi Apuna, director of Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting. The city added an AI bot that was able to review some of the prescreen checklist items in a newly streamlined process, and it helped cut that wait to two or three days. That success helped lead to a more expansive generative AI pilot with Chicago-based startup CivCheck, a relationship Takeuchi Apuna expects to continue.

“We have learned that there are enormous possibilities of AI in our business processes,” she says, “and that the most important piece is the people that are using it.” She emphasizes that this is just part of an overhaul that also includes better staff training and improved communication with applicants. “It’s a value that you must bring and continue to enforce as part of AI in order to get the best results.”

While these early results are promising, AI still presents plenty of challenges and wildcards. Some of the startup’s promising, powerful generative AI tools are untested. And as MacDonald points out, the technology isn’t cheap. There’s also a need to set standards around what data the process collects and how it can be used. (Kelowna, for example, is working with the nonprofit Montreal AI Ethics Institute on policy and guidance issues.) And, of course, there are broader public concerns about giving too much control to an automated tool, however seemingly intelligent and teachable that tool may be. “It’s not going to replace people,” Boehm says. “We’re never going to just issue you a building permit from an AI bot.”

In fact, he continues, that concern could be considered an opportunity, if cities use AI thoughtfully and transparently. Although government is often opaque and thus treated with skepticism by many, AI “is a great opportunity to demystify government,” Boehm says. “It [can increase the] understanding that this is really about people in the end and supporting them.” In other words, in the best-case scenario, AI might improve a knotty but vital bureaucratic process by giving it a more human touch.

Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, and other subjects. He is the author of the Lincoln Institute book City Tech: 20 Apps, Ideas, and Innovators Changing the Urban Landscape. His newsletter is at robwalker.substack.com.

Lead image credit: PhonlamaiPhoto via iStock/Getty Images Plus.

CAMBRIDGE, MA—The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has released its newest book, City Tech: 20 Apps, Ideas, and Innovators Changing the Urban Landscape, by Rob Walker.

In this thoughtful, inquisitive volume, Walker investigates technologies that have emerged over the past few years and their implications for planners, policymakers, residents, and the virtual and literal landscapes of the cities we call home. Featuring a foreword by tech journalist Kara Swisher and an afterword by urbanist and futurist Greg Lindsay, the book explores the role of technology in our rapidly urbanizing world.

Experts predict that up to 80 percent of the population will live in cities by 2050. To accommodate that growth while ensuring quality of life for all residents, cities are increasingly turning to technology, from apps that make it easier for citizens to pitch in on civic improvement projects to designs for smarter streets and neighborhoods.

“We’re on a complicated journey; our decisions can set us off in surprising directions, and opinions may differ on how to navigate the challenges ahead,” writes Walker, a Fast Company columnist and New York Times contributor, in the book’s introduction. “But based on the examples in this collection, it seems clear that collaboration, creativity, and an openness to new ideas are the keys to getting where we need to go.”

City Tech is a chronicle of the recent rise of urban technologies, featuring firsthand reflections from the founders, innovators, and researchers closest to the work and from the planners and other officials who are putting these tools into practice on the ground. It’s also a source of essential questions: What are the ethical implications of smart cities? How can cities keep up with the rapid evolution of driverless vehicles? Is building skyscrapers out of wood a viable climate solution?

“If the last decade of urban tech has been a dress rehearsal, then the curtain is now rising on the most momentous decade of change most cities have ever had to face,” writes Lindsay in the book’s afterword. “It is our turn to formulate what we demand from our technologies, versus the other way around.”

City Tech, a curated collection of newly updated columns originally published in Land Lines, the magazine of the Lincoln Institute, follows last year’s release of Mayor’s Desk by Anthony Flint, a compilation of interviews with mayors from five continents who shared their strategies for tackling global challenges at a local level. Together, the books provide tangible examples of how cities across the world have mobilized to implement innovative land-based solutions for some of society’s most critical challenges.

City Tech is available for purchase on the Lincoln Institute website. For review copies, contact Kristina McGeehan at kmcgeehan@lincolninst.edu. City Tech is distributed by Columbia University Press.

About the Author

Rob Walker is a journalist and columnist covering technology, design, business, and other subjects. A longtime contributor to the New York Times, Walker writes a column on branding for Fast Company, and has contributed to Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, Fortune, Marketplace, and many other outlets. He writes the City Tech column for Land Lines, the magazine of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. He is the coeditor of Lost Objects: 50 Stories About the Things We Miss and Why They Matter and the author of The Art of Noticing. His Art of Noticing newsletter is at robwalker.substack.com. He also serves on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

About the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy seeks to improve quality of life through the effective use, taxation, and stewardship of land. A nonprofit private operating foundation whose origins date to 1946, the Lincoln Institute researches and recommends creative approaches to land as a solution to economic, social, and environmental challenges. Through education, training, publications, and events, we integrate theory and practice to inform public policy decisions worldwide. We organize our work around three impact areas: land and water, land and fiscal systems, and land and communities. We work globally, with locations in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Washington, DC; Phoenix, Arizona; and Beijing, China.

Lead image: Quantum network servers managed in a partnership between Chattanooga utility EPB and Qubitekk. Credit: Courtesy of EPB.

Two years ago, the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority pulled off something of a municipal miracle. The agency learned that almost 200 corporate-owned houses in Cincinnati were in receivership and up for sale. Rather than forever forfeit all that single-family housing to yet another institutional investor, the Port launched a bold bid to purchase the homes, with the goal of fixing them up and creating affordable homeownership opportunities for the existing tenants and other Cincinnati residents.

Well into the project, the Port would discover that many of the 194 houses it had purchased were in worse condition than expected, and dozens were vacant. “When we bought the portfolio, we thought there were only going to be 10 vacant, but 60 were vacant, and those were in really bad shape,” says Laura Brunner, the Port’s president and CEO. “So that’s where we’ve been focusing our capital investment, getting those homes ready to sell.”

The Port has now started selling the first of those fixed-up homes—19 of them so far—at affordable prices, to owner-occupants who earn less than 120 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI). The agency also helped stabilize the housing situations of the 130 or so renters in the other properties, addressing a backlog of hundreds of repair requests, helping tenants get current on their rent, and offering them free homebuying and financial literacy education.

Given the state of the houses, repairs and essential upgrades have cost more than double what the Port expected—averaging $96,000 per house so far, compared to a projected $40,000. But the agency has been able to make up the difference with grants so it can still sell the homes affordably, at cost. Unlike a house flipper, the Port only needs to break even to fulfill its debt obligations, not turn a profit.

In reclaiming rental houses from institutional landlords and converting them into homeownership opportunities, the Port is helping low- and moderate-income residents build generational wealth. And the agency’s approach is supporting sustainable growth in other areas of the local economy, too.

Spreading the Wealth

While homeownership itself has historically been an engine of wealth creation for millions of Americans, the real estate market is also a massive driver of economic activity in a community. New homebuyers tend to also buy new home goods, from dishes to lawn mowers, and a whole suite of local service providers participate in a home purchase, from appraisers to contractors.

So as the Port rehabs and sells what it calls its CARE (Creating Affordable Real Estate) Portfolio, it’s been very intentional about involving local businesses throughout the process.

“We’ve been really conscientious in our contracting to use small minority- and women-owned businesses,” Brunner says. With the cost of renovations averaging almost $100,000 per house, “the project size is perfect to really help grow and scale a small business. . . .And we’re not just giving them a contract and hoping they do a good job; we’re doing some technical assistance along the way to help them scale and grow their businesses sustainably.”

Rather than list the homes through an internal real estate agent, as it has historically done to save costs, the Port has partnered with Black-owned brokerages through the Greater Cincinnati Realtist Association (GCRA) to handle at least a quarter of the sales. The Port pays agents a standard commission, which adds some costs, but is essentially just another expenditure supporting local small businesses, Brunner says. “It’s helping to grow the whole ecosystem.”

The GCRA is a local chapter of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers, the oldest and largest African American trade organization in the country. “Prior to 1962, African Americans were not allowed to be members of NAR, the National Association of Realtors—or to even be called a Realtor, because that’s a trademarked name,” says Marcus Parrish, president of the GCRA. So in 1947, a group of 12 Black brokers, including Cincinnati hotelier Horace Sudduth, formed their own real estate organization, NAREB, whose agents would be called Realtists. “Our mission is democracy in housing—representing the underserved and providing education and resources,” Parrish says.

Only a quarter of Black households own their home in Cincinnati—less than half the homeownership rate of the city’s white families—and both the Port and Parrish hope that converting investor-owned rental units to affordable homeownership opportunities can help close that gap. “The Cincinnati market is just as challenging as any other market in the nation,” Parrish says. “Low housing inventory just creates a challenge for anybody who’s purchasing, but specifically for our first-time homebuyers and our Black and brown communities.”

A GCRA selection committee chose a handful of Realtists to handle the Port listings, although Parrish and other board members listed the very first batch of CARE portfolio houses themselves so they could get a feel for the process and work through any kinks. Buyers need to prove their income eligibility, and the houses include a deed restriction that prevents owners from reselling them for the first five years.

As for the renovations, the Port isn’t trying to chase HGTV trends or install high-end finishes, Parrish says; they’re focused on making the homes safe, efficient, and functional for first-time buyers. “I listed and sold two of those properties, and for the most part, the updates and rehabs have been good,” Parrish says. “If it needs a new furnace, needs new central air, if the roof is beyond repair, they’re going to do that.”

Early this year, Parrish sold a Port-rehabbed house at its list price of $165,000, and he recalls the ripple effects of the sale: The mortgage lender at First Financial Bank, who helped the Latino homebuyers get a five-figure down payment grant, also belonged to the GCRA, and so did the title company representative. “Everyone involved in the process was a member of our organization,” Parrish says.

That’s important, because Black brokers, agents, and appraisers are underrepresented (and often underpaid) in the real estate industry. Nationally, only 6 percent of real estate agents are Black; less than 2 percent of appraisers identify as Black. “The main thing is, you want to have representation, so the push is to get more African Americans in the real estate profession,” Parrish says.

Rent, Renovate, Replicate

While it renovates vacant houses, the Port is also acting as a landlord for over 100 households. The agency holds its contractors to high standards and offers technical assistance to ensure they succeed; it’s also been careful in its hiring practices.

Brunner says the Port was very close to signing a contract with one property management company until a company representative referred to the renters as “these people,” a rhetorical red flag. “That’s obviously coded for the kind of practices we’re trying to fight against—that ‘these people’ are not trustworthy, just assuming the worst,” Brunner says. “We had to have somebody that we could trust.” They hired a different firm.

In addition to addressing hundreds of repairs that the corporate landlord had ignored, the Port has helped dozens of tenants catch up on back rent—some of them were over a year behind. “We were successful in working with our local community action agency to secure ARPA funding to bring 60 of them current,” Brunner says, adding that “there’s a whole psychological benefit to knowing you’re current. We’ve got a good collection record now, after people were able to kind of wipe the slate clean with grants.”

The Port also hired a local nonprofit called Working in Neighborhoods to offer financial literacy training and first-time homebuyer classes to interested tenants. Many of the renters still lack the financial stability needed to buy a home, and some have been hesitant to engage with these resources. But about 60 of them have participated in the classes, and that’s helping to create a pipeline of potential buyers. “We’ve got maybe half a dozen who will be ready [to purchase a home] in the next six months, and half a dozen who’ll be ready in the next year,” Brunner says.

Even if it takes longer than expected to convert existing renters into homeowners, what the Port has accomplished is remarkable, says Robert ‘R.J.’ McGrail, senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and director of its Accelerating Community Investment initiative.

“These are largely stabilized rental households now, and that is an extraordinary public policy outcome,” he says. Selling the rehabbed homes has enabled the Port to pay the debt service on its bonds, buying itself more time to move existing tenants along a track to homeownership. “It’s just win, win, win across the continuum of policy outcomes that you’d like to see from a financial intervention like this.”

Proof of Concept

Could the Port’s approach be replicated elsewhere? “Technically, transactionally, yes,” McGrail says. “There are debt-issuing authorities in other cities that have the powers to execute a financing transaction like this. There are fewer that have the rest of the Port’s powers around taxes and around landholding; they’re also a land bank, so they’re more empowered than your typical municipal financing-only entity. They can do it all in house.”

The Port also had plenty of previous experience hiring construction crews and managing properties, primarily for commercial properties. “That set of tools—the financing, the property management, plus the redevelopment expertise—is a unique set of competencies to have under one roof,” McGrail acknowledges, but there’s no reason this strategy couldn’t be replicated by a more typical financing entity working with civic and nonprofit partners. “You don’t need the one-stop shop to do this. You just need the will to tell three shops to do it together.”

Brunner says the Port has proven that the approach can be replicated and scaled. “We’ve shown that we can recover our costs, that you can buy a house, fix it up, and sell it for what you put into it,” she says. “We’ve established that, even in these poor neighborhoods, there is a market for ownership. And we’ve proven that, even with the highest interest rates in 20 years, many people can still own a home with a lower mortgage payment than what their rent was.”

What’s more, Brunner insists, it must be replicated. “We can all agree that our racial wealth gap is one of the biggest problems in our country,” Brunner says. “We can all agree that homeownership is the most direct way to increase wealth. So how can we not play whatever role we possibly can to make that possible for more people?”

Beyond the economics, she says, “there’s a moral imperative, for those of us in this country who can, to fight back against these institutional investors. It’s not a little thing, just every here and there a bad actor as a property owner; it’s become an epidemic. We cannot just give up on all these poor to moderate-income neighborhoods, and wipe out that potential of first-time ownership, largely for our Black and brown communities. We have to fight back.”

Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: The Port of Cincinnati bought 194 homes formerly owned by institutional investors in neighborhoods across the city. Credit: Port of Cincinnati.

A medida que la ciudad crece y los efectos del cambio climático se tornan más evidentes, también crece la importancia de los árboles urbanos. Los árboles brindan la sombra que tanto necesitamos, eliminan la contaminación del aire, absorben el carbono e incluso aumentan los valores de los bienes inmuebles. Pero suele pasarse por alto un elemento: una cosa es plantar muchos árboles, pero otra es preservarlos.

Durante años, la tecnología ha desempeñado un papel importante en los esfuerzos de rastrear, mapear y cuantificar los impactos globales de los paisajes arbóreos, desde lo ambiental hasta lo económico, tema que se trató en esta columna en 2018. Pero, desde entonces, surgieron y evolucionaron nuevas tecnologías, y algunas de las más interesantes se centran no solo en los impactos políticos de alto alcance, sino también en el tema crucial del mantenimiento a largo plazo. Si se espera que la población de árboles urbanos perdure, el riego adecuado y oportuno, sobre todo para los árboles más jóvenes, debe ser parte de la planificación. Y, cada vez más, las ciudades están aprovechando herramientas de datos sofisticadas para fomentar y permitir la participación de la ciudadanía en la preservación de los árboles urbanos.

Por ejemplo, CityLAB Berlin, una organización sin fines de lucro de innovación tecnológica de Alemania que aplica datos a los problemas urbanos tiene varios proyectos en curso. En los últimos años, Berlín, una de las ciudades con más árboles de Europa, perdió el 20 por ciento de sus ejemplares a causa de las altas temperaturas y la escasez de lluvias. Esto se debe, en parte, a que supervisar y preservar árboles individuales puede ser una carga ardua y complicada para los gobiernos municipales. Así que, en 2020, CityLAB lanzó Gieß den Kiez (Regar el barrio), una plataforma digital que puso a disposición del público en general datos del gobierno sobre árboles. Esto permitió que la ciudadanía pudiera informarse sobre las necesidades de riego de los árboles locales y comprometerse a ayudar. “La aplicación se desarrolló con base en las necesidades de nuestra comunidad”, expresó por correo electrónico Yannick Müller, directora de asociaciones estratégicas de la organización.

La cantidad de datos disponibles fue una revelación: los proyectos de los gobiernos habían detallado y mapeado con anterioridad cientos de miles de árboles. CityLAB, un proyecto de Technologiestiftung Berlin, fundación financiada por la Cancillería del Senado de Berlín, combinó esto con otros datos, como cifras de lluvias, para crear un mapa que asocia la actividad de riego con las necesidades específicas para cada especie para los árboles de la ciudad. Los comentarios de la ciudadanía comprometida con los árboles ayudaron a darle forma al desarrollo de la plataforma. Algunas personas ya habían adoptado y empezado a preservar árboles de forma particular. “Sienten que son sus propios árboles”, dijo la gerenta de CityLAB Berlin, Julia Zimmermann. La ciudadanía también tuvo ideas sobre cómo utilizar el sistema de bombas de agua existente en la ciudad y mejorar su asequibilidad.

“Los usuarios, grupos e iniciativas pueden interactuar entre sí a través de una herramienta de chat, que también nos permitió comunicar y recopilar opiniones”, explicó Müller. Aparte de resolver errores pequeños, esto inspiró nuevas funciones, como una que muestra la ubicación y el estado de las bombas de agua. A su vez, permitió designar “cuidadores” para árboles específicos, que se comprometen a supervisar y regar con regularidad. “La adición de esta función pequeña permite a los ciudadanos hacer uso de sus recursos de forma más dirigida”, expresó.

Según Müller, en 2021, la ciudad de Leipzig adoptó la herramienta, y algunas otras municipalidades alemanas siguieron sus pasos. Los números de los usuarios no paran de crecer, y más de 3.500 ciudadanos se registraron como cuidadores de más de 7.500 árboles adoptados.

Más allá de esto, los esfuerzos de Gieß den Kiez siguen siendo un complemento de la política pública. “Sin embargo, la plataforma logra generar cada vez más conciencia sobre las adaptaciones climáticas, anticipándose a las futuras olas de calor”, sostiene Müller. En Berlín, por ejemplo, “suscitó un debate entre las diferentes autoridades de distritos locales sobre hasta qué punto la ciudadanía debería participar en el cuidado de los árboles de la ciudad y si ese uso del agua es adecuado” (Según Müller, lo es, si se consideran los costos de plantar árboles nuevos y los numerosos beneficios comprobados para la salud y el medioambiente que ofrece un follaje urbano robusto).

Una de las inspiraciones que CityLAB Berlin ha citado es el mapa de árboles de la ciudad de Nueva York (NYC Tree Map), una herramienta digital que se remonta al 2016, y que ya tiene registrados alrededor de un millón de árboles. En un comunicado de prensa de 2022, el Departamento de Parques y Recreación (NYC Parks) declaró que “NYC Tree Map es el mapa más integral y actualizado de árboles vivos en el mundo”. “El mapa, que está integrado directamente con la base de datos forestales de los parques, le brinda a la ciudadanía el mismo acceso en tiempo real al bosque urbano que los silvicultores de parques tienen en el terreno”. Esto permite que las personas de Nueva York “interactúen de forma digital” con la población forestal de la ciudad en los cinco distritos; por ejemplo, pueden supervisar la inspección más reciente de un árbol, con la fecha y la identificación de la inspección.

“Nuestro NYC Tree Map permite que los amantes casuales de árboles identifiquen ejemplares fácilmente, comuniquen sus inquietudes e informen sobre su cuidado”, explicó por correo electrónico Nichole Henderson, directora de la Administración de NYC Parks. “Grupos y personas registran en el mapa sus actividades de cuidado de árboles, como el riego, la eliminación de basura, el cultivo de la tierra y la cobertura con mantillo”.

Varios grupos usan el mapa para coordinar esfuerzos de mantenimiento y administración más ambiciosos. A modo de ejemplo, Hernderson menciona el Jackson Heights Beautification Group, una organización ambiental y artística de Queens; Trees New York, una organización profesional de larga trayectoria que capacita a “podadores de la ciudad”, entre muchas otras actividades, y la organización Gowanus Canal Conservancy, cuyos proyectos incluyen esfuerzos de “ciencia comunitaria” como experimentos sobre la captura y el uso del agua de lluvia. Y el mapa de árboles es clave para la campaña de mayor alcance de NYC Parks, Let’s Green NYC (Llenemos de verde a NYC), que publica “actividades de cuidado de árboles en las calles de toda la ciudad con socios comunitarios y permite que los voluntarios vean el impacto visible, cómo están contribuyendo directamente con el cuidado de la floresta urbana”, dijo Herderson.

En otras ciudades importantes se están llevando a cabo iniciativas similares. El Departamento de Transporte del Distrito (DDOT) de Washington, DC, mantiene un mapa de árboles digital que promueve la participación ciudadana (por ejemplo, para que informen el oscurecimiento de las hojas o el daño de insectos, así como los árboles que necesitan agua). El mapa de árboles se lanzó con un foco especial en preservar 8.200 árboles plantados en 2017. Otro ejemplo es la aplicación Adopt-A-Tree en Atenas, que permite a los ciudadanos asumir la responsabilidad del riego de árboles individuales de la ciudad durante los meses secos del verano. Y las entidades como CityLAB Berlin siguen innovando: su nuevo proyecto Árboles Cuantificados (QTrees) aspira a desarrollar un sistema de predicción respaldado por inteligencia artificial, haciendo uso de bases de datos y sensores para identificar los árboles urbanos en riesgo de secarse. Ya se está probando un prototipo, y el plan es lanzarlo este año.

Zimmermann, de CityLAB Berlin, reconoce que fue difícil demostrar con precisión el impacto de estos esfuerzos. “Esto se debe a la naturaleza de la naturaleza”, dijo. Los árboles se adaptan con lentitud, así que estimar los efectos de los programas de riego podría requerir años de supervisión del crecimiento y la salud. Pero el tablero de datos del proyecto ilumina los patrones de riego, y mostró que las cantidades de riego aumentaron desde que el programa comenzó, y, casi con certeza, contrarrestaron los efectos de la sequía. “Así que el proyecto genera, por lo menos, un mejor entendimiento y cuidado de los espacios verdes urbanos”, añadió. En algunos casos, ha inspirado a gobiernos locales a apoyar a voluntarios, al brindarles material y lineamientos para prácticas de riego óptimas.

En una encuesta reciente sobre la valoración sorprendentemente duradera de las personas por lo arbóreo, la historiadora y autora, Jill Lepore, observó que “los árboles son los nuevos osos polares, la imagen que es tendencia en el movimiento medioambiental”. Ahora tenemos la ciencia y la tecnología para entender y cuantificar el valor de los árboles más allá de lo estético. “Si a nuestros ancestros les pareció inteligente y necesario talar los bosques rápidos, es incluso más necesario que sus descendientes planten árboles”, escribió la paisajista Andrew Jackson Downing en 1847. “Permitamos que todas las personas, cuyas almas no sean un desierto, planten árboles”. De acuerdo. Pero, también tenemos la obligación, y la tecnología, para preservarlos.

Rob Walker es periodista; escribe sobre diseño, tecnología y otros temas. Es el autor de The Art of Noticing. Publica un boletín en robwalker.substack.com.

Imagen principal:  Árboles en la calle y una ciclovía emergente en Berlín, donde una organización sin fines de lucro del sector tecnológico lanzó una plataforma digital que ayuda a los residentes a informarse sobre las necesidades de riego de los árboles locales. Crédito: IGphotography vía iStock/Getty Images Plus.