The Lincoln Institute provides a variety of early- and mid-career fellowship opportunities for researchers. In this series, we follow up with our fellows to learn more about their work.

With a background in landscape architecture, Seung Kyum Kim has always been interested in the interplay between green space and the urban form.

After beginning his career at Design Workshop in Phoenix and Salt Lake City in the late 2000s, Kim relocated to South Korea in 2009 to take a role with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport, working on flood mitigation, drought, and stormwater management. There, he got interested in “how to minimize risk from flooding, natural disasters, and climate change,” he says, which led him to pursue a master’s and a PhD from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

While at Harvard GSD, Kim joined a trip to several cities in China with Professor Richard Peiser and discovered he had an interest in housing and land policy as well. Since then, his research—which included work as an International Fellow through the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s China program in 2021—has spanned multiple disciplines, connecting urban planning, landscape architecture, housing and economics, environmental justice, and climate change.

In this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Kim reflects on some of the most successful climate-adaptive green spaces around the world, why cities with aging residents are less likely to invest in new green spaces, and how park usage differs in the United States and South Korea.

JON GOREY: What is the main focus of your research?

SEUNG KYUM KIM: I’m currently a professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology [KAIST], which is very much focused on technology and science. The engineering school is very strong here, it’s like MIT in South Korea. My department is the Graduate School of Future Strategy, and I’m working on the economic side, urban planning and climate change, while some of the professors in our department are working on the engineering side.

I’m working on six research projects at the same time, so my field of research is kind of expanding, rather than going deep. I’m focusing on how climate policies like carbon taxes and the CBAM, or carbon border adjustment mechanism, influence the urban economy, particularly manufacturing competitiveness and urban inequality. I’m also exploring the long-term impact that these policies have on shrinking cities and urban revitalization.

One of my projects is on how blue-green infrastructure for climate change adaptation affects gentrification in urban areas in 32 countries on the African continent. And in one of my recent research papers, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, I was researching how an aging population impacts climate policy.

JG: What’s something that was surprising or unintuitive that you found in your research?

SK: I studied how the aging population impacts climate adaptation strategy in Southeast Asia. Using remote sensing and difference-in-differences approaches, I found that communities with a growing elderly population were seeing reduced green infrastructure and green spaces, making them more vulnerable to climate change. This was sort of surprising, and it underscored the importance of considering demographic change in climate policy planning.

As people get older in a community, the tax base decreases. So with a limited budget, the government’s priorities are different. As the people are getting older, the government mostly focuses on hospitals, the health budget is increased—but for environmental green space and parks, investments in those kinds of amenities, the budget is reduced.

JG: What do you wish more people knew about urban green spaces?

SK: I wish people understood that climate policy isn’t just an environmental concern. It is deeply connected to economic and social equality. Effective urban planning can simultaneously address environmental, economic, and social issues as well.

JG: You’ve studied green spaces all over the world. Are there any great projects that you think were particularly successful at combining green space and climate adaptation?

SK: There are a few inspiring examples of successful green space projects that also address climate change and provide cultural benefits. There’s the Cheonggyecheon Stream restoration in South Korea, this was 15 or 20 years ago. Originally it was a covered highway, and the Cheonggyecheon was restored into an urban stream and linear park in central Seoul. It significantly reduced urban heat island effects, improved air quality, boosted biodiversity, and provided the poor with an urban oasis in the densest area of the city.

One of the reasons they did not convert the covered highway into a stream and green space earlier was that land prices are very expensive in central Seoul, and because of traffic issues, transportation issues. So there were two phases. Before the Cheonggyecheon restoration project, they actually modified the transportation systems within Seoul. . . . The local government created a dedicated bus lane in the center of the road to solve the traffic conditions. After that, they did the stream restoration. So that kind of environmental project is not solely a green space project, it’s linked. That’s one of the reasons we need to see the broader perspective. We need to see the transportation and climate change and environmental benefits and the cultural benefits within urban issues.

China also has the sponge city initiative in various cities, including Wuhan and Xinjiang. It aims to incorporate permeable surfaces, wetlands, green roofs, and rain gardens throughout the urban area. The [sponge city] project improves urban water management to reduce flooding and runoff and enhance the urban ecosystem, making the city more resilient to extreme weather events.

JG: Have you noticed any differences in the ways we use or don’t use urban green space in the United States compared to South Korea?

SK: In the United States, green space often means larger parks . . . nature reserves and recreational areas that are generously spread out, especially in suburban or less dense urban areas. Expansive parks like Central Park in New York or Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, they’re intended not only for recreation but also for preserving nature and wildlife within an urban context.

But in Korea, the green spaces are usually smaller—it’s a small country, so they’re more strategically placed within dense urban neighborhoods because of limited urban land availability. The parks tend to be compact and highly designed to maximize efficiency, often equipped with walking paths, exercise equipment, benches, and community gardens. Also, in Korea green space focuses heavily on accessibility, daily convenience, and the well-being of residents fitting seamlessly into the high-density urban environment. Another difference is cultural usage. Korean parks often serve as a community space for daily activities, like group exercise and community gatherings, whereas US parks might see more individual, family-based recreational uses, like picnics and sports and leisure activities.

JG: What’s the best book you’ve read lately, or a favorite TV show you’ve been streaming?  

SK: Recently I read Elizabeth Kolbert’s Under a White Sky, which vividly explores how environmental innovations can sometimes have unexpected consequences. Another book I read recently was Ian Goldin’s Rescue: From Global Crisis to a Better World. That was also fascinating, especially how it highlights the factors determining urban success or failure.

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

Lead image: Former Lincoln Institute International Fellow Seung Kyum Kim. Credit: Courtesy photo.

Jacob Frey es un nuevo residente sin complejos. Mientras asistía a la facultad de derecho en Villanova, el nativo de Virginia vino a Minneapolis para correr el maratón de Twin Cities y, según lo cuenta, se enamoró de la ciudad. El día después de graduarse, condujo los 1.900 kilómetros al oeste hasta Minneapolis, el lugar que eligió para vivir.

Comenzó como abogado laboral y de derechos civiles, se convirtió en organizador comunitario, ejerció en el consejo de la ciudad y fue electo alcalde en 2017. Bajo este cargo, supervisó la aprobación de una prohibición de zonificación unifamiliar pionera en 2019, enfrentó la COVID y el asesinato policial de George Floyd en 2020. Fue reelecto en 2021 y ha seguido ocupándose de las conexiones entre la equidad racial, la capacidad de pago y la zonificación.

El miembro sénior, Anthony Flint, entrevistó a Frey durante su visita a Minneapolis para la conferencia de la Asociación Estadounidense de Planificación de 2024. Más tarde, Frey se unió a Flint, el alcalde de Cincinnati, Aftab Pureval y la alcaldesa de Scranton Paige Cognetti para un panel de debate con aforo completo sobre las principales antiguas ciudades industriales.

Esta entrevista, que se ha editado por motivos de espacio, puede escucharse completa en el pódcast de Land Matters.

Anthony Flint: Minneapolis ha sido pionera en la reforma de la zonificación y en la prohibición de la zonificación unifamiliar. ¿Cómo le va? ¿Puede hacer algún comentario sobre si aumentar la oferta es un buen camino para lograr la capacidad de pago?

Jacob Frey: Hay dos caminos críticos que se deben tomar en simultáneo para lograr la capacidad de pago. El primero es el subsidio. Es cerrar la brecha entre el precio de mercado y el precio asequible, es asegurarse de que las personas sin vivienda tengan el siguiente peldaño en la escalera para ascender. Ese lado de la ecuación no puede lograrse solo a través de la oferta; requiere cierta intervención del gobierno. Y se necesita oferta para tener un ecosistema de vivienda saludable . . . y así, hace unos 10 años, cuando asumí el cargo de concejal de la ciudad por primera vez, dije con mucha claridad que íbamos a ir a luchar contra los estacionamientos a nivel del suelo. Íbamos a aumentar la oferta y la densidad en gran medida, y eso hicimos. Combinamos eso con un plan integral que, como mencionó, eliminó la zonificación unifamiliar, lo que dio lugar a los dúplex y tríplex en barrios residenciales, y luego también sumó densidad y altura en los corredores comerciales. Todas esas cosas han permitido a Minneapolis mantener los alquileres más bajos que cualquier otra ciudad importante del país. Otras ciudades experimentaron aumentos de dos dígitos, mientras que nuestros aumentos de alquiler se mantuvieron entre el 1 y 2 por ciento. Y esto ocurrió con mucha gente nueva que llegó a la ciudad. Logramos un aumento drástico en la oferta, y ha ayudado mucho.

Durante años, operamos bajo ordenanzas de zonificación prescriptivas que decían explícitamente que mantendríamos a los negros y a los judíos en una parte de la ciudad. Cuando hacer eso explícitamente se volvió ilegal, se comenzó a hacer lo mismo implícitamente a través del código de zonificación, de modo que a menos que uno pudiera ser dueño de una casa enorme en una parcela enorme, no podría vivir en franjas grandes de la ciudad. Las consecuencias de esas decisiones perduran hasta el día de hoy. Queríamos deshacer eso. Buscamos una diversidad de opciones de vivienda en cada barrio y, por lo tanto, una diversidad de personas en cada barrio. En los últimos tres años, hemos construido más de 1.000 unidades de vivienda en edificios multifamiliares en parcelas que antes solo permitían una vivienda unifamiliar.

Hemos visto un gran progreso, . . . y, luego, nos demandaron. A la larga, vamos a ganar, ya sea a través de la legislación o a través del litigio en sí. Todos deberían tener la oportunidad de vivir en una gran ciudad, y queremos crear esa oportunidad para todas las personas.

AF: Para las personas que no están en Minneapolis, ¿quién lo demandó y cuál fue la justificación?

JF: Nos demandó un grupo de personas que dijeron que estábamos haciendo algo que dañaría el medio ambiente, y estoy rotundamente en desacuerdo. Una de las mejores maneras de mejorar el medio ambiente, de reducir tu producción individual de carbono, es vivir en una gran ciudad. En lugar de trasladarte 45 minutos al trabajo desde tu propia casa unifamiliar con cerca de madera en los suburbios o exurbios, puedes caminar hasta la tienda de comestibles e ir en bicicleta al trabajo. Incluso si usas el auto, son menos kilómetros recorridos. La demanda dice, en líneas generales, que deberíamos haber realizado una revisión medioambiental sobre este plan integral y el desarrollo potencial total. Seamos realistas: no podemos asumir que cada edificio del centro tendrá 100 pisos de altura y cada casa unifamiliar será un tríplex, porque eso nunca va a suceder. La forma en que nos pedían que calculáramos el desarrollo no funciona en la realidad.

AF: Pasando ahora al transporte público y la movilidad, ¿cómo está logrando su visión de movilidad sostenible en una metrópolis históricamente dependiente de los automóviles?

JF: Nuestra ciudad se construyó en una época en la que la gente dependía en gran medida de los automóviles. En relación a lo que se construyó antes de ese período de tiempo, las calles y las redes se adaptaron para que se centren en los automóviles. Por supuesto, reconocemos que los automóviles son una forma en que las personas se desplazan, pero queremos agregar opciones para que las personas puedan ir a trabajar en bicicleta de manera segura y cómoda; queremos que los peatones se sientan cómodos y, de hecho, que se les dé prioridad; queremos agregar opciones de transporte público, no solo como una opción que esté disponible de vez en cuando, sino como una opción conveniente para ir del punto A al punto B.

Estamos sumando autobuses de tránsito rápido (BRT, por su sigla en inglés) siempre que sea posible. Observamos un aumento drástico en el número de líneas de BRT y, en los últimos 15 años, Minneapolis ha tenido un crecimiento de alrededor de 50.000 personas; sin embargo, el total de kilómetros recorridos por vehículos y las emisiones de gases han disminuido.

Reconocemos que la gente va a usar automóviles y vamos a tratar de hacer que esos automóviles sean lo más sostenibles posible a través de estaciones de carga de vehículos eléctricos. En este momento, también estamos agregando carriles de tránsito específicos para autobuses para que uno pueda tomar el autobús y evitar el tráfico en el que, de otro modo, estaría atascado.

AF: ¿Cuál es su valoración del financiamiento basado en el suelo para financiar el transporte, la reurbanización, la vivienda asequible y los parques? La idea es que la acción y las inversiones del gobierno creen valor en el suelo y la urbanización privados. ¿No es posible aprovechar una parte de ese aumento de valor y reinvertirlo en la comunidad? ¿Es partidario de la recuperación de plusvalías?

JF: Creo que no es inteligente estar a favor de la recuperación de plusvalías, del financiamiento por incremento impositivo (TIF, por su sigla en inglés), o en contra de la recuperación de plusvalías o del TIF. Es una herramienta muy importante y necesita equilibrarse. Hay una manera de mejorar una ciudad mediante el uso de herramientas como la recuperación de plusvalías y el TIF para lograr estructuras y opciones de construcción y transporte maravillosas que no serían posibles si no fuera por la intervención del gobierno. Lo hemos estado usando de diversas maneras, incluido uno de los movimientos de políticas más populares que hemos hecho en los últimos años, que es derribar el viejo Kmart. Para ponerlo en contexto, unos 40 o 50 años atrás, se tomó la decisión de bloquear Nicollet Avenue y poner un gran Kmart en un enorme estacionamiento en el medio.

Sería algo injusto por mi parte cuestionar las decisiones que se tomaron en ese momento, porque estoy seguro de que, dentro de 40 años, las decisiones que he tomado no serán tan inteligentes, pero, en mi opinión, esta es una de las peores decisiones de planeamiento urbano tomadas en nuestra ciudad. Encontramos formas de obtener el control del suelo sobre ese antiguo Kmart. Vamos a derribar el edificio. Vamos a abrir la calle, y revitalizar esta importante arteria, y asegurarnos de que no falte nada, desde un parque hasta viviendas asequibles, además de precios comerciales y de mercado. Permite que el flujo de emprendimientos y el crecimiento de nuevos negocios en ese corredor se expandan hacia el sur y el norte. Una gran parte de lo que estamos utilizando para lograr este objetivo a gran escala es la recuperación de plusvalías.

Es una herramienta que debe usarse, pero también es una herramienta que no debe usarse cada vez que se levanta un nuevo edificio o aparece una oportunidad nueva. Tiene que haber un equilibrio.

AF: Un grupo de trabajo está estudiando cambios en el Consejo Metropolitano, pero ¿de qué manera está funcionando este acuerdo pionero? ¿Puede o debe ser replicable esta idea de gobernanza regional?

JF: No se puede pensar en ninguna ciudad como si viviera en el vacío. El alcalde Carter [de St. Paul] y yo bromeamos diciendo que no solo protegemos el agua de nuestro lado del río Mississippi; lo compartimos. De la misma forma, compartimos una economía que no termina donde termina la calle y comienza el límite.

Tengo una responsabilidad con la ciudad de Minneapolis, y ayuda tener un órgano de gobierno que tenga un enfoque regional. Tenemos un Concejo Metropolitano nombrado en gran parte por el gobernador que nos ayuda a poner un metro ligero que pasa por varios municipios diferentes. Nos ayuda a diseñar el tránsito rápido de autobuses, ayuda a pagar la policía de tránsito metropolitano. Tener ese enfoque regional no solo es importante, sino que es crucial para promover una mentalidad y un objetivo regionales.

AF: ¿Cuál es su opinión sobre los pasadizos elevados? Las prácticas actuales de planeamiento urbano sugieren un enfoque en la calle y la actividad a nivel de la calle. ¿Existe algún conflicto ahí? Cuéntenos un poco sobre la parte de diseño urbano de su trabajo.

JF: Si tienes 100.000 o 200.000 personas que vienen al centro de la ciudad, y tienes dos niveles de actividad, estás dividiendo el número que sea entre esos dos niveles. ¿Me gusta dividir la actividad? Por supuesto que no. A nadie le gusta. Prefiero tener una concentración de todo ese bullicio, exaltación y movimiento en un solo nivel. Pero uso el pasadizo elevado. Durante los meses que hace frío, entro y me como un sándwich, y no me siento culpable por ello. De hecho, estoy realmente entusiasmado de ver a los propietarios de pequeñas empresas locales que operan en él.

Los pasadizos elevados se han visto particularmente afectados en los últimos años debido a una disminución en el número de trabajadores que vienen al centro cada año. No aceptaré más críticas sobre la falta de movimiento en el centro o el cierre de la tienda de sándwiches favorita de alguien, por parte de la persona que está sentada en el sofá de su casa en los suburbios. Si le importa, entonces debería estar apoyando esa tienda de sándwiches.

Si quieres ver movimiento y quieres ver más tráfico peatonal, tus pies deberían sumarse a ese tráfico. Estamos aumentando los números de manera bastante radical en este momento. La gente sin duda está regresando, pero no está sucediendo de forma explosiva.

AF: Se ha convertido en un cliché, pero en verdad no hay sustituto para estar en la oficina.

JF: Son las interacciones no planificadas las que en última instancia ayudan. Estoy gran parte del tiempo en Minneapolis debido a una coincidencia. Conoces a alguien, consigues un trabajo, obtienes una entrevista, encuentras una gran ciudad de la que te enamoras. Estas cosas solo suceden porque estuviste allí para que te sucedieran.

Anthony Flint es miembro sénior del Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo, conduce el ciclo de pódcasts  Land Matters y es editor colaborador de Land Lines. Es el autor de El escritorio del alcalde: 20 conversaciones con dirigentes locales que resuelven problemas globales.

Imagen principal: El alcalde Jacob Frey. Crédito: Cortesía de la Oficina del Alcalde de Minneapolis.

This article is reprinted with permission from Bloomberg CityLab, where it originally appeared.

Not far from the pyramids of Giza, symbols of the endurance of civilization, a global group of urban planners and scholars recently gathered to confront the myriad threats afflicting the physical city.

Calamity associated with climate change continued to be top of mind at UN-Habitat’s World Urban Forum 12, a summit to promote equitable and sustainable global cities held in Cairo in November. But another driver of urban devastation loomed especially large: intensifying military conflict.

In Gaza and Ukraine, entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble, following on the vast destruction seen in Syria, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia in the last nearly half-century. While attacking human settlement is hardly new—from the sacking of Rome to the London blitz to Hiroshima and Nagasaki—the razing of cities has grown in intensity and scope, researchers say, thanks to shifts in military strategy and advances in missile, bomb, and drone technology.

Accordingly, conflict-driven destruction—and the vastly complicated associated questions of humanitarian triage, refugees, and ultimately, rebuilding—played a prominent role in policy discussions at WUF12. With urban ruination occurring in real time not far away, one of the forum’s six major “dialogues” confronted the issue directly: In a session called “The Loss of Home,” delegates addressed “displacement caused by global crises, with a focus on rebuilding resilient communities and strengthening urban responses to protect the idea of home.”

The forum’s concluding resolution acknowledged the toll, citing “the need for resilient urban systems that can adapt and respond to the needs of all residents, fostering social cohesion and the reconstruction of homes” and noting that “local governments play a key role in driving solutions and integrating the forcibly displaced into urban development strategies.”

“Those of us brought up as architects or urban planners, we know that the home is not just about the provision of shelter,” but is inextricably bound up with family, community, culture and identity, said Sultan Barakat, professor of public policy at Qatar Foundation’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University and one of the speakers at the dialogue.

Any plans for accommodating displaced peoples, or in the longer term, reconstruction—a politically fraught exercise that will depend on who is doing the rebuilding, and paying for it—must acknowledge these powerful associations, Barakat said.

While there is no single metric, researchers and international aid organizations agree that urban destruction driven by conflict has intensified in the first quarter of the 21st century. Since 2002, approximately 432,000 civilians have been killed, and 38 million forcibly displaced, according to the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Most were city dwellers, partly a reflection of continuing global rural-to-urban migration.

Over the last several decades, the battlefield has shifted to dense urban areas, military scholars say, often because insurgent or paramilitary forces have embedded themselves into the civilian population. In other cases, armies are simply seeking to make territorial gains city by city—an established military tactic that is today playing out in an excruciatingly drawn-out process.

“Evacuation and exile appear to be the main objective: depopulation lowers the human capital of countries and depresses their economies,” writes University of Glasgow professor Josef Konvitz in his 2023 article “People Are the Target: Urban Destruction in the 21st Century.” “Moreover, the increased number of refugees can be turned into an instrument to exert leverage on other countries, destabilizing regions far removed from the war zone.”

Advances in weaponry also play a role. While modern weapons systems can hit with great accuracy—and in some cases civilians are forewarned of an attack—the sheer volume and intensity of today’s urban bombardments has brought shocking devastation. By some measures, the campaign on Gaza has outpaced Allied bombings of Germany during World War II. Human rights groups have decried the use of weapons like ground-penetrating bunker buster ordnance, air-launched glide bombs and “barrel bombs”—oil barrels filled with explosives—on the populations of cities like Kharkiv in Ukraine and Aleppo in Syria. This carnage has brought into the discourse the concept of urbicide, referring to the deliberate destruction of cities, their iconic architecture, and their identity.

The end result, as listed by United Nations Under-Secretary Anacláudia Rossbach, executive director of UN-Habitat, which organizes the World Urban Forum: 1.4 million homes damaged or destroyed and 3.7 million people displaced in Ukraine; 227,000 homes destroyed and 2 million forced to flee in Gaza; and 6,700 residential buildings destroyed and 1.2 million people displaced in Lebanon.

“The situation is huge and urgent. The sense of emergency—we need to bring that to the table,” she said before a hushed audience at the event, offering to work with other parts of the UN, especially with regard to building safe housing. “My view on that is that we can support in looking at the long term. While all the agencies are very well equipped to provide immediate humanitarian support, we can help look beyond the humanitarian crisis. We can work with communities, with local governments, with local stakeholders, with the civil society, because we do have these entry points naturally throughout our work.”

Beyond near-term measures geared toward humanitarian relief and accepting refugees—an estimated 9 million are expected in Egypt alone—the broader discussion of reconstruction from these current conflicts is so politically fraught that it’s hard to envision a way back from all the destruction. The rebuilding of Europe under the Marshall Plan appears straightforward by comparison. As the journal article author Konvitz wrote: “Cities destroyed in world wars were rebuilt; cities destroyed in today’s urban battles, often in fragile, unstable states, may be left in ruins for years.”

Nevertheless, there are tools and methodologies available to facilitate rebuilding, these experts said in Cairo, from post-disaster land readjustment strategies to geospatial mapping, which can instantly assess the damage and define the land use parameters of reconstruction.

At WUF12, those with experience with the devastation of warfare on cities talked about the importance of neighborhood-scale planning. Mona Fawaz, professor in urban studies and planning at the American University of Beirut, warned against a focus on rebuilding individual buildings, which can engender competition. Instead, she envisioned building a “collective” that would have “custody over the neighborhood and the space of negotiation with public authorities. Once we don’t focus on the collective and we don’t put the public at the center of our attention, what happens is that people don’t come back.”

Another challenge, she said, is the regulatory framework. Consider that cities and villages in southern Lebanon, for example, were built before modern building codes: “So the framework allows only for reconstruction not as it used to be before, which destroys heritage and the sense of identity in these collectives, or then to build illegally.”

Ammar Azzouz, a research fellow at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, agreed that if cities can ever recover from the horrors of conflict over recent years, rebuilding will need to be informed by more basic elements of urbanism. There is too much emphasis on the destruction of “cultural heritage and monuments and the ancient and the classical antiquity sites, but less often there is a focus on the everyday, on the mundane, on the bakery shops on the streets, the neighborhood, the schools,” he said.

Azzouz, the author of Domicide: Architecture, War, and the Destruction of Home in Syria, left his hometown of Homs, Syria, in 2011, and has not been able to return.

“These power dynamics are so important, and I feel like we have to to move from our obsession in academia and journalism and international organizations of focusing on one mosque or one church or a bridge, to celebrate the success of reconstruction,” Azzouz said, asserting that master plans formulated by aggressors do not constitute genuine rebuilding at all. “We need to think about the wider question of what reconstruction means for the local people, and how can we listen to their voices.”

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matterspodcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Lead image: A residential building in Odesa, Ukraine, damaged by a Russian drone strike in 2024. Credit: Office of the President of Ukraine via Flickr/CC0 1.0 Universal.

For years, a certain resident of New Orleans, someone who drives a lot for work, would turn one corner or another and encounter an all-too-familiar sight: a road pocked with potholes and broken pavement. “Look at this freakin’ street,” he would say to himself. Actually, he said something a little more salty than “freakin’,” and eventually converted his repeated utterance into the handle of an Instagram account devoted to documenting, and venting about, the many flaws of the Crescent City’s infrastructure.

Today the account (we’ll just call it LATFS) has more than 125,000 followers—including employees of city and water utility agencies whose accounts it tagged in some snide posts. “I figured I’d just get blocked,” says the account’s creator, who has chosen to remain anonymous. Instead, those agencies started to pay attention to the account—and, in some cases, problems flagged (and mocked) on LATFS promptly got fixed. Today the account’s creator mostly curates submissions from others, and while the account quite clearly is not an official part of New Orleans’ infrastructure maintenance system, it’s hard to deny that it’s part of the conversation. And there may be lessons in that for cities looking to harness citizen input to manage infrastructure maintenance.

The use of technology to strengthen government-citizen communication is of course a long-established practice. The Federal Communications Commission designated 311 for non-emergency government service in 1996. Baltimore was the first city to implement a 311 system that year, and other cities followed, offering an easy way for citizens to report potholes, graffiti, malfunctioning stoplights, and so on. This early version of crowdsourcing soon moved online, evolving into web- or app-based systems that can (depending on the municipality) respond to texts, accept photo or video submissions, and incorporate back-end software that can collect and consolidate service data.

Along the way, private-sector services emerged to develop and provide cities with more efficient and consumer-friendly citizen-connection platforms. SeeClickFix, a pioneer in that category, was created by New Haven entrepreneur Ben Berkowitz and partners in 2007, and acquired in 2019 by CivicPlus, a public sector tech firm with over 10,000 municipal clients. CivicPlus offers a variety of software and services from local government software to websites to an emergency alert system. One of its clients’ top priorities across categories is making these systems work together as seamlessly as possible, says Cari Tate, solutions director at CivicPlus.

For 311-style products, that means getting user concerns to the right part of city government smoothly, and making sure people feel heard. “Residents ultimately want to see their communities improved,” says Tate, a SeeClickFix veteran who came to CivicPlus with the acquisition. “And want to partner with their local governments to do so. But they often don’t know how, or they feel like their comments go into the void.”

Partly that’s a matter of improving functionality. The publication Government Technology surveyed app-store reviews for 75 city and county 311 apps and identified Improve Detroit as one of the most praised. The app, which uses SeeClickFix software, is regularly updated with relevant new features—for example, after flooding in 2021, the city added a tool to file water damage claims.

But partly the effectiveness of a citizen-to-government tech connection may also be a matter of meeting residents where they are, which is increasingly on social media. Over the years, some municipalities have publicized hashtags—like #502pothole for Louisville residents, as an example—that citizens could use to flag problems via popular social platforms like Twitter (now X) and Instagram.

Not surprisingly, users of such platforms don’t need an invitation to sound off about the flaws or blemishes of their local infrastructure. And sounding off in public digital spaces often feels more satisfying than going through official channels. New Orleans, for example, has a 311 service, but it can feel like a “black box” compared to the buzzy camaraderie of Instagram, the creator of LATFS points out. When the latter actually gets results, that fact just heightens the attention. A recent example: A series of images of a fallen stop sign and its citizen-painted replacement caught the attention of a city council member who leaned on city services to make a real fix—and credited LATFS to local media. (A spokesperson for the city’s sewer and water utility says as an entity it does not “actively follow” LATFS in a formal way, but is aware of the account; often the utility is aware of issues before they show up on social media, the spokesperson added, pointing to the official “robust” customer contact phone number as the best way to report an issue.)

One challenge with making practical use of social media accounts is that reactions to fleeting problems may lack context. For actual infrastructure planning, social data is “actually really muddy, not specific,” says Julia Kumari Drapkin, CEO and founder of ISeeChange, a climate risk data and community engagement platform that works with New Orleans, Miami, and other municipalities and utilities. Its approach takes in social media data and uses AI to help craft bigger-picture solutions. As it happens, it has worked with LATFS, asking it to direct followers to the ISeeChange app during flood events, enabling residents to upload real-time reports and photos.

ISeeChange’s software can take in that information and combine it with data from its municipal and utility clients to deliver insights with tangible impacts, Drapkin says. In one recent project with engineering and design firm Stantec, ISeeChange collected firsthand, citizen-provided flood data that helped improve a flood infrastructure project in New Orleans. This resulted in the reallocation of $4.8 million in federal funding, more than doubling stormwater capacity in one low-income neighborhood. On the ground residents, she maintains, can provide the best data.

Social media’s role in reporting infrastructure issues may be somewhat messy, but its sheer popularity makes it hard to ignore. Last year, Tulane University sociology PhD candidate Alex Turvy published an article in the journal Social Media + Society closely analyzing LATFS posts and comments provided to him by the account’s founder, and concluding that it is “an effective and powerful participatory platform for exposing a broad range of systemic problems and their causes.” Boiling user strategies down into categories (shaming, mocking, and exposing), he contends that the account allows residents, through humor, connection, and “in-group knowledge,” to “take back the narrative of their city’s infrastructure challenges” and who is responsible for them. And while there is plenty of anger and snark, resident users also swap explanations and practical information.

Turvy acknowledges both the utility of 311-style systems and the challenge an actual city government would face in trying to corral the disgruntled and profane discourse of something like LATFS. And while similar citizen-driven accounts have popped up elsewhere—Pittsburgh’s PWSA Sinkholes on Instagram is a notable example—many fizzle out if they fail to attract submissions and followers. But even if LATFS is an outlier, cities might still learn from it, Turvy argues.

“The core lesson is that cities need to move beyond treating citizen reports as individual service requests and instead view them as part of a collective narrative on infrastructure issues,” he says. While traditional systems feel transactional, LATFS feels like a shared story. Its success, he continues, “highlights the power of storytelling over service processing.” To encourage that “organic, citizen-driven” feel, cities could work with community groups, communicate more proactively, and clearly demonstrate how citizen feedback is being put to work.

Some of this may seem a bit utopian, but it also overlaps with trends and aspirations for 311-style systems. Cities are looking “to provide a way for residents to actually hear back and to see all of the other things that they’re doing,” says Tate of CivicPlus. Too often, “you see all of the problems, but we don’t see what the city is actually doing.” Cities are increasingly looking for systems with strong data analytics that also “provide visibility, and actually shift that mindset and build trust.”

While LATFS remains a highly irreverent forum focused more on complaints and jokes than on civics or the complexities of infrastructure planning, the city’s engagement with the account has probably softened its original oppositional feel. “We try not to post things that are in the middle of repair, which I get a lot of,” says its founder. “We can’t shame the city for repairing things.” That said, he is also quick to point out that he’s a citizen, not a stealth urban planner or city activist. As he put it: “I’m just a guy posting on Instagram.” But sometimes, that’s exactly the person the city needs to hear from—and wants to engage.

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

Lead image: This photo of a hand-painted New Orleans stop sign held up with plastic wrap gained notoriety—and inspired the city to install a proper replacement—after it appeared on a citizen-led Instagram account dedicated to flagging necessary infrastructure repairs. Credit: LATFS.