4 ms·

A Tool Lets Urban Planners See The Potential Impact Of Their Ideas

71 points by joshwa 8y ago

IIAOPSW 8y ago
I believe the tool works, but I'm skeptical it will have any impact. There's a lot of "no shit sherlock" development that isn't happening. Building dense near the train station is literally textbook urban planning. It shouldn't take a complex simulation to prove it. The problem I see is that the electorate doesn't work the way the founders imagine. >When communities can see comprehensive data about multiple plans for the future, the startup’s founders say, it becomes easier to compare them and reach consensus. What actually happens is people like and dislike certain things and will post hoc justify entrenching their preferences in law.
- matt4077 8y ago
  Even given the dynamics you're describing, the basic idea still makes intuitive sense to me: it's easier to convince someone with a pretty & intuitive simulation than it is without. Your case would require complete rejection of rational arguments by the population. And while I do enjoy indulging in gratuitous negativity from time to time, reality clearly isn't quite as bleak as one may think. As but one example: power generation & distribution are one of the segments of infrastructure that often lead to controversies, but supply has so far managed to remain stable. The optimist might say we're using some slack in the system to take our time to find solutions that might actually better than first drafts. Yet even the pessimist will at least agree that there's still a lot of potential to get worse.
  - davidw 8y ago
    > Your case would require complete rejection of rational arguments by the population. Sounds exactly like a good chunk of the US electorate in 2018
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Or good chunk of the people complaining about US electorate in 2018. It's easier to blame everything on evil Russian hackers manipulating elections than to accept that for a lot of people, given their particular problems and issues, this particular candidate may have been the least worst one, or promised the best things.
- upzone3 8y ago
  > The problem I see is that the electorate doesn't work the way the founders imagine. Ding ding ding! Precisely. We’ve been designing cities well for thousands of years. I mean, pre-automobile, it made zero sense to have 5, 10, 15, 20 miles between you and a merchant or a doctor or law enforcement. This is a political problem. NIMBY property owners are increasingly the only ones able to vote in a given location, partially because they’re the only ones who can afford to live there. I mean, Jane Jacobs was writing in the ‘60s about how we’re ruining thousands of years of urban planning knowledge.
  - matt4077 8y ago
    Of course US urban planning, and especially its reliance on cars and the wrongheaded deprecation of mixed zoning are a problem. But telling people "you're idiots" just doesn't seem to change any minds. It being a political problem (which is almost a truism) doesn't change anything regarding the tools that can be successful. NIMBYs obviously fear change. If they are right, and some development would cause unreasonable harms, then it'd be wrong to dismiss them. If, however, as most people seem to assume, their fears tend to be overblown, then what better way to change minds than showing them a believable simulation? Possibly one that lets them interactively fiddle with the assumptions, examine the experts' opinions previously presented as inscrutable dogma, and arrive at more realistic expectations.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - Kalium 8y ago
      Not to wax cynical, but hasn't that precise approach proven less effective than might be hoped in the arena of climate change politics?
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        Was it even tried? I'm yet to see "believable simulations" shown to the general public. Something that doesn't look like a video of an indexed-color Earth with randomly rotating palette, but is explainable, explained, and possibly interactive. I myself believe scientists working on this have such simulations. But I've never seen any being discussed with regular people.
- mistrial9 8y ago
  A different way to phrase this might change the assumptions. Demand for funds to do many civics projects in California and elsewhere is legally bound to involve stakeholders before funds can be considered. This software environment builds detail-rich mapping, both current conditions and also a proposal (or three). The result is a quantitative data set that can be visualized and queried. That data environment is on the table of each stakeholder, so that discussion can be grounded with detail, and attention put to specific content. The scenario-sketching is available for private developers, public actors and government too, for their respective processes. SO it is not the tool that makes change.
- nkoren 8y ago
  You're not wrong inasmuch as that's what happens today. However: tools do help people think. I've worked as both an architect and an urban planner, and seen how people engage with complex systems in those situations. Absent good modeling tools, it's easy to spin fantasies and post-hoc justifications in virtually any direction, and when those directions diverge within a collaborative effort, nothing gets done. A good modeling tool can help the situation simply by limiting the degree of divergence that is possible. It's a nudge, and it'll take the culture a long time (if ever) to fully respond to it, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.
jalessio 8y ago
Surprised to find this on HN this morning! I'm Director of Engineering at UrbanFootprint (https://urbanfootprint.com/ https://urbanfootprint.com/), the company featured in the Fast Company article. We provide data and tools for urban planners to assess and compare the impacts of land use and transportation decisions. A basic use case is a city updating its General Plan, which would start with a forecast of how much population growth is anticipated / needs to be accommodated. A planner then needs to assess where new residents will live, work, shop, and play. Perhaps even more essential, how are people going to travel between all of these activities? Will the new growth be auto-dependent, transit-focused, walkable? Is any of the existing or planned development in hazard areas such as flood of wildfire? What are the energy and water use impacts of the plans? We’re using Python and Postgres/PostGIS on the backend to answer these questions and a React SPA to serve it up and make it interactive in a browser. Also, if you happen to live in California, UrbanFootprint is available for free to your city through our California Civic Program (http://info.urbanfootprint.com/california-civic-program http://info.urbanfootprint.com/california-civic-program) so feel free to nudge them to get in touch ;)
- roel_v 8y ago
  How many people are you?
- matt4077 8y ago
  Congrats for the PR successes, and also for turning what I can only assume was a worrying SimCity habit into a career & a tool for good. To expand that SimCity analogy to its breaking point: I've long fantasised a game/simulator crossover that tries to get as close as possible to simulate a city. Down to, say, individual agent's decision to eat out or shop for groceries, and the resulting traffic etc. Is that something you see happening in the (longish-term) future?
  - jgibson 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent-based_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent-based_model This is already in common use as far as I'm aware. Its used in the Netherlands to predict electrical grid load based on the number of EVs driving about.
paulcole 8y ago
Sim City?
HNNewer 8y ago
I thought it was about Cities:Skyline, I found the game realistic and helpful for city planning
BenRoss001 8y ago
Cities Skylines with the Real Time Mod and Transport Manager President Edition mods added Gets pretty close to simulating what cities go through (Foreign Affairs not withstanding) and makes a great tool in communicating to residents and businesses (as the Swedes and Finnish discovered).

71 points by joshwa 8y ago

I believe the tool works, but I'm skeptical it will have any impact. There's a lot of "no shit sherlock" development that isn't happening. Building dense near the train station is literally textbook urban planning. It shouldn't take a complex simulation to prove it. The problem I see is that the electorate doesn't work the way the founders imagine. >When communities can see comprehensive data about multiple plans for the future, the startup’s founders say, it becomes easier to compare them and reach consensus. What actually happens is people like and dislike certain things and will post hoc justify entrenching their preferences in law.

matt4077 8y ago
Even given the dynamics you're describing, the basic idea still makes intuitive sense to me: it's easier to convince someone with a pretty & intuitive simulation than it is without. Your case would require complete rejection of rational arguments by the population. And while I do enjoy indulging in gratuitous negativity from time to time, reality clearly isn't quite as bleak as one may think. As but one example: power generation & distribution are one of the segments of infrastructure that often lead to controversies, but supply has so far managed to remain stable. The optimist might say we're using some slack in the system to take our time to find solutions that might actually better than first drafts. Yet even the pessimist will at least agree that there's still a lot of potential to get worse.
- davidw 8y ago
  > Your case would require complete rejection of rational arguments by the population. Sounds exactly like a good chunk of the US electorate in 2018
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Or good chunk of the people complaining about US electorate in 2018. It's easier to blame everything on evil Russian hackers manipulating elections than to accept that for a lot of people, given their particular problems and issues, this particular candidate may have been the least worst one, or promised the best things.
upzone3 8y ago
> The problem I see is that the electorate doesn't work the way the founders imagine. Ding ding ding! Precisely. We’ve been designing cities well for thousands of years. I mean, pre-automobile, it made zero sense to have 5, 10, 15, 20 miles between you and a merchant or a doctor or law enforcement. This is a political problem. NIMBY property owners are increasingly the only ones able to vote in a given location, partially because they’re the only ones who can afford to live there. I mean, Jane Jacobs was writing in the ‘60s about how we’re ruining thousands of years of urban planning knowledge.
- matt4077 8y ago
  Of course US urban planning, and especially its reliance on cars and the wrongheaded deprecation of mixed zoning are a problem. But telling people "you're idiots" just doesn't seem to change any minds. It being a political problem (which is almost a truism) doesn't change anything regarding the tools that can be successful. NIMBYs obviously fear change. If they are right, and some development would cause unreasonable harms, then it'd be wrong to dismiss them. If, however, as most people seem to assume, their fears tend to be overblown, then what better way to change minds than showing them a believable simulation? Possibly one that lets them interactively fiddle with the assumptions, examine the experts' opinions previously presented as inscrutable dogma, and arrive at more realistic expectations.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - Kalium 8y ago
    Not to wax cynical, but hasn't that precise approach proven less effective than might be hoped in the arena of climate change politics?
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Was it even tried? I'm yet to see "believable simulations" shown to the general public. Something that doesn't look like a video of an indexed-color Earth with randomly rotating palette, but is explainable, explained, and possibly interactive. I myself believe scientists working on this have such simulations. But I've never seen any being discussed with regular people.
mistrial9 8y ago
A different way to phrase this might change the assumptions. Demand for funds to do many civics projects in California and elsewhere is legally bound to involve stakeholders before funds can be considered. This software environment builds detail-rich mapping, both current conditions and also a proposal (or three). The result is a quantitative data set that can be visualized and queried. That data environment is on the table of each stakeholder, so that discussion can be grounded with detail, and attention put to specific content. The scenario-sketching is available for private developers, public actors and government too, for their respective processes. SO it is not the tool that makes change.
nkoren 8y ago
You're not wrong inasmuch as that's what happens today. However: tools do help people think. I've worked as both an architect and an urban planner, and seen how people engage with complex systems in those situations. Absent good modeling tools, it's easy to spin fantasies and post-hoc justifications in virtually any direction, and when those directions diverge within a collaborative effort, nothing gets done. A good modeling tool can help the situation simply by limiting the degree of divergence that is possible. It's a nudge, and it'll take the culture a long time (if ever) to fully respond to it, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

jalessio 8y ago

Surprised to find this on HN this morning! I'm Director of Engineering at UrbanFootprint (https://urbanfootprint.com/ https://urbanfootprint.com/), the company featured in the Fast Company article. We provide data and tools for urban planners to assess and compare the impacts of land use and transportation decisions. A basic use case is a city updating its General Plan, which would start with a forecast of how much population growth is anticipated / needs to be accommodated. A planner then needs to assess where new residents will live, work, shop, and play. Perhaps even more essential, how are people going to travel between all of these activities? Will the new growth be auto-dependent, transit-focused, walkable? Is any of the existing or planned development in hazard areas such as flood of wildfire? What are the energy and water use impacts of the plans? We’re using Python and Postgres/PostGIS on the backend to answer these questions and a React SPA to serve it up and make it interactive in a browser. Also, if you happen to live in California, UrbanFootprint is available for free to your city through our California Civic Program (http://info.urbanfootprint.com/california-civic-program http://info.urbanfootprint.com/california-civic-program) so feel free to nudge them to get in touch ;)

roel_v 8y ago
How many people are you?
matt4077 8y ago
Congrats for the PR successes, and also for turning what I can only assume was a worrying SimCity habit into a career & a tool for good. To expand that SimCity analogy to its breaking point: I've long fantasised a game/simulator crossover that tries to get as close as possible to simulate a city. Down to, say, individual agent's decision to eat out or shop for groceries, and the resulting traffic etc. Is that something you see happening in the (longish-term) future?
- jgibson 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent-based_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent-based_model This is already in common use as far as I'm aware. Its used in the Netherlands to predict electrical grid load based on the number of EVs driving about.

paulcole 8y ago

Sim City?

HNNewer 8y ago

I thought it was about Cities:Skyline, I found the game realistic and helpful for city planning

BenRoss001 8y ago

Cities Skylines with the Real Time Mod and Transport Manager President Edition mods added Gets pretty close to simulating what cities go through (Foreign Affairs not withstanding) and makes a great tool in communicating to residents and businesses (as the Swedes and Finnish discovered).