The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy today launched a new enterprise to expand the use of advanced technology for land and water conservation—The Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS). The center will give people and organizations the tools they need to manage land and water resources with precision, at the scale required to confront pressing challenges such as climate change, loss of habitat, and water scarcity.

The center will provide data, conduct analysis, and perform specialized consulting services that enable organizations of all sizes in the nonprofit, public, and private sectors to deploy geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, and other geospatial technologies. The center will help practitioners to overcome barriers such as a lack of staffing, resources, or expertise, which have hindered the adoption of geospatial technology, especially in the nonprofit sector.

“If land and water managers, conservationists, and governments are to meet rapidly accelerating social, economic, and environmental challenges, including climate change, they need to work together at larger scales and make use of every possible tool,” said Anne Scott, executive director for the Center for Geospatial Solutions. “The Center for Geospatial Solutions will enhance collective access to better data and analysis, so that practitioners and decisionmakers can act collaboratively on the best information available.”

The center will deliver services directly to nonprofit organizations, foundations, governments, and businesses, and will also work with funders to guide and administer grants. The center will also use the resources and expertise of the Lincoln Institute, which is organized around the achievement of six goals: sustainably managed land and water resources, low-carbon, climate-resilient communities and regions, efficient and equitable tax systems, reduced poverty and spatial inequality, fiscally healthy communities and regions, and functional land markets and reduced informality.

“My wife, Laura, and I developed Esri to help people make better decisions for our world, and that is what the Center for Geospatial Solutions is accomplishing,” said Jack Dangermond, President and CEO of Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri). “The Center for Geospatial Solutions will move the global environmental field over the next decade to meet goals set forth by scientists to save and restore our planet. The center’s combination of partnerships, shared resources, advanced data science and analysis fills an important niche to bring geospatial technology solutions to environmental organizations worldwide.”

The center will prioritize access to technology for people and communities that have been historically marginalized, governments in the developing world, under-resourced nonprofit organizations, startups, and businesses operating in developing or restricted economies. The center will build customized tools that can be tailored to fit the size and capacity of any organization.

“These are unprecedented times, which require broad vision combined with the practical implementation of innovative solutions,” said Breece Robertson, director of partnerships and strategy for the Center for Geospatial Solutions. “We can’t address global challenges like climate change and inequity without access to data, science and technologies that enable everyone to act effectively.”

The potential for geospatial technology to improve conservation is well demonstrated. In one powerful application, regional planners in Tucson, Arizona, worked with nonprofit partners, including the Lincoln Institute’s Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, to map the tree canopy, surface temperatures, and other data to help communities to better-manage stormwater, and to prioritize where to plant trees. In another case, Denver’s regional planning agency is using high-resolution maps to classify land cover into eight categories for a wide range of possible uses, including to understand habitat connectivity and quality to guide investment in green infrastructure.

In addition to advancing land and water conservation, geospatial technology can inform decisions in urban contexts. Its applications include analyzing cities’ carbon footprints, exploring the conservation potential of brownfield sites, revealing local variations in air quality, and mapping parks, open spaces, and urban corridors for wildlife.

“Some organizations are already using geospatial technology to understand what is happening on the ground with greater and greater precision,” said Jeffrey Allenby, director of geospatial technology for the Center for Geospatial Solutions. “The center will bring this capability to organizations of all sizes and scales by building customized tools that are easy to use for all staff, even those with no background or training in technology.”

“The center builds on the Lincoln Institute’s long track record of pioneering ideas that have transformed land policy,” Lincoln Institute President and CEO George W. “Mac” McCarthy wrote in an essay in Land Lines, the magazine of the Lincoln Institute. “The Center for Geospatial Solutions represents another transformational idea—by making land, water, and mapping technology universal, we can enable people and organizations to collaborate and achieve impact that is orders-of-magnitude greater than what they can accomplish today. Like lifting a fog, applying geospatial technology will enable anyone to see what is happening anywhere on the Earth. It will make the planet feel that much smaller, and the solutions to humanity’s toughest problems that much easier to grasp.”

For more information, visit cgs.earth or email cgs@lincolninst.edu.

Leadership of the Center for Geospatial Solutions

Anne Scott, Executive Director

Anne brings leadership experience in public and community health and international development, and she is particularly passionate about achieving cost-effective outcomes that can be replicated and scaled. She has lived and worked in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East on the implementation and evaluation of large-scale health and environmental programs funded by the U.S. and European governments, and philanthropic foundations. Anne has held executive positions at the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation in London, the Charlottesville (Virginia) Area Community Foundation and, most recently, Boston-based Pathfinder International. She is a prior board chair of the Chesapeake Conservancy. Anne has a Ph.D. in medical anthropology and an MBA in finance, as well as post-doctoral qualifications in science and diplomacy, and health and child survival.

Jeffrey Allenby, Director of Geospatial Technology.

Jeff brings a wealth of experience developing systems-focused solutions at the intersection of technology and the natural world. Prior to joining the Lincoln Institute, Jeff was the director of conservation technology at the Chesapeake Conservancy and cofounder of the Conservancy’s Conservation Innovation Center, building it from scratch into a globally recognized pioneer in the application of technology to improve environmental decision making in the Chesapeake Bay and across the world. Jeff worked previously for the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources on projects to support local climate change adaptation. Jeff has a M.E.M. and a certificate in geospatial analysis from Duke University and a B.S. from the University of Richmond. Jeff also serves as a member of the advisory board for the Internet of Water.

Breece Robertson, Director of Partnerships and Strategy

Breece has more than 18 years of experience leading collaborative and strategic initiatives that leverage data-driven platforms, GIS, research, and planning for the park and conservation fields. Breece combines geospatial technology and storytelling to inspire, activate, educate, and engage. During her career at The Trust for Public Land, she led geospatial innovations that supported the protection of 3,000+ places, over 2+ million acres of land, provided park access to over 9 million people, and achieved $74 billion in voter-approved funding for parks and conservation. She is a skilled leader, collaborator, implementer, and creative visionary with a legacy of building award-winning teams and community-driven GIS approaches for strategic conservation and park creation. Esri, the world’s leader in geographic information system (GIS) technology, twice has honored Robertson for innovation in helping communities meet park and conservation goals. In 2006, she was awarded the Esri Special Achievement in GIS award and in 2012, the “Making a Difference” award – a prestigious presidential award.

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.

Will Jason is director of communications at the Lincoln Institute.

Image: NOAA Data Enterprise (NDE) VIIRS daily global active fire detections, UMD Geographical Sciences VIIRS Active Fire site, http://viirsfire.geog.umd.edu/pages/mapsData.php.

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President’s Message: Center for Geospatial Solutions: Think Globally, Map Locally

City Tech: Precision-Mapping Water in the Desert

In the 1980s, not long after China had opened up to global trade and commerce, the nation’s farmland began succumbing to rapid urbanization. The explosive growth of cities consumed an estimated 7 million to 12 million acres of prime farmland from 1987 to 1995. This pattern led to dramatic changes in the landscape and grave concerns about food security. Aware that no farms meant no food for the country’s growing population—and just a few decades removed from a devastating famine that had cost the lives of 20 million to 50 million people between 1958 and 1961—the central government enacted regulations requiring those who converted farmland for other uses to ensure the protection of the same amount of farmland elsewhere.

China’s Ministry of Land and Resources tried heroically to meet these zero net loss mandates. But it was impossible to monitor land quality and local land exchange decisions, especially with last-generation management systems like limited data, paper records, and low-resolution maps. Urbanization continued apace, swallowing an estimated 82 million acres of farmland between 2001 and 2013. In most cases, the rich farmlands around growing cities were “replaced” with less productive woodlands and grasslands. To get higher yields from less fertile land, farmers had to adopt more intensive cultivation practices, relying on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation. These technical solutions maintained food security, but at a high cost, including the depletion of aquifers and contamination of soil.

China is now a net importer of grains and future production hinges on finding new sources of water for irrigation. Concerns are growing about food security once more, but something else is changing in China: the land and resources agency—now called the Ministry of Natural Resources—is modernizing the system it uses to monitor and enforce the farmland preservation policy. This includes adopting geospatial data from satellite imagery and other remote sensing to map and evaluate the quality of reclaimed land. It also includes monitoring urban frontiers to better guide development decisions.

Recent improvements in the quality of satellite imagery and computer analysis methods are making it possible to monitor China’s farmland preservation efforts with increasing precision. These improvements also hold great promise for land and water conservation around the globe. This fall, the Lincoln Institute is taking a major step to expand the accessibility and use of such cutting-edge technology by launching the Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS).

CGS is a new hub of data, expertise, and services for people and organizations across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors working to conserve land and water resources. It will expand access to geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, and other tools that can inform decisions about land and water management. Although these tools have existed for decades, many organizations lack the data, equipment, staff, or expertise to implement them, limiting their ability to achieve their goals and to collaborate with others at large scales. The center will focus on opening access to cutting-edge technology for historically oppressed or marginalized people and communities; governments in low- to middle-income countries, regions, or states; nonprofit organizations with limited resources; and startup businesses, or businesses operating in developing or restricted economies.

We’re launching this effort because we know that sweeping reforms like those China implemented to preserve farmland are just the first step toward an intended outcome. To succeed, such policies must be followed by the less glamorous work of persistent enforcement and monitoring, with adjustments to the rules in response to lessons learned. In addition, if policy makers hope to manage land policy at the national or international level, they need access to the best possible data and precision tools to track and respond to what is happening locally. CGS, led by staff members with deep expertise in mapping technologies, organizational development, public health, and conservation, will provide data, conduct analysis, and build customized tools to respond to increasing demand from organizations of all sizes, with all levels of technical capacity.

CGS builds on the Lincoln Institute’s long track record of pioneering ideas that have transformed land policy at national and global levels. Beginning in the 1970s, the Lincoln Institute played a leading role in developing computerized property assessment. This revolutionized how local governments around the world administered the property tax—the most important component of local public revenues in most places. In the early 1980s, the Lincoln Institute convened some 40 land trusts to mobilize efforts to conserve private land in the United States to complement public land conservation. By expanding the scope and use of conservation easements and advocating successfully for state and federal tax breaks for private land conservation, the coalition, which became the Land Trust Alliance, has since helped to protect more than 56 million acres of private land—equal to the land area of Minnesota. And in 2014, we launched the International Land Conservation Network, which connects civic and private land conservation organizations and people around the globe, and has spawned major conservation initiatives on several continents.

With the launch of CGS, we are prepared to apply our expertise to the work of supporting and amplifying today’s bold land-based initiatives. Earlier this year, for example, the Campaign for Nature launched an effort to protect 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030. The “30 by 30 Campaign” seeks to address climate change, support a growing global population, and prevent mass extinctions by protecting critical natural resources and ecosystems, and monitoring and managing their protection in perpetuity. This colossal effort can learn from farmland protection efforts in China and other bold efforts to manage land and resources at national or global levels, and it will benefit from the kind of tools and analysis CGS brings to the table.

An important first question is whether we can leverage the traumas of 2020—a pandemic, devastating wildfires in Australia and the United States, the increasing frequency and severity of weather-related calamities—to forge the political will to take meaningful global action. Can we convince global politicians and voters that the climate crisis or mass extinctions threaten human survival and require the type of coordinated global action sparked by the pandemic? Second, can we sharpen the global goal of 30 by 30 to motivate more specific (and practical) actions at lower levels of geography to avoid unintended consequences? While 30 by 30 is a handy slogan, the 30 percent of lands and oceans the campaign chooses to protect will have direct bearing on whether we can reverse the climate crisis or avert mass extinctions.

We will need to determine which land and other resources to protect, which to protect first, and how to do it. We will need to monitor local actors to make sure their actions are consistent with global goals and strategies. And we’ll need to find ways to hold key actors accountable for meeting critical benchmarks. Finally, once we’ve identified the specific ecosystems we want to protect, we will need legal mechanisms to protect them and means to monitor protection and stewardship in perpetuity. It will require thousands of people equipped with the tools and training to monitor and enforce legal agreements and the authority to do so.

The Lincoln Institute can contribute to this bold global effort by helping the Campaign determine which land and other resources to protect first, how to monitor and manage that protection, and, with the help of ILCN, how to navigate the relevant legal mechanisms across different countries with different legal systems. In parallel efforts, the Lincoln Institute is building distance learning curricula to train local government officials and practitioners to use new land and water management tools and approaches more effectively. CGS can decentralize decision making by providing tools and training that can be deployed locally to support global goals. By making mapping technology universally available, we can enable people and organizations to collaborate and achieve impact in land and water conservation that is orders of magnitude greater than what they can accomplish alone.

The Center for Geospatial Solutions exists to bring new clarity and insight to the business of global land conservation, increasing access to data in the name of building a more sustainable future. Like lifting a fog, applying geospatial technology will enable anyone to see what is happening anywhere on the Earth. It will make the planet feel that much smaller, and the solutions to humanity’s toughest problems that much easier to grasp.

Image: The Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS) will expand access to geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, and other tools that can inform decisions about land and water management. This CGS map combines social and environmental data to highlight landscapes that are relied on by  at-risk species, facing development pressures, and adjacent to existing protected areas (shown in green). Credit: CGS.

Numina, un emprendimiento tecnológico con base en Brooklyn, Nueva York, usa sensores especialmente construidos para recopilar datos sobre la conducta de peatones y ciclistas. De esta manera, ofrece información detallada y anonimizada a urbanistas, gestores de políticas y empresas centradas en la movilidad, que puede ayudar a dar forma a nuevos proyectos y ajustar diseños existentes de paisaje urbano. Si bien Numina siempre se centró en peatones y ciclistas, su tecnología demostró ser útil para evaluar una conducta que hace un año nadie habría incluido en su lista de deseos sobre datos de referencia: el distanciamiento social.

Es un ejemplo modesto, pero convincente, de cómo la tecnología puede ayudarnos a ver las ciudades de diferentes formas, y de cómo las secuelas de la pandemia de COVID-19 podrían cambiar el debate sobre el papel de los macrodatos en la planificación y el uso urbano del suelo.

El núcleo del servicio de Numina es un dispositivo parecido a una cámara diseñado para instalarse en infraestructura existente, como postes de servicios. El dispositivo captura videos; estos se reproducen en el software de Numina, que distingue entre ciclistas, peatones, automóviles, autobuses, perros y otros objetos en movimiento, y luego clasifica los datos resultantes. Desde que se realizó un prototipo del sistema en St. Louis en 2015, con el apoyo de un subsidio de Knight Foundation, Numina se centró en lo que llama “actividad a nivel de la acera”: por ejemplo, mide el impacto de un proyecto específico para alivianar el tráfico y así complementa datos de niveles más complejos, como la American Community Survey de la Oficina del Censo de los Estados Unidos.

En marzo, con la implementación del distanciamiento social y el confinamiento en respuesta a la propagación del nuevo coronavirus en los Estados Unidos, Numina ya tenía sensores posicionados para capturar datos que evidenciaran cambios en conductas reales de traslado urbano. Por ejemplo, los sensores de Golden Gate Park, en San Francisco, computaron un cambio masivo de automóviles a bicicletas. Y en Nueva York, un fascinante video secuencial (peatones y vehículos se representan con cuadros de colores) mostró la dificultad de mantener una distancia de dos metros con otras personas en una esquina en particular. Incluso el tráfico peatonal se redujo drásticamente en Manhattan en comparación con los niveles anteriores al confinamiento; algunos peatones bajaban a la calle para evitar a otros. “Nuestros datos muestran que los neoyorquinos están haciendo el mayor esfuerzo posible para respetar el #distanciamientosocial”, tuiteó Numina. “Pero esta instantánea del sábado muestra lo difícil que puede ser, dada la limitación de espacio en la acera”.

Estos datos de referencia alimentaron el debate público de muchas ciudades acerca de cerrar calles para dar a peatones y ciclistas más espacio para moverse de forma segura. Tara Pham, CEO de Numina, dice que la empresa ha estado atendiendo una cantidad “inaudita” de consultas de ciudades que luchan con esos problemas. “Las ciudades necesitan nuevos tipos de datos para controlar las conductas de distanciamiento social, la densidad de multitudes en espacios públicos y la incorporación de nuevas iniciativas”, dice. “No están planificando para intervenciones transitorias, sino cambios de 18 o 24 meses, o incluso permanentes”. Esto significa que la urgencia de la pandemia podría suscitar una nueva actitud receptiva a usar dichos datos (conjuntos de barrido, recopilados casi en tiempo real mediante varias tecnologías) como una herramienta de planificación más prominente.

“Las ciudades adoptaron varias modalidades de los siglos XIX y XX para comprender a la gente y los lugares: entrevistas, encuestas, grupos de sondeo”, dice Justin Hollander, profesor de políticas y planificación urbanas y medioambientales en la Universidad Tufts. Y agrega que a menudo estos métodos también resultaron útiles para los planificadores. Pero también tienen fallas y limitaciones. En los últimos años, incluso los planificadores sin conocimientos técnicos han podido acceder cada vez más a datos “para comprender qué está pasando en las comunidades de formas que antes no eran posibles”.

En su libro Urban Social Listening (Escucha urbana social, respaldado en parte por el Instituto Lincoln), de 2016, Hollander se refirió al potencial de usar conjuntos de datos seleccionados de redes sociales y otras fuentes. “Desde entonces, las cosas explotaron”, dice; y esa sensación no hizo más que aumentar desde que llegó la pandemia.

Otro ejemplo de cómo la crisis actual hizo surgir conjuntos de datos existentes en nuevas formas: hace poco, Google lanzó los Informes de Movilidad Local. Como explicó la empresa en una declaración pública, los funcionarios de salud que intentan medir el impacto de las políticas en los movimientos individuales necesarios para contener el virus pueden verse beneficiados con “el mismo tipo de conocimiento colectivo y anonimizado que usamos en productos como Google Maps”. Si usa Google Maps, ya sabe que este puede decirle, por ejemplo, cuándo un restaurante u otro comercio tiene mayor actividad. Esto es porque muchos usuarios (se den cuenta o no) otorgaron permiso a esta app tan popular para que rastree sus movimientos. Esto crea el tipo de tesoro de datos masivos que puede hacer que Maps sea tan útil para los usuarios.

Y eso significa que también es útil para los funcionarios de salud (y en realidad para todos) a quienes les interesa saber en qué grado la gente se está moviendo, a nivel de cada condado. Por ejemplo, el Informe de Movilidad Local del distrito de Luisiana donde vivo me muestra que a mediados de abril la gente visitaba lugares minoristas en un 62 por ciento menos que un mes antes. New York Times trabajó con empresas de telefonía móvil para crear visualizaciones de datos similares.

Y los proyectos de este tipo abundan. El emprendimiento de visión artificial Voxel51 analiza transmisiones de video en vivo de calles urbanas de alta densidad en todo el mundo para crear un “índice de distanciamiento físico” que, según la empresa, “capta la cantidad promedio de actividad humana y conductas de distanciamiento social en ciudades importantes conforme avanza el tiempo”. La tecnología automatizada desarrollada por Zensors, una empresa nacida en el Instituto de Interacción Humana con Computadoras de la Universidad Carnegie Mellon, se está usando para analizar las transmisiones de las cámaras disponibles de videovigilancia para estudiar conductas de distanciamiento social.

Si bien todas estas entidades, grandes y pequeñas, insisten en que los datos que recopilan se anonimizan y no son invasivos, es cuestión de tiempo para que algo de esto suscite inquietudes sobre la privacidad. Estas inquietudes son reales, y se deben tratar con seriedad para mantener la confianza del público. Pero con el tiempo, la implementación creativa y productiva de los macrodatos podría llevar a que los gestores de políticas estén más dispuestos a usar datos para planificar; no solo para labores de saneamiento de la pandemia a corto plazo, sino también para proyectos y enfoques a un plazo más largo.

Hollander indica que una crítica frecuente a las labores de planificación basadas en datos es que no tienen “el toque humano”. Pero la clave es que estas nuevas fuentes no reemplacen los aportes humanos tradicionales, sino que logren que los planificadores dependan menos de ellos. Y, al final, podrían permitir una planificación más inclusiva. Después de todo, no muchos ciudadanos quieren responder preguntas de encuestas o grupos de sondeo, y mucho menos asistir a reuniones de la comunidad. Esto hace que sus voces y opiniones se pierdan, y puede distorsionar los resultados de las devoluciones. 

“Este nuevo tesoro oculto de conocimiento reformulará nuestra concepción fundamental de lo que entendemos por sociedad humana”, dice Hollander. “Y seguirá teniendo un papel muy importante en la formación del planeamiento urbano”.

¿Y si los datos neutrales pudieran sugerir distintas respuestas, por ejemplo, sobre dónde debería colocarse un nuevo puente, o qué edificios deberían conservarse? ¿Respuestas basadas no en devoluciones selectivas, sino en evidencia que las empresas tecnológicas ya están recopilando? Estas labores en la era del coronavirus son solo el ejemplo más reciente de algo que está ocurriendo desde hace años. “Realmente se puede entender dónde está la gente, y a dónde está yendo”, dice Hollander. “Los datos están ahí”.

Rob Walker es periodista; escribe sobre diseño, tecnología y otros temas, y es autor de The Art of Noticing (El arte de darse cuenta).

Imagen: Un video secuencial recopilado por los sensores de Numina revela patrones de distanciamiento social en las calles de la ciudad de Nueva York. Crédito: Numina/@numina.

Numina, a tech startup based in Brooklyn, New York, uses purpose-built sensors to gather data on pedestrian and bicyclist behavior, offering urban planners, policy makers, and mobility-focused businesses granular, anonymized information that can help shape new projects and tweak existing streetscape designs. While Numina has always focused on walkers and cyclists, its technology is proving useful for evaluating one behavior that wasn’t on anybody’s data-point wish list a year ago: social distancing.

It’s a modest but compelling example of how technology can help us see cities in different ways—and how the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic could shift the dialogue about the role of big data in planning and urban land use.

At the center of Numina’s service is a camera-like device designed to be installed using existing infrastructure, such as utility poles. The device collects video that’s run through Numina’s software, which distinguishes among cyclists, walkers, cars, buses, dogs, and other moving objects, then sorts the resulting data. Since its system was prototyped in St. Louis in 2015, with support from a Knight Foundation grant, Numina has focused on what it calls “curb-level activity”—gauging the impact of a specific traffic-calming project, for example, and thus complementing higher-level data such as the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

In March, as social distancing and lockdown orders were issued in response to the spread of the novel coronavirus in the United States, Numina already had sensors in place that were positioned to capture data demonstrating changes in actual urban travel behavior. Sensors in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, for instance, tallied a massive shift from cars to bikes. And in New York, fascinating time-lapse video—with pedestrians and vehicles represented by colored boxes—showed the difficulty of keeping a six-foot distance from other people on a particular corner. Even with pedestrian traffic radically decreased from pre-lockdown levels in Manhattan, some walkers circled out into the street to avoid others. “Our data shows that New Yorkers are doing their best with #socialdistancing,” Numina tweeted. “But this snapshot from Saturday shows how difficult it can be, given limited sidewalk space.”

These data points added to a public discussion in multiple cities about closing streets to give walkers and cyclists more space to move safely. Numina CEO Tara Pham says the firm has been fielding an “unprecedented” number of inquiries from cities grappling with those issues. “Cities need new kinds of data to monitor social distancing behaviors, crowd density in public spaces, and adoption of new initiatives,” she says. “They are not planning for temporary interventions, but 18- or 24-month changes, or possibly permanent [changes].” That means the urgency of the pandemic may spark a new openness to using such data—sweeping sets, collected in almost real time via various technologies—as a more prominent planning tool.

“Cities have embraced a variety of 19th and 20th century modalities for understanding places and people: interviews, surveys, focus groups,” says Justin Hollander, a professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University. Often those methods have served planners well, he continues. But they also have flaws and limitations. In recent years, even planners with no technical expertise have increasingly been able to access data “to understand what’s going on in our communities in ways that weren’t possible before.” Hollander addressed the potential for using data sets culled from social media and other sources in his 2016 book Urban Social Listening (supported in part by the Lincoln Institute). “Things have exploded since then,” he says—and that sense has only increased since the pandemic hit.

Another example of how our current crisis has surfaced existing data sets in new ways: Google’s recent release of Community Mobility Reports. As the company explained in a public statement, health officials trying to gauge the policy impact on individual movements needed to contain the virus could benefit from “the same type of aggregated, anonymized insights we use in products such as Google Maps.” If you use Google Maps, you know, for instance, that it can tell you when a restaurant or other business is busiest; that’s because many users (whether they realize it or not) have given the wildly popular app permission to track their movements. This creates the kind of massive data trove that can make Maps so helpful to its users.

And that means it’s also helpful to health officials (and really, to anyone) interested in knowing, down to the county level, the degree to which people are moving around. For instance, the Community Mobility Report for the Louisiana parish where I live shows me that in mid-April, people were visiting retail locations 62 percent less than they had been a month earlier. The New York Times has worked with mobile phone companies to create similar data visualizations.

Other projects abound. Computer vision startup Voxel51 analyzes live video streams of dense urban streets around the world to create a “physical distancing index” that, according to the company, “captures the average amount of human activity and social distancing behaviors in major cities over time.” Automated technology developed by Zensors, a firm with roots in Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, is being used to analyze the feeds of available CCTV cameras to study social-distancing behavior. 

While each of these entities, large and small, insists the data it collects is anonymized and non-invasive, some of this is bound to raise privacy concerns. Those concerns are real, and need to be dealt with seriously to maintain public trust. But over time, the creative and productive deployment of big data may result in a new receptiveness among policy makers to using data for planning—not only for near-term pandemic recovery efforts, but for longer-term projects and approaches.

Hollander recounts a recurring critique of data-driven planning efforts as lacking “the human touch.” But the key is that these new sources don’t replace traditional human input—they just make planners less reliant on it. And ultimately, that could lead to more inclusive planning. After all, plenty of city residents don’t want to answer survey or focus group questions, let alone attend community meetings. Their voices and insights are thus lost, and that can skew feedback outcomes.

“This new treasure trove of insight is going to fundamentally rework our understanding of human society,” Hollander says. “And it’s going to continue to play a really important role in shaping urban planning.”

What if neutral data could suggest different answers to, say, where that new bridge should go, or which buildings to target for preservation? Answers based not on selective feedback, but on evidence that is already being collected by tech companies? These coronavirus-era efforts are just the latest example of something that’s been underway for years. “You can really get a good handle on where people are, and where they’re going,” Hollander says. “The data’s there.”

Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, and other subjects. He is the author of the book The Art of Noticing.

Images in order of appearance: 

This still from a time-lapse video reveals social distancing patterns among pedestrians in New York City. Credit: Numina/@numina

Voxel51’s Physical Distancing Index (PDI) shows the impacts of the novel coronavirus on human behavior in real time. The company has created PDIs for major cities around the world. Credit: Voxel51/@Voxel51

Over the past 25 years, the western edge of Missoula, Montana, has been a hotbed of growth. Thousands of residents have moved into new neighborhoods built on former agricultural land, with big box stores like Costco and Home Depot cropping up nearby. The city and county are now considering multi-use development of the 2,000 or so undeveloped acres remaining in the area—a tract surrounded on two sides by housing and adjacent to a main thoroughfare and the regional airport—and public input is key to shaping the direction of the project. But with the COVID-19 crisis halting all in-person planning meetings and approvals in the region, including a scheduled community charrette, the planning process went online.

During a multi-day virtual charrette in April, participants watched presentations and videos on the current plan, whose elements include affordable housing, community-supported agriculture, walkable urban centers, and the restoration of a local creek. They submitted questions and answered daily online polls, and those who couldn’t attend could access videos and submit comments after the fact. All told, more than 280 people participated in the charrette or later visited the “virtual studio.” The videos—on topics including historical and environmental preservation, traffic planning, and stormwater management—have gotten thousands of views.

“The event was attended by far more people and a wider variety of people than a live event,” said Jason King, a principal at Florida-based project consultant Dover, Kohl & Partners. “Landowners called in from Seattle, and a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation called in from the Flathead Reservation. These are people who it is difficult to get to an on-site charrette but who we talked to specifically because they could call in from their homes and offices.” At this virtual charrette and others the firm has held, King says, “we see more than just ‘the usual suspects’ from city council night.”

Amy Cotter of the Lincoln Institute, who previously directed regional planning initiatives for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council in Boston, says casting that broader net can make planning processes more representative and more robust. “Using technology could open the doors to people who have barriers to attending public meetings in person,” said Cotter. “Maybe they have to look after kids in the evening, or they don’t feel comfortable entering a public building, or have night class. By giving people more ways to access meetings, you’re going to get more participation and, I’d argue, better decisions.”

But shifting to virtual convenings isn’t always simple. Many localities have had to wait for state leaders to remove legal barriers preventing them from going forward. Florida, Delaware, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island, and Utah are among states with executive action seeking to suspend, amend, or clarify open meeting laws to allow for remote meetings. Some legislatures are taking up the issue as well, with states including Oklahoma, Ohio, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania considering legislation that addresses open meeting laws and virtual engagement.

In New York City, the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis in the United States, Mayor Bill de Blasio temporarily suspended the city’s land-use decision making processes even as the city received state permission to hold online meetings. Anita Laremont, executive director of the city’s planning department, expects that planning meetings will restart shortly. But she also said that COVID-19, the economic crisis it has created, and its disruption to daily life means that planning departments need to be realistic about what needs to move forward and what can wait.

“We will look at everything we put forward through the lens of whether it helps with the recovery,” Laremont said. “If we have neighborhood rezonings designed to develop additional affordable housing, we might choose to go forward because that remains an issue in the city.”

When it comes to executing the meetings themselves, planners must consider access and equity. How can online meetings conducted in English provide translation for speakers of other languages? How can cities best reach those without internet access or technical know-how?

Many platforms do offer language interpretation services for meetings and webinars, and options such as a call-in number can give attendees without internet access the opportunity to listen and participate in a meaningful way. But whether planners use general videoconferencing tools such as Zoom or GoToMeeting or planning-specific tools such as coUrbanize and Polco, figuring out which platform’s services work best for a city’s needs requires legwork. 

“It means speaking to all of these platforms and trying to understand what they can accommodate,” said Laremont. “That’s the only way we’ve really been able to do it, is to go and talk to them.”

Comparing notes with fellow planners is also vital, said Milwaukee Long Range Planning Manager Sam Leichtling. His department has been exploring the methods peers across the country are employing and collecting examples of approaches that capture different audiences. 

“I applaud the private vendors trying to adapt their technology to COVID-19, and with the right scenario, those tools have amazing uses,” Leichtling said. “But as a profession, we have to acknowledge that’s not going to be the solution to every case. Phone trees, dropping literature off at neighborhood facilities, these analog methods are still vital.”

It may well be that future planning processes use some combination of methods to reach as many people as possible. King confirmed that Dover, Kohl intends to combine virtual and on-site sessions going forward, pointing out that online convenings offer additional benefits including a lower carbon footprint and reduced travel time and costs for consultants and other experts. Cotter also noted that the Lincoln Institute advances more effective and inclusive public engagement strategies through its Consortium for Scenario Planning, which involves stakeholders beyond the planning office by introducing diverse voices into the process.

“Will we return to a situation where we rely only on traditional public meetings?” Cotter asked. “I doubt it. I think this will be a component of the way cities conduct business going forward.”

Liz Farmer is a fiscal policy expert and journalist whose areas of expertise include budgets, fiscal distress, and tax policy. She is currently a research fellow at the Rockefeller Institute’s Future of Labor Research Center.

Photograph: A virtual charrette allowed planners and the public to exchange information and ideas related to a potential development in Missoula, Montana. Credit: Courtesy of Dover, Kohl & Partners.

In the face of rapid changes to technology, the climate, and the global economy, a growing number of cities and regions use scenario planning to prepare for an uncertain future. The new book Scenario Planning for Cities and Regions: Managing and Envisioning Uncertain Futures, by Robert Goodspeed, explores this growing and evolving practice and offers the first in-depth examination of how urban planners and the communities they serve can make better decisions about the future.

A procedural tool originally developed for military and corporate strategic planning, scenario planning enables communities to create and analyze multiple plausible versions of the future. Unlike traditional approaches that begin with forecasting, scenario planning starts with a consideration of multiple plausible futures based on the different ways that major uncertainties could evolve. 

Historically, the planning field has largely ignored uncertainty, resulting in plans that perpetuated the status quo rather than preparing residents for the future. Inflexible plans can lead to disaster, however: homes flooded because they were built in areas thought to be safe from storms, public funds wasted on infrastructure to accommodate overestimated growth, or expensive mismatches between affordable housing types and residents’ needs.

By contrast, scenario planning puts uncertainties at the heart of the process, prompting practitioners to examine key variables like changing climate and weather patterns, uncertain growth trends, and evolving housing preferences. With this focal shift, a city might implement strategies that contend directly with unknown levels of sea-level rise, that direct efforts to maximize housing affordability, or that use critical natural resources more equitably and sustainably.

When this analysis focuses on forces within the city itself, planners can explore not only what may change but also what could change to advance community goals—or as the result of other interventions. When participants focus on external uncertainties, they can better prepare for changes in the broader environment, improving resilience to uncertain but foreseeable events. Taken together, these investigations help cities pursue practical transformation.

Scenario Planning for Cities and Regions examines how this tool can be adapted to a range of urban and regional planning contexts—and how it can empower practitioners and citizens alike to better address the unprecedented challenges that lie ahead for cities and regions. Intended for urban planners, students, and researchers, the book features practical guidance on scenario planning methods, modeling and simulation tools, and detailed case studies.

University of Southern California Professor Dowell Myers notes, “This masterwork on scenario planning is wonderfully accessible and deeply grounded in planning theory and systems thinking about interconnections and uncertainties. Robert Goodspeed has created the best explanation I’ve ever seen for understanding this planning strategy that is so urgently needed for guiding our cities through the turbulent 21st century.”

The book brings scenario planning to life with in-depth explorations of how planners and citizens have used the tool in their communities. Cases explored in the book include the Austin Sustainable Places Project, which used normative scenarios for low-budget, neighborhood-level land use planning in Texas, and the Sahuarita Exploratory Scenario Project, which employed exploratory scenarios to analyze an Arizona town’s general plan applied to possible futures. Although it focuses on U.S. cases, the book also describes international applications of scenario planning, including an ambitious Queensland, Australia, regional planning project, and covers foundational work by the Royal Dutch Shell company, which developed scenario creation methodology in the 1980s to analyze the global business environment.

Goodspeed also examines the history of both scenario and urban planning, showing how once-distinct fields can combine to create comprehensive long-range plans that account for a wide range of potential futures and build consensus among diverse stakeholders. He further demonstrates how scenario planning is uniquely suited to contemporary planning challenges and concludes, “Cities exist as they are, not as we wish they were, and scenario planning offers a good way to comprehend and plan them well.” 

“This book is an essential resource for anyone interested in using scenario planning to inform and improve planning and policy making,” University of Akron Emeritus Professor of Geography, Planning, and Urban Studies Richard E. Klosterman said. “It combines an instructive history of scenario planning, illustrative case studies, an overview of digital tools for creating and evaluating scenarios, a careful review of empirical studies, and a useful framework for evaluating urban scenario outcomes.”

Allison Ehrich Bernstein is principal at Allative Communications.

Photograph: Dripping Springs, Texas, was one of four towns outside of Austin that completed a scenario planning process to inform its local land use plan. Credit: Robert Goodspeed. 

A couple of years ago, landscape architect Pamela Conrad got curious about the climate impact of her work. How much carbon dioxide did her chosen materials release into the atmosphere? How much carbon was sequestered, or captured, by any given project’s mix of trees, shrubs, grasses, and other plants? What factors could she adjust to improve the net outcome? Conrad, a principal at the San Francisco firm CMG Landscape Architecture, decided to investigate.

“I went online and I just assumed there was going to be some magical tool that I could download, and it would just tell me,” she says. “I kind of expected to find it that afternoon.” That didn’t happen. She did find helpful tools and data intended to help gauge and improve the emissions impact of the built environment, but what she was looking for didn’t seem to exist: a tool to help landscape architects understand, in a holistic way, the climate impacts of their work.

Beyond her personal curiosity, this struck Conrad as a surprising absence. “We haven’t been measuring anything outside the building,” she says. That meant crucial conversations with policy makers and clients weren’t happening, because “we haven’t had the data.” Because landscape architecture can not only reduce emissions but also make tangible contributions to carbon sequestration, this field is perfectly positioned to offer “climate positive design,” as Conrad calls it: design that sequesters more carbon dioxide than it emits.

Conrad set out to make the tool she couldn’t find, with the support of a research grant from the Landscape Architecture Foundation. She worked with environmental consultants and tech developers to create a beta version of the free, web-based app now known as Pathfinder. The app, which formally launched in September 2019, has been used by 300 firms and counting. It is intentionally simple and accessible. Users enter various details of a project, large or small, from a backyard garden to a city plaza. The interface asks for information about materials (e.g., sand, crushed stone), plant types (e.g., trees, lawn), and other details.

On the back end, the app draws on data from sources including the U.S. Forest Service and the Athena Impact Estimator software created by the Athena Sustainable Materials Institute (ASMI) for building materials. It provides a kind of carbon profile for each project and offers suggestions to improve it, such as substituting a no-mow meadow for a lawn, or a wood deck for paving. The suggestions are intended to reduce the time it will take for each project to become carbon neutral, and then carbon positive. In the course of designing Pathfinder, Conrad tapped into a vein of similar efforts in other corners of the architecture and construction sectors that are contributing fresh insight to broader discussions of policy, planning, and land use. ASMI, a nonprofit collaborative, has been a pioneer on this front: since 2002 it has provided a variety of software tools that help designers measure the building, construction, and material impacts of their projects and materials.

Interest in this sort of resource is surging. Stephanie Carlisle, a principal at Philadelphia architecture firm KieranTimberlake, caused a stir earlier this year with a lengthy call-to-arms essay on the contribution of architects to climate change in Fast Company. New construction contributes massively to carbon emissions, she wrote: “Although it’s become mainstream to discuss energy efficiency and advocate for minimizing those impacts, architects, engineers, and planners have yet to truly reckon with the magnitude and consequences of everyday design decisions.”

Carlisle says she has been heartened by the enthusiastic response to the essay. As it happens, KieranTimberlake introduced its own carbon measurement tool, Tally, a few years ago. Tally was designed to be folded into workflow processes, as a plug-in to a 3D modeling software commonly used in the industry called Revit. This means, Carlisle explains, that a designer can substitute and change material and other options Tally allows architects to compare the climate impacts of various materials on a work in progress, then run a report on its potential carbon impact. “It tells designers where to spend their energy,” she says. Some 200 firms now use Tally, and its sales rose about 150 percent last year.

Tally, Pathfinder, and other similar tools fit into a broader trend of architects and landscape architects responding to climate change. “These [projects] are great pieces of the puzzle,” says Billy Fleming, Wilks Family Director for the Ian L. McHarg Center at the University of Pennsylvania and a coeditor of the recently published Design with Nature Now, a collaboration between the university and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. “The core of [the challenge] is absolutely about social, technical, and political systems that have to be reorganized around an international mobilization and response to climate change. So these efforts should be treated as the beginning of a conversation—not the end of it.”

Indeed, both Carlisle and Conrad emphasize that these tools are just a means to an end. Such tools are “directly empowering architects and engineers,” Carlisle says, but they can also help establish common benchmarks that make it easier for communication around carbon standards to “make its way into policy and code.” That’s starting to happen—Carlisle cites Marin County’s recent introduction of carbon standards for construction materials, and Conrad notes that San Francisco is embarking on a sustainable neighborhoods framework that factors in carbon sequestration standards—but they say there’s still not enough awareness of the possible positive impacts of design outside the design professions, or perhaps even within them. “We need way more investment in R&D, and in tools,” Carlisle says.

Conrad extends the point: as much as she intends Pathfinder to offer “really quick, accessible answers” with practical impacts on real projects, she also wants it to serve as an educational experience that builds awareness. “Landscape architects are the primary target,” she says. “But I see [potential use for] a lot of other players in the space, like policy makers using it to set standards.” While it’s easy for an individual to use Pathfinder to plan a backyard renovation, large-scale landowners can use it to gauge the impact of setting aside portions of development for trees and other elements that build climate resilience. A simple slider interface shows the user that, for example, a combination of 400 large trees and 1,100 medium-sized ones can sequester 2.3 million kilograms of carbon. “Once we’re able to measure what we’re doing and collect that data and get that feedback,” Conrad continues, “then we can start understanding what we’re doing and evolve our practices.”

Conrad has been spreading the word about Pathfinder through conferences and webinars, and has been taking suggestions that will guide updates in 2020. Late last year, she helped organize the Climate Positive Design Challenge, aimed at landscape architects, which established specific targets for projects large and small to achieve carbon-positive status: five years for parks, for instance, or 20 years for streetscapes or plazas. Pathfinder is meant to play a central role in helping designers meet that challenge. 

“We could potentially take a gigaton of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere over the next 30 years,” Conrad says. “We think you can cut emissions [on a given project] in half, and increase sequestration by two or three times, just by having the right information in front of you.”

Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, and other subjects. His book The Art of Noticing was published in May 2019. 

Photograph: The web-based app Pathfinder was the brainchild of landscape architect Pamela Conrad, who created the tool to measure the climate impacts of her work after discovering that no such tool existed. Credit: Courtesy of CMG Landscape Architecture.