{"id":67632,"date":"2018-11-07T14:55:36","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T22:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcwatch&p=67632"},"modified":"2018-11-26T15:13:45","modified_gmt":"2018-11-26T23:13:45","slug":"the-building-blocks-of-a-smart-city","status":"publish","type":"arcwatch","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcwatch\/the-building-blocks-of-a-smart-city","title":{"rendered":"The Building Blocks of a Smart City"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":651,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"arcwatch_issues":[38092],"class_list":["post-67632","arcwatch","type-arcwatch","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","arcwatch_issues-march-2017"],"acf":{"short_description":"Where and how should a community grow? Where should a city build sidewalks and trails to lower the risk of accidents and encourage walking?","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":null,"file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Where and how should the community grow? Where should the city build sidewalks and trails to lower the risk of accidents and encourage walking? What areas should be preserved as green infrastructure? How far do residents have to walk or drive to reach a public park?\r\n\r\nThese are the types of questions that urban planners from around the world ask daily. And the answers are out there, thanks to the increasing availability of open and proprietary data and the growing use of geodesign technologies, such as GIS software, that make sense of the data.\r\n\r\nAnalyzing and visualizing data on maps\u2014including in high-resolution 3D city models\u2014powers smart planning processes. The data-driven smart planning approach was one of the major topics discussed during this year's\u00a0Geodesign Summit<\/a>, where the theme was Geodesign: Enabling a Smarter World."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":59432,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"\"Data is everywhere and can be collected from everywhere, including from individuals walking around with cell phones,\" said summit moderator Stephen Goldsmith, speaking to more than 220 planning directors, urban planners, architects, engineers, GIS professionals, and academics. The group met for a series of workshops and presentations at the summit, held from January 24 to January 26, 2017, at Esri headquarters in Redlands, California.\r\n\r\n\"[With] this massive amount of data, we need context,\" said Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and a former mayor of Indianapolis, Indiana. \"GIS is an organizing context for data.\"\r\n\r\nEsri president Jack Dangermond, who had recently gone to India to inaugurate the\u00a0GIS Innovation Hub in Hyderabad, said the country is embracing the idea of data-driven smart cities faster than in some areas of the United States.\r\n\r\nDangermond spoke of how digital technology is everywhere in India, \"[from] tiny rural villages to growing metropolises.\"\r\n\r\nEvery person who walks around with a mobile phone is a potential sensor or collector of real-time data that, once analyzed and visualized, can be used to make decisions and improve how a community functions."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":59452,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Real-time data collection using sensors and the Internet of Things (IoT), coupled with advanced spatial analytics and visualization of big data or smart GIS, will help drive problem solving, Dangermond said. And there are big problems to solve, including climate change, loss of nature, and loss of biodiversity, he said.\r\n\r\n\"These are problems we are going to face for the rest of our lives, [so] we need to collaborate and work together,\" Dangermond said. \"GIS and geodesign represent a framework and process for creating a smarter world.\"\r\n

Smart Urban Planning<\/h3>\r\nCreating a smarter world starts with smart planning. That's where geodesign comes in.\r\n\r\nGeodesign combines the art of design with the science of geography in the planning process. Stakeholders provide input, and geodesign practitioners then use creative design techniques, rigorous methodologies, and spatial analysis and mapping to find the most suitable sites for housing developments, parks, office space, transit, and renewable energy projects.\r\n\r\nAll government organizations, from small municipalities to major cities, face vexing planning issues that often revolve around questions of where and how to grow while maintaining the unique character of the community. For answers to those questions, some cities, such as San Francisco, California, and Boulder, Colorado, are trying 3D geodesign technologies."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":59492,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"At the summit, Scott T. Edmondson, a planner-economist for the San Francisco Planning Department, said that as the city of San Francisco studies options of how to grow, it is beginning to use 3D GIS technology.\r\n\r\nHe showed the summit audience how city planning staff and an Esri team used 3D GIS tools to analyze and visualize data pertaining to height control of buildings, housing and jobs capacity, housing and growth, and transit access to housing and jobs.\r\n\r\nEdmondson said that the city has typically used tools such as 2D maps, Microsoft Excel tables, and charts to communicate planning scenarios. However, the 3D tools and techniques used for the demonstration project provided a \"better visual explanation\" of the data, he said.\r\n\r\n\"People get it quickly,\" Edmondson added.\r\n\r\nIn Colorado, work is currently under way on updating the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, a long-range planning guide for Boulder, a community with a population of 107,000 people and 100,000 jobs. That means there's a large commuter workforce, and a need for more affordable housing\u2014an issue that the city's planners are studying and creating a strategy for to address. The city's comprehensive planning manager, Lesli Kunkle Ellis, told the audience that the city is expected to continue to rapidly grow during the next four or five years.\r\n\r\nTo study and communicate data and issues related to land use, the City of Boulder has used Esri technology including\u00a0Esri CityEngine<\/a>\u00a03D modeling software and Esri Story Maps, such as the Esri Story Map Series app\u00a0Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan Story Maps<\/a>. The story maps show, for example, how much land in the City of Boulder is currently residential (38 percent), commercial and mixed use (8 percent), parks and open space\/mountain parks (29 percent), publicly owned (14 percent), and land that is uncategorized (1 percent)."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":59512,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"The Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan Story Maps app includes 3D maps of subcommunities with layers that, when turned on, show wetland areas, bike lanes and pedestrian trails, sidewalks, transit routes, parks and open space, zoning districts, and capital improvement projects.\r\n\r\nEllis said that Boulder residents are very interested and engaged in the planning process. To give the public the opportunity to explore the land-use data, the city put the story maps on its website.\r\n\r\n\"The story maps are a fantastic tool,\" said Ellis. \"We would like to [create] more.\"\r\n\r\nKenton County, Kentucky, also uses GIS maps to study issues and communicate with the public. Trisha Brush, GIS director, and Emi Randall, director of planning for Planning and Development Services (PDS) in Kenton County, told summit attendees about the county's\u00a0LINK-GIS<\/a>, an information portal that lets people explore a wide selection of online maps.\r\n\r\nBrush and Randall also talked about\u00a0Northern Kentucky mapLAB<\/a>\u00a0(NKYmapLAB), the product of a PDS initiative in which data is analyzed to produce story maps intended to inform and solicit feedback from the public and elected officials. Various issues are addressed, including some that are connected to Direction 2030, the county's long-range plan."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":59532,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Esri Story Maps apps have been created on topics such as walkability and sidewalk connectivity, traffic congestion, the urban tree canopy, solar power potential, and a plan to widen a state highway in northern Kentucky.\r\n\r\n\"If a picture is worth a thousand words, a map is worth a million,\" Brush said.\r\n\r\nBrush and Randall gave a presentation that included the\u00a0PLAN4Health in Kenton County<\/a>\u00a0story map. It shows the results of an analysis done to identify food deserts, which are areas of a community that lack easy access to healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables.\r\n\r\nThe\u00a0American Planning Association<\/a>\u00a0(APA) funded a Kenton County PLAN4Health Coalition project to conduct the analysis and support a program that's bringing more healthy foods into corner grocery stores and educating people about nutritious foods.\r\n\r\nBrush and Randall said that one program participant was Kimmy's Korner, a neighborhood grocery store in Covington, Kentucky. The store owner added apples, oranges, yogurt, fresh vegetables, and sweet potatoes to his shelves. To support Kimmy's Korner, money was provided for refrigeration equipment such as a freezer and a deli case."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":59552,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"\"The owner, Mark, wanted to help kids eat healthier,\" Randall said.\r\n

Learning Technology, Planning Communities, Telling Stories<\/h3>\r\nThe Kenton County PLAN4Health project and story map serve as a good example of what James M. Drinan, APA's executive director, spoke of in his Geodesign Summit talk, \"Placemaking as Storytelling.\"\r\n\r\nUrban planners need expertise in both design technology\u2014including geodesign\u2014and storytelling, Drinan said. Planners need to educate themselves about the latest technology in order to gather and communicate stories about a place, which is important in the design process, he said.\r\n\r\n\"Technology is not just a tool but a compelling requirement that planners must master. . . . Otherwise, we risk irrelevancy,\" he said. \"We risk being left behind.\"\r\n\r\nWhile data is important in planning, so are stories, according to Drinan. Planners need to gather people's perspectives about issues in order to create plans for the community's well-being, he said."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":59572,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"\"As planners, we need to listen to the stories that people tell [us],\" Drinan said. \"I want to start by understanding everyone's perspective. I need to ask questions and get information from them.\"\r\n\r\nStories carry impact and can be used to explain a plan better than data alone can, according to Drinan. For example, a story can illustrate how straightening a road and adding lighting to an area will protect children who are riding their bikes to the store, he said.\r\n\r\n\"Storytelling humanizes the data,\" said Drinan.\r\n\r\nThat's why using technology such as Esri Story Maps is so helpful, said Drinan, pointing to the PLAN4Health in Kenton County story map as an example."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":59592,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"The story map includes\r\n